How To Clean Guns

I grew up with guns. I loved them, took care of them, cleaned them, hunted with them, bragged about them: I am going to brag about them now. My parents gave me my first gun, a seven-shot bolt-action Remington .22 with a peep sight — was that cool, kind of a telescopic-sight wannabe. I was probably about twelve. About the same time, my godfather gave me a single shot .4l0 shotgun. It came apart in three pieces, stock and firing mechanism, fore-stock, and barrel, with a kick like a mule. Shot a lot of doves with that and missed even more. By the time I finished high school I had five guns, a Savage 250–3000 with a two-and-a-half power Weaver scope — a real telescopic sight — and finally a Smith and Wesson 38-caliber pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun, the last two inherited from my godfather. The pistol came with five bullets, I never fired it because I knew I couldn’t afford to replace the bullets. The 12-gauge was a beautiful gun with a recoiling barrel (zero kick), and held three shots, a semiautomatic gun.

In those days the NRA was all about gun safety, Carry your gun pointed to the ground, Never aim a gun, even unloaded at something you don’t want to kill, Keep it clean, etc. My father’s L C Smith double-barrel 20 gauge was loaded only when hunting; his pump-action .22 was always loaded and ready to use against rattlesnakes. We knew it was loaded and reminded ourselves of the electrician who always did his wiring with the lines hot, so he would never mistake a hot wire for a cold one.

So my hobby between about 1953 and 1960 was sport hunting. Fun to go hunting, outside beside a stock pond for doves after September 1, or up in a tree at 6:00 am in December waiting for deer. Keeping the guns clean was not a chore but a pleasure.

My purpose in going over this is to establish my creds. To this day I think that the story in Ukraine would be different if about forty percent of the population lived in households with guns. Putin eventually is going to have to give up his cowardly, long-distance attacks and send in soldiers and settlers, and their pioneering adventure would be different if the natives had our ratio of guns to households.

Now, my fellow citizens, I hope it doesn’t make you twitch to suggest that maybe deep down, in the quiet of your home, you are not happy about the mass shootings. Surely, like me, you think this is not right. If you are content with living with the random chance of being killed any day, and having your loved ones killed, then I can save you some time by suggesting that you turn to other things than reading further.

I have written here in two essays on two related topics: in one essay I point out that there is a heavy profit motive for gun interests to oppose all efforts at gun control.

Let’s Clean Up, Rebuild After this Tornado of Gun Violence, and Rid Ourselves of Turds

Their financial interests are aided and abetted by members of Congress who I refer to as turds on their payroll. An earlier draft referred to them as whores, but I did not want to defame sex workers. I like the word turds, necessary in our world only as something that we need to get rid of.

The other essay points to the efficacy of the gun interests’ use of stories.

We’re Losing the Battle for a Well-Regulated Militia at the Level of Stories

What they have on their side is the dramatic imagery of Stand Your Ground, A Man’s Home is His Castle, The Best Defense is a Good Guy with a Gun. And there is the drunkard Charlton Heston holding up his flintlock.

In that second article, I said that the way to counter those images is with new ones. I argued that parents should have the right to allow their mangled children’s bodies shown, like Emmett Till’s mother decided to do, to bring home the horror of what guns can do. The pictures should be accompanied with caption:

Susie, who chased butterflies in a park over the weekend, had her arm shot off with a gun that Senator X and Senator Y allowed by voting against bill Z, that would have kept the gun out of the hands of the shooter.

Well, we saw what happened when the Austin newspaper released a video of the police outside the room where the shooter was systematically killing children. Furor. Because the parents had not given their permission. Absolutely. Parents have to decide to be Emmett Till’s mother. Not everyone can do it. But because of the furor, you can see what power the images have.

Let me repeat that, it is central to where we can go. Because of the furor, you can see what power the images have. If we want to get meaningful gun safety measures in place, we must produce new images for the American consciousness. The gun interests have theirs; the rest of us need to deliver more compelling images, and, I am sorry, more horrible images of the truth.

It won’t be easy. I have spent several essays here explaining how images/stories make us who we are, they are us. Changing them out will not be easy, or cheap. Consider the profit motive of the gun interests: that is what we are up against. I ball-parked a billion dollars a year. It won’t come from the government, so private funding will have to step up. As I have said before, we get the government we pay for.

So, I think I know how to get new images, and therefore a motivating urgency, into American minds. I don’t know who. We have ad agencies with talent, we have market research. We can do this. I welcome other ideas about who can do this.