\t\t\t\tGUNS
\nGUNS SNUG NUNS’ SUSS, GUS.<\/p>\n
I was just talking to somebody about guns. I never knew my dad owned a gun until he ended himself with one. I suspect he procured it for the one purpose it served, even if he had purchased it years earlier. I never saw the gun but I found a box of bullets in the kitchen cabinet. I told John, the downstairs neighbor who found my dad, to get rid of them. I bet kept the bullets for himself.<\/p>\n
A person I was talking to is from Texas, where buying guns is as easy as walking into a pawn shop. He said he bought his .38 a couple of years ago and does not even need a license for it unless he intends to carry it, which he does not. Legal ownership of guns in NYC, on the other hand, is pretty rare. It is not a subject near or dear to me but that’s somehow how this conversation began.<\/p>\n
My sister, when she moved back home to take care of our mother, told me she found a gun buried in a file cabinet under a bunch of junk. I was surprised to learn this, since mother had always loathed guns. We never even had toy guns of any kind. She maintained that her brother would have lived a long life had he not owned a gun. His house was burglarized and the robber used his (my mother’s brother’s) gun to kill him. The robber arrived unarmed. Simply having a gun, mother said, makes it infinitely more likely that you will be shot yourself. That logic is kind of hard to dispute.<\/p>\n
So how did she end up with a revolver? I actually suspect she did not even know it was there. It must have been a parting gift or something just left behind by… I think his name was Matthew… a guy who moved in with mother for a couple of \u00a0years. I never met him but was told he was something of a gun nut. My sister disposed of the gun without any comment, and mother never mentioned it. So for that I suspect she just did not know it was there, but she certainly knew guns were present while that dude was living with her.<\/p>\n
The only guns I’ve ever held, as far as I can remember, were in grade school at a summer camp rifle range. I think they were BB guns. I still have the targets I shot at. I scanned them and posted them somewhere on my web site, with \u00a0my Chosatonga and Sequoyah pictures. The world needs to know what kind of a sharpshooter I was in grade school, right?<\/p>\n
I have a foggy memory of holding some kind of gun and spinning the ammo chamber, but I think that was either a prop of some sort or just a decorative piece. We had, for some reason, a long-barrel rifle hanging over the living room in Tampa. But that was a decorative thing that we got in Africa. So that was considered classy. As a weapon I don’t think that gun could have done much damage. It looked like a pea-shooter.<\/p>\n
My dad always bragged that in 30+ years of military service he never once carried a gun. He said this to assure me that if I joined the military, like he wanted me to, that I would never see combat. I respect those who do but I never even considered joining the military. My mother once threatened to kill herself if I joined the military. That threat, or whatever it was, did not influence my disinterest in a military career. I always thought it was a strange comment, though. I thought of it years on, when every conversation I had with her started with her saying “I want to die” or a similar sentiment.<\/p>\n
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