Exaggeration and Credibility

Rub dirt in your hair. Rend your garments. Curse the heavens. Stand on a street corner with a battery bull horn and proclaim the end of the earth. Or just join the Tea Party, or other bloviating collection of gas bags and erase what marginal vestige of credibility they might have had when they woke up this morning. This is the patriotic bullies' end of the world, who see themselves as the saviors of our ability to own firearms and enjoy shooting sports.

These folks lost the election. The American people did not buy their over-the-top rabble rousing, appeal to the lowest common denominator of uninformed voter style of presenting the pros and cons of an issue. They helped sink the once Grand Old Party with their crude rhetoric, their tragic comprehension of history and their prognostications of things to come that any high school debate team could render moot. Instead of leading the discussion, they herd their acolytes and believers, sweeping along the confused and undecided into what appears to them to be a consensus.

While grown-ups (mostly) debate our financial future in Washington, these single-issue ideologues hop from one foot to the other preaching doom. They are not alone, of course. On the other side of the issue, the equally silly "gun grabbers" who doggedly follow the path that gave us Prohibition in the 1920s, plan and connive to remove all firearms from civilians -- 300 million firearms -- to make our world a safer place. That might have been a swell idea back when the Chinese were still tinkering with gunpowder, but 1100 years later, things have gotten out of hand.

All of the chest beating on both sides has done nothing to ease the burden on the average gun owner who must explain themselves as a sportsman and not one of the aluminum foil hat people whenever they let slip their sport of preference in a conversation.

Compromise Should Call the Shots

It's a whole new world out there. A fresh rain has washed all the soiled PAC money off the streets into the gutter where it belongs. The American electorate has once again cut through the ideologues' rhetoric to weed out the gasbags and constipated bloviators. The woof and stomp drum beat of the tragically off-track, out-of-touch Tea Party silliness has been given the boot for at least four years when the burrowing insects will emerge once again to plague the democratic process.

There, that was fun. I wish it was that clear cut. Like dogs yapping at the wheels of progress (what an image), we will continue to have skulkers loping along bleating doomsday forecasts, claiming election fraud, rubbing dirt into their hair and rending their garments. In the halls of the National Rifle Association PAC, we can imagine lamp cord nooses being fastened to light fixtures above teetering chairs atop tables, and bereft ideologues imploring their Conservative gods for a sign that this betrayal is all part of some mystical plan in the coming post-apocalyptic world. Or maybe not.

Maybe, just maybe some closet moderate might propose that the question of America's firearms tradition will be better served if the hierarchy in their fused vertebrae rigidity, peering out at the real world of shooting sports and our gun culture considers exploring...compromise. Of course the
"C-word" requires at least two parties. Those ultra-liberals perched on the lofty heights of moral righteousness who hide behind pages of slippery statistics and employ the same tactics to remove guns from the American populace as did their predecessors who championed Prohibition and the 18th Amendment have to pull a chair up to the table.

The tradition of firearms ownership and shooting sports should not be the ideological playground of  blustering patriotic bullies, nor the dry and barren desert of sweaty-palm statistic jugglers. There is a middle ground that removes the stigma and celebrates the accomplishments of shooting sports while abstracting the concept of "weapons" for their narrow and necessary applications. Give the C-word a chance and take the majority of American sportsmen and women off the hook.

Post Election Promenade

With the election concluded and Barack Obama back in office for the next four years, we can look forward to enjoying the following results: an end to those lying vicious PAC commercials that most people muted on sight --except for the knuckle-dragging mouth breathers who are today rubbing dirt into their hair, rending their garments, beating their breasts in lamentation and seeking solace in watching Honey Boo-boo reruns. We can also listen to the damp hiss that is the air leaking from Far Right Republican Lock-step Ideologues as they and their agenda for ruling the world behind the trenchantly gullible Tea Party cannon fodder -- who would have us return to dial phones, round-screen TVs, ice boxes and an Apple II in every home playing Space Invaders and featuring Visicalc --- quietly steal back into their bunkers smelling of freshly poured concrete to await the Black Helicopters coming for their guns.

A visit to the NRA Web site reveals tragic wreckage, abandoned conference rooms, shattered IPads and empty paper towel dispensers in the men's room. Champagne bottles sit warm and uncorked in shallow pools of melted ice. Boxes of cigars with open lids are untouched and the 60 ring gauge churchill stogies are drying out. Fox News plays old George Bush press conferences on overheated 55 inch screens while ignored desk computers endlessly scroll Romney Wins! in a for-next loop on their green screens.

As the disco rock band in the rented hall down the street packs up its rotating mirror ball and caterers chip loose ossified chocolate mousse from little cups next to cooled plates of chicken fricassee that imprison forks in gummy puddles, the victory dance is over beneath the now blank video projection screen and the centerpiece of dripping ice sculpture depicting Romney and Ryan giving everyone the "V" for victory sign -- but the index fingers have already melted away, leaving behind no doubt about the message.

It is a time for healing and taking down from the bathroom medicine cabinet those suppositories marked "compromise" and "common sense" and the really big one designed for ideologue acolytes who still believe the world is truly flat and every hunting rifle needs a 30-round magazine.

The NRA spent decades as the confident steward of our sport and now it has a chance to serve its members more than the thin gruel of right wing, cynical propaganda, take self interest off the table and return to advance the sport into national recognition and respect.

Whatever Your Mission

"Whatever Your Mission…” Civilian Firearms - from Weapons to Sports 

(From an article published in the GroundReport blog. Sept, 2012)

In a gun magazine advertisement, a militia member, tricked out in copies of army “tactical” gear hefts an assault rifle with a 30 round magazine and strides forward above the text  “…Whatever your mission.”  Today, ads for military rifles and self-defense pistols have intensified, aimed at civilians with images of combat situations combined with text promising deadly capabilities.  

During the history of American firearms, muskets, rifles and shotguns won our independence, defended our lives and property, and put meat on our table. They accompanied our westward migration in saddle scabbards and wagon beds. Whole families learned to shoot as a matter of survival in the 18^th century and, as civilization and population growth caused social pressures, the civilian market for firearms shifted from tools and sport to weapons.

When armies and militias in the early 19^th century required more mobility and greater volume of firepower, the repeating rifle and the revolver became the cash cow of firearms marketing.  Multishot breechloader carbines and rifles from Sharps, Burnside, Spencer and Winchester joined Colt and Remington revolvers in the great land armies of the Civil War. Spencer, the first successful breech loading repeater, fired seven .52 caliber cartridges. Confederates called it, “That Yankee rifle you load on Sunday and shoot all week.”

            At the end of the war, millions of combat weapons found their way into civilian hands as the West opened up to settlers, speculators and the railroad. With the military downsized, gun marketing followed the westward migration with combat-proven, rapid fire weapons. The revolver and shotgun were touted as necessary for self defense in rough cow towns and the lawless expanses of the prairie. Actually, most cow towns and villages had tougher gun laws than we have today. Some of the large cattle ranches forbade their cowpokes from owning a revolver while on the trail, and many of the firearms displayed in period photographs of “tough waddies on the prod” are the photographer’s props. But the romantic six-gun myth grew.

World War I rekindled military arms development on a grand scale. The Thompson Submachine Gun, designed for fighting in France, arrived too late for the war. Instead, it was marketed to ranch owners for cutting down pesky cattle rustlers. This was the first automatic-fire battle weapon to find a civilian demand during Prohibition.  Murders on the city streets helped fuel a firearms frenzy and even National Geographic Magazine carried ads for Colt handguns, “…to defend your hearth and home.” Throughout the Great Depression, Tommy Guns and six guns flashed and boomed in the hands of motor bandits and peace officers across the country.

            Following World War II, the shooting sport market was flat. None of the conventional war weapons: the M1 rifle, carbine and automatic pistol were suited to civilian use. The Armalite all metal and plastic AR-15 rifle arrived in time for the Vietnam War. Essentially, it is three metal tubes machined from bar stock. This “assault rifle” became a cheap-to-build platform for a variety of military weapons from the M-16 to the current H&K416 Seal Team rifle system. Even with reduced firepower, it promises high capacity, deadly combat capabilities to any civilian shooter…”whatever your mission.”

            Real or imagined, this aggressive mindset has helped polarize the general public’s firearm attitudes and acceptance of sport shooting traditions.

Home, home on the Range

I love the smell of a firearms range in the morning. It smells like...action. Standing at the firing line and peering downrange at the waiting targets jumpstarts my motor. I was 12 when I first laid down on an old discarded mattress that reeked of dried little boy pee and dessicated mouse corpses in a crawl space under an old, old house and looked across the sights of a .22 rifle at a target suspended 50 feet away in a bullet trap, and pushed my first real cartridge into the rifle's breech. My very first shot drilled the center of the bullseye, as did my second and third shots. I was on my way to earning my Boy Scouts Marksmanship Merit Badge and discovering that I was not doomed to be an "also," or part of "the field" who always chases the winner across the finish line. My inability to clobber a baseball, throw a perfect football spiral, slapshot a puck into a net, sink a freethrow, or skate on wheels or blades was not going to keep me down. I could be a contender.

And that's how it all worked out. My shooting skills, resulting from hours and hours of practice and thousands of rounds blazed downrange punched my ticket. That golden time spent at the range allowed me to turn shooting skills into photographic skills ("hold...breathe...squeeze...") -- except with a camera, after I squeezed the shutter, my subject could walk out of the frame. From there, my shooting sports co-existed with my career as an international photojournalist, film and video documentary maker, television and video producer, director and writer -- and finally book author of U. S. Histories, military histories, biographies, fine arts volumes, auto racing and young adult books. In other words, a life of great adventure.

Shooting sports helped me bond with my father, crunching through the fall leaves in search of squirrels, rabbits or pheasants for the dinner table. The range provided a gathering place for some lasting friendships like Diane, the southpaw who could shoot rings around any guy on the line with .22 or a .30 caliber M1 rifle, who earned a Distinguished Rifleman's badge and had a great sense of humor. There was Gavin and Jim and Doc Meissner, the opthamologist and American Legion rangemaster who taught us all how to shoot and grow up while we were still in our teens.

I shoot casually with friends now, but I can still hear his voice, "Keep those muzzles pointed downrange! The longer you hold on a target, the unsteadier you get! Don't ever believe a gun is unloaded until you've personally checked it! More people get hurt on a tennis court or a golf course than on any well-run rifle range!"

Marksmanship is a gender-blind and age-proof sport that should be developed for spectator appeal and spun into the American Shooting Sport League with teams across the country. To realize that vision, we need more ranges and participation in a tradition that goes back to when our country was brand new and sharpshooters were held in high esteem. 

Guns -- Power in a Powerless World?

The gun is a dumb, powerless instrument. Unlike a golf club or a tennis racket, a gun relies on its user's intent rather than imposing its specific intent, or context on the user. Guns have one specific function, to hurl a projectile at a target. Shoot at people, you have a weapon. Shoot at clay, paper, steel, other inorganic targets, or hunter's game and you have a sporting firearm. This synergy between the target and the gun, in turn, confers power on the shooter.If the target is another human being, the power is life or death. All other targets reinforce the power of  eye, hand. muscle and mental acuity, an athlete's skills.

The history of the gun has caromed back and forth between its imposed function as weapon or sporting firearm, adding in its early decades, "survival tool" until enough domesticated animals could be bred to eliminate hunting as a life-sustaining necessity. Specifically in the United States, as population swelled, the huge variety of social customs and the separation of economic classes caused conflicts that too often escalated into disastrous wars. Just as the space program moved technology forward in great strides, warfare accelerated development of the gun. The expertise in producing weapons for the military trickled down into the civilian market: modular design, carbon fiber components, laser sights, rail mounted accessories and varieties of ammunition designed for maximum impact and minimum collateral damage.

As the gun manufacturers realized greater market share in military-style firearms, their advertising and marketing began conferring the skills and power of the professional soldier in combat upon the civilians who bought watered-down variations of these weapons. The manufacturers, with the help of the NRA, used fear of street crime, radical groups, rape, pillage and rampage to equate civilian life with a combat zone. Leaving home in the morning added a ritual to plucking the car keys off their hook next to the back door; now the citizen also tucked a .45 caliber Glock, Kimber or S&W pistol  into a concealed belt holster.

This testosterone-dipped marketing fantasy reached into entertainment, video games, and many facets of pop culture: fashion, language and sports. We gradually became a more violent society by osmosis.

The most tragic benefactors of this trickle-down violence are the kids trapped in geographic ghettos where every day is a struggle to stay off the bottom rung of the social ladder. In desperation, they buy into the myth that the gun confers power in a powerless world. They are trapped in an abandoned society, cast adrift by social scientists, academics and passion-driven do-gooders who actually believe removing 270,000,000 guns from American hands will solve the problem. These are the same people who gave us Prohibition in the 18th Amendment. On the other side of the coin, the patriotic bullies goading on the manufacturers and raising money for Political Action Committees to terrorize legislators are just as foolish. Their woof and stomp pit bull antics embarrass their membership of sportsmen and women. No one wants to be tossed into the same pit as the militia yahoos, aluminum-foil hat people, or other crazed types wielding the Second Amendment as a club.

Both of the extreme ends of the gun control issue use the same argument forced on the kid who wants a job, an education, a chance at a better life and some self-esteem. Instead, he is fed the lie that the gun confers power in a powerless world.      

Phony gun buy-backs a political non-event

Voluntary Gun turn-ins like the latest set for June 23 are largely a politically motivated attempt to look like the local government is doing SOMETHING to eliminate gun violence. In American Shooter, I wrote, "...Politically cynical buy-back programs were tried by City Hall, paying Chicagoans to turn in guns for $100 gift cards. These buy-back efforts always produced a pile of trash and the gangs get spending money to buy ammunition."

Little has changed as Mayor Emanuel pushes this same tired tactic. The littered table tops at police stations where the buy-backs are displayed for the media are rarely covered with an arsenal of street crime weapons. According to Steve Chapman, a member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board in today's Sunday Tribune, (6/17/12) "The people who participate are generally those who are the least dangerous. Those who are most dangerous have no motive to participate. So when the buy-back is done, the number of armed criminals will most likely be unchanged." As Chapman further points out, "...a pistol used in the course of armed robberies will pay for itself many times over. A $100 gift card won't."

A few old plinking rifles, A grocery store bag full of dusty, cheap automatic pistol knock-offs with clips rusted into the grips and revolvers that require a hammer to open the cylinder make for great scrap, but hardly represent the Glocks, Mac-10s, Taurus, Kimber, Colt and Desert Eagle street-carries shoved into baggy pants waistbands and hoody pockets.

The police and politicians are still casting too wide a net, hauling in more sporting firearms and fewer real weapons with each trolling expedition. This is another reason why we need a disconnect between sporting firearms and the needs of the police and military. We need more rifle and pistol ranges to train civilian gun owners and sports competitors in the rigors of marksmanship, firearms safety and responsibility. Today, draconian range building rules are insuring that the people who own the most (concealed and open carry) guns have the least amount of training -- and that's a recipe for tragedy.

What we need is a resurgence of firearms sports and competitions to get us back to our roots and away from the virulent extremist tub-thumping.