On the quilt of my bed are a .22 rifle and a .410 shotgun. Normally these pieces sit against the wall in the closet beyond the bed, along with a couple of other firearms, boxes of .22 shells and some other ammo, and cleaning equipment.
The .22, a single-shot bolt action I used to teach shooting to my children, belonged to my father when he was young. When I was sixteen, my parents gave me the shotgun for Christmas, a firearm last fired in 1969.
Like many who have enjoyed shooting, I began when my father gave me a BB gun. I was eleven or so, and plinked away at tin cans and toy soldiers. Dad then taught me firearms safety and shooting with the .22. With the shotgun I went hunting rabbits with Dad two or three times on a farm owned by a surgeon, Dr. Moose, whose name acted as a billboard for his large, bluff face and robust frame. I am reasonably certain I never hit any living creature on these hunts.
The .22, a single-shot bolt action I used to teach shooting to my children, belonged to my father when he was young. When I was sixteen, my parents gave me the shotgun for Christmas, a firearm last fired in 1969.
Like many who have enjoyed shooting, I began when my father gave me a BB gun. I was eleven or so, and plinked away at tin cans and toy soldiers. Dad then taught me firearms safety and shooting with the .22. With the shotgun I went hunting rabbits with Dad two or three times on a farm owned by a surgeon, Dr. Moose, whose name acted as a billboard for his large, bluff face and robust frame. I am reasonably certain I never hit any living creature on these hunts.
During my first summer at West Point we spent a week on the firing range, shooting M-14s at pop-up plastic targets made in the profile of a human being’s head and torso. Here I qualified as an expert marksman. We also shot M-16s, whose light weight and plastic compared to the wood-and-metal of the M-14 felt like a child’s toy. The following summer found me at Camp Buckner, blazing away with grenade launchers, M-60 machine guns, a LAW (light anti-tank weapon), artillery, and guns on a tank.
Over the years since then, I have infrequently fired weapons, usually while teaching marksmanship to my children. Once an Asheville writer, Lewis Green, invited my family to his home to shoot automatic weapons, for which he had a license. A few other times, every five or six years, I have gone to a range or to a friend’s house for some sport.
Clearly, I am not a serious sportsman, adopting instead a whimsical approach to guns and shooting. I enjoy firing at targets—age has shaken my abilities with a handgun—but it’s not an activity I do often. Though some friends and family have earned their concealed carry permits and keep a handgun on their person or in their car, I could never be bothered. If I ever attended a concealed-carry class, my purpose would be to write about it rather than lug around a handgun. Besides, I always imagined that like Barney Fife I would be more likely to shoot myself in the foot than to ward off an attacker.
Despite my lack of interest in shooting, I remain an advocate of gun ownership. For years, I have belonged to the NRA. I am aware of the arguments for and against gun control, and won’t bother restating these here except to make three points. First, despite the rhetoric of groups like Black Lives Matter, the high number of shootings and murders in major cities like Baltimore and Chicago are largely the result of gang violence, not out of control cops. Both of these cities share similarities in that 1) they have strict gun-control laws; 2) Democrats have dominated city government for more than half a century; and 3) the great majority of shootings are black on black. The lack of vision on the part of city officials; the breakdown of the black family over the last sixty years; the absence of fathers on the streets and in the homes; the high teen unemployment; drugs; a culture of gang violence: these are the reasons for the murder and mayhem that daily occur in these cities.
The arguments over gun control will continue. But the primary reason for my advocacy of gun ownership is constitutional.
For me, as for many of the Founding Fathers, the “right of the People to keep and bear arms” was intended in part to give the government, local or federal, pause in some of it machinations and plots. An armed citizenry remains a check on radical government, whether of the left or the right.
In fact, at some points in American history, guns and people willing to use them have thwarted government injustices. In 1850, when Frederick Douglass was asked what the best response was to the Fugitive Slave Act, he replied: “A good revolver.” In the Jim Crow South black gun owners were those best able to ward off lynchings. In a 2014 New York Times piece, “Do Black People Have Equal Gun Rights?“ Charles Cooke writes:
“In her remarkable 1892 disquisition on the evils of lynching, the writer Ida B. Wells noted that “the only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.” Wells offered some blunt advice: “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”
In the same article, Cooke tells us that Martin Luther King, Jr., though denied the right to carry a firearm, had an arsenal of guns at home.
In 1946 occurred the “Battle of Athens” in Tennessee, in which an armed band of citizens, mostly ex-GIs, engaged in a gun battle and ousted a corrupt government and police force.
From the quotes below, collected by Cooke for his article, we can glimpse what the Founders thought of firearms, individual rights, and the government.
"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people.... To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.... " --George Mason
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. " --Thomas Jefferson
"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion . . . in private self-defense. " --John Adams
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. " --Samuel Adams
" . arms discourage and keep invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. ... Horrid mischief would ensue were [the law-abiding] deprived of the use of them. " --Thomas Paine
"[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...[where] the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." --James Madison
"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms...To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike...how to use them." --Richard Henry Lee
"A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." --Amendment II, Constitution of the United States
Over the years since then, I have infrequently fired weapons, usually while teaching marksmanship to my children. Once an Asheville writer, Lewis Green, invited my family to his home to shoot automatic weapons, for which he had a license. A few other times, every five or six years, I have gone to a range or to a friend’s house for some sport.
Clearly, I am not a serious sportsman, adopting instead a whimsical approach to guns and shooting. I enjoy firing at targets—age has shaken my abilities with a handgun—but it’s not an activity I do often. Though some friends and family have earned their concealed carry permits and keep a handgun on their person or in their car, I could never be bothered. If I ever attended a concealed-carry class, my purpose would be to write about it rather than lug around a handgun. Besides, I always imagined that like Barney Fife I would be more likely to shoot myself in the foot than to ward off an attacker.
Despite my lack of interest in shooting, I remain an advocate of gun ownership. For years, I have belonged to the NRA. I am aware of the arguments for and against gun control, and won’t bother restating these here except to make three points. First, despite the rhetoric of groups like Black Lives Matter, the high number of shootings and murders in major cities like Baltimore and Chicago are largely the result of gang violence, not out of control cops. Both of these cities share similarities in that 1) they have strict gun-control laws; 2) Democrats have dominated city government for more than half a century; and 3) the great majority of shootings are black on black. The lack of vision on the part of city officials; the breakdown of the black family over the last sixty years; the absence of fathers on the streets and in the homes; the high teen unemployment; drugs; a culture of gang violence: these are the reasons for the murder and mayhem that daily occur in these cities.
The arguments over gun control will continue. But the primary reason for my advocacy of gun ownership is constitutional.
For me, as for many of the Founding Fathers, the “right of the People to keep and bear arms” was intended in part to give the government, local or federal, pause in some of it machinations and plots. An armed citizenry remains a check on radical government, whether of the left or the right.
In fact, at some points in American history, guns and people willing to use them have thwarted government injustices. In 1850, when Frederick Douglass was asked what the best response was to the Fugitive Slave Act, he replied: “A good revolver.” In the Jim Crow South black gun owners were those best able to ward off lynchings. In a 2014 New York Times piece, “Do Black People Have Equal Gun Rights?“ Charles Cooke writes:
“In her remarkable 1892 disquisition on the evils of lynching, the writer Ida B. Wells noted that “the only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.” Wells offered some blunt advice: “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”
In the same article, Cooke tells us that Martin Luther King, Jr., though denied the right to carry a firearm, had an arsenal of guns at home.
In 1946 occurred the “Battle of Athens” in Tennessee, in which an armed band of citizens, mostly ex-GIs, engaged in a gun battle and ousted a corrupt government and police force.
From the quotes below, collected by Cooke for his article, we can glimpse what the Founders thought of firearms, individual rights, and the government.
"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people.... To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.... " --George Mason
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. " --Thomas Jefferson
"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion . . . in private self-defense. " --John Adams
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. " --Samuel Adams
" . arms discourage and keep invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. ... Horrid mischief would ensue were [the law-abiding] deprived of the use of them. " --Thomas Paine
"[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...[where] the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." --James Madison
"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms...To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike...how to use them." --Richard Henry Lee
"A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." --Amendment II, Constitution of the United States
RSS Feed