Guns and Me: A Memoir

Gun fighter Nicky, age @ 5

When I was a child, I always had toy guns with which to play. I never owned or touched a real gun until I was in college.  As a kid I didn't even have a BB gun; my father, a WWII veteran, was opposed to guns.

That last statement isn't entirely true. When I was a bout 3 years old I found my then retired grandfather Nick's police revolver in a bureau drawer at our house. According to the story (I can't remember the event) I opened the bathroom door where my mother was sitting on the commode and, pointing the (loaded) pistol at her, asked, "Who bringed my dis gun?" My mother got the gun away from me and my father immediately got it out of the house.

With my mother and father at UK

At the University of Kentucky, I was an R.O.T.C. cadet. It was then that I purchased and fired my first firearms (both .22 cal.) on the cadet firing range. My idea was, if I was going to be an army officer and if I was going to end up in Viet Nam, I had best be an able marksman.

Savage .22 carbine

Erma Luger, .22 cal.

After graduation and commissioning as a Second Lieutenant in Armor Branch (tanks) of the United States Army, I qualified as Expert Marksman with the .45 cal. pistol while stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Expert Marksman Badge (pistol), United States Army

M1911 Colt .45 cal automatic 

I also learned to fire a much larger gun!

M60A1 tank, 52 tons. 105 mm main gun

As an army officer, I taught marksmanship courses for:

M14 rifle

M16A1 Rifle

.45 cal "grease gun" semi-automatic - "the tankers' friend"

After leaving military active duty, I kept the carbine and Luger  but never fired either again. I added one more pistol to the collect when, after the death of my Uncle Frank, as we were moving his bedroom dresser, an automatic pistol fell out of a drawer.

Colt .25 cal. automatic pistol

When I saw the little Colt, I remembered the story of how it came into my uncle's possession. Late one night during Prohibition the owner of the company for which my uncle worked (and later retired as vice-president) telephoned him and asked him to go to a police station. The owner's son had been arrested in a raid on a speak easy and my uncle was asked to bail him out. When my uncle arrived, he was able to speak with the young man before he had been processed. The kid reached into his coat pocket and slid something into my uncle's coat pocket. It was the Colt, for which the young man had no license to carry. My uncle put it in his dresser drawer and it stayed their for almost 60 years.

I kept all of those guns until, during my first pastorate, I decided that, since I would/could never shoot any one, I had no reason to keep them. So I disposed of all of them. 

Today I lobby for gun control. 

Share These Graphics

PLEASE

Please

Let's Give Our Nation a Special Christmas Present

Demand a plan to end 

GUN VIOLENCE

Season's Gifts In the name of Peace

There is an evil in this land

I awakened this morning to realize that yesterday's horror was not a nightmare. The murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School are real. Twenty little girls and boys are dead, as well as adult educators. My morning prayers have centered upon the victims' families and upon the ridding of the evil that is in this land.

There is an evil in this land that preys on the innocent.

Every year three times as many people are murdered with guns in the United States as were murdered on Sept. 11, 2001. ~ The Washington Post

We may never know the why of atrocious murders such as those yesterday at Sandy Hook Elementary School; however, we can identify the means of the evil. Like so much of what in wicked in the United States, it relates to money and greed. Specifically it centers in the greed of the firearms industry  gun lobby and the politicians who accept their bribe money.

Guns are big business in the United States—very big business. The U.S. manufacture and sale of firearms is a multi-billion dollar business in the United States and that doesn't include the U.S. weapons exported, legally and illegally, to foreign lands.

In 2012, prior to yesterday’s murders in Connecticut, the United States has witnessed multiple mass shootings—at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin and at a mall in Oregon. Existing gun-control laws did nothing to prevent any of them.

Last month a study of U.S. gun control legislation, prepared by a specialist in domestic security and crime policy at the Congressional Research Service., was presented to Congress. The report noted that, since the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives…

much of the gun control debate in the 112th Congress has swirled around allegations (regarding the failure of) …the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives mishandled a Phoenix, Ariz.-based gun-trafficking investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious.

In other words, the GOP ignored the murders in Colorado, Wisconsin and Oregon in favor of meaningless accusations against government agencies. No new legislation restricting the firearms will come about as long the gun control lobby has the political right wing in its very large and wealthy pockets.

I end by addressing  this question to politicians who accept contributions from the gun lobby: ‘How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? (Psalms 82.2)

For further reading:

• The Washington Post: Why killing is a profitable enterprise By Michael F. McNulty
• ABC News: Gun Control Laws in America
• Congressional Research Service: Gun Control Legislation
• The New York Times: Republicans and the Gun Lobby

The following appeared on FaceBook a few moments ago:

12/14/12
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, 
Forever untouched, for no one was there.

The tree was unlit, the presents lay scattered,
Forgotten by families whose lives were just shattered.

One nation, one wail, rose into the night,
Echoed by God, for children reft of life.

Then a candle was lit, then another and another.
And a whisper was heard mixed in the sobs of the mothers -

"Clasp hands with me, Neighbor.
Share with me this grief.
Let us comfort each other
Until we find peace."

The whisper grew louder,
Transformed to a roar -
One Nation, undivided, could take no more.

Amen