Gun Play

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. (NRSV I Cor. 13:11)

A poster that hung in my college dorm room featured a young child in GI Joe gear, a machine gun nearby, with row upon row of military gravestones in the background. The Pauline text from I Cor. 13:11 served as the jarring caption that forced me, and everyone who entered that room, to consider the terrible irony of how our violence is too often child’s play. It hit me particularly hard back then, and even more today, in its recollection.

I spent much of my childhood playing outdoors, neighborhoods back then rarely harboring the dangers that keep so many of today’s kids indoors or under the watchful eye of parents, nannies, sitters and coaches. We ran around, unsupervised, most of the time, working up a sweat chasing each other in games like tag, red-light/green-light, and hide ’n ’seek. My favorite pastime, however, thrust me into the make-believe universe of cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, and army, of which I never tired. Whether as good guys or bad guys—girls handling either part as well as us boys—we shot at each other, staged acrobatic death poses as we fell to the ground, popped up full of smiles, and did it again and again.  It was all play, gun play, and it was the stuff of many a Baby Boomer’s upbringing.

Along the way we learned a few things about life that few children get a chance to experience anymore. Since we made up our games as we went, we shouldered the burden of organizing our play, setting up the rules, delegating responsibilities, and negotiating our many disagreements and conflicts. Needless to say, arguing was a huge part of being a kid back then, and lacking any adult referees and arbitrators, we got pretty good at it. Watching kids today, and seeing how many grown ups seem intimidated and put-off by those who disagree with them, makes me wonder about the long-term impact that generations of over-managed children is having on the 21st Century world.

I suspect I took to playing with toy guns thanks to the steady diet of Westerns, police shows and war dramas I watched on television and at Saturday matinees. I knew and revered Hollywood’s mythicized and manufactured heroes of yesteryear, from Wild Bill Hickok to Hopalong Cassidy to Roy Rogers, even sporting the latter’s made-for-kids holster, six-gun, chaps and hat. In time I built up an arsenal of pistols, a wooden Springfield bolt action rifle (WWI vintage), a Lucas McCain Rifleman long gun, and—best of all--a four-foot long, black plastic, red barreled, staccato amplified, tripod mounted 50 caliber machine gun: the envy and terror of many a war game. When available I enjoyed using explosive caps you could buy in rolled strips, lending some auditory authenticity to my weapons. Since caps often failed to discharge, especially when they got wet, I was happy to settle for the bang-bang and dow-dow-dow vocalizations that worked just as well. Guns were a lot of fun, making me feel grown up in my many rehearsals of the morality tales upon which kids like me feasted at the table of 1950s era entertainments.

To say I was fascinated with guns would be an understatement. Looking back, I wonder what my teachers must have thought of this otherwise docile kid who seemed to always be carrying with him the same library book: Musket to M-14. Looking back, I wonder myself. I didn’t come from my dad, an Air Force lifer who spent most of his 26 years in blue uniform, sitting at a desk, armed with a cup of coffee and an ever-handy cigarette that proved more lethal than any of the guns in my collection. While his career immersed him in the fighter jets, bombs and military hardware of the Cold War air we breathed, he never owned a gun nor did we ever have one in our house. Not being a hunter, he really had no need for one, and in the decades since, I’ve followed his example. But for a BB-gun I once used in a futile effort to scare away the rabbits depleting my garden, I never owned a firearm, nor ever seriously considered adding one to my home security system.   

So while I played with guns, read about them, and watched hours and hours of movies and prime time TV in which guns were the co-stars, I never made them part of my identity. I suspect that, at some level, even back then, I knew that my guns weren’t real, only props in that make-believe world that was once such a part of my childhood play.  

Over the years I’ve had many close friends who owned and used guns, mostly for hunting, self-defense and target shooting. As much as they enjoyed their guns, they respected their lethal power even more. I never felt threatened in their company, and they never seemed to require a gun to back up their courage or bolster their sense of security. Guns were another part of the furniture of their existence, but never the means by which they chose to exercise power over others or express their rage at any of life’s frustrations.  If only everyone exercised their 2nd Amendment rights with such maturity.

For the past three weeks all of us have been awash in the wake of the Uvalde massacre. It has made me do some serious thinking about my own youthful fascination with guns, and the shift in our country’s attitudes and conduct about their use, and abuse, during the past four decades. I’ve long understood that our right to bear arms was born out of the gravest concern that we be able to defend ourselves from tyrannical governments, whether imposed by wigged Englishmen or the recently empowered colonial aristocrats who replaced them. And the arms our founders agreed that we could keep and bear—smooth-bore, muzzle-loading muskets and single shot pistols—were best suited for massed infantry fusillades or dueling at 10 paces. I wonder if they would have left us so broad a privilege had the weaponry at their disposal resembled the killing devices of our era? When high impact weapons are equally at home in the arsenals of Navy SEALS, drug lords, SWAT teams, street gangs, and adolescent boys using them to mow down unarmed folks in churches and stores or terrorize defenseless children in schools—we have a problem beyond anything the framers of our Constitution could have imagined, or likely intended.   

So it was with some interest, and hope, that I paid close attention as actor Matthew McConaughey, a native of the state I called home for twelve years, poured out his heart before the nation last week. Speaking as a parent, concerned citizen, and gun owner, McConaughey conveyed his message in a manner we don’t often hear today. It was sincere, passionate, and reasonable.  As I listened, that long discarded college poster of mine slowly came back into focus, no longer buried in memory’s blur where it had lain dormant for over 50 years.     

Like McConaughey, I hold no pathological revulsion to guns. Yet at the same time, I am both alarmed and disgusted by those who have chosen to hide behind firearms as some sign of their machismo, or as the “un-equalizer” of choice they use to bully and terrorize others. A part of me can understand why some choose to do this, as guns easily seduce us into thinking that a playing field of confrontation has been leveled or tilted in one’s favor. While they represent power in the hands of those eager to brandish them, they actually betray the depth of their insecurity. Few implements of our invention serve as more effective alter-egos to those intent on getting even, garnering attention, or redressing the inadequacies of their being on the short end of wealth, education, social status or political power.

As I mentioned earlier, I fully indulged in childhood’s fantasies and played childish games, many with guns, while pretending to be what I wasn’t. Sadly, too many of us today, perhaps children inhabiting teenage and adult bodies, seem unable to put away these childish things. Playing with guns, as McConaughey said so clearly and concisely, is not a matter of constitutional rights.  Nor is it worthy to be elevated to a righteous cause. It is a matter of growing up and acting responsibly with lethal weapons that are anything but toys. His call for action needs to be heard with more than just nodding heads:

“So, we know what's on the table.  We need to invest in mental healthcare.  We need safer schools.  We need to restrain sensationalized media coverage.  We need to restore our family values.  We need to restore our American values. 

“And we need responsible gun ownership -- responsible gun ownership. We need background checks.  We need to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15 rifle to 21.  We need a waiting period for those rifles.  We need red-flag laws and consequences for those who abuse them.

“These are reasonable, practical, tactical regulations to our nation, states, communities, schools, and homes. Responsible gun owners are fed up with the Second Amendment being abused and hijacked by some deranged individuals. These regulations are not a step back; they’re a step forward for a civil society and -- and the Second Amendment.”

To me, his voice is a call for all of us-—whether left or right, whether gun lovers or abolitionists—to wake up. Like an Amos or Jeremiah from long ago, he has spoken a truth we may not want to face, but one we must hear. And among his many well chosen words, the one that stands out above all the rest in demanding, and commanding, our attention is this: responsible. It captures the one quality that we humans must own if we are ever to rise above the jungle out of which we once emerged and the war-zone into which we are evolving. We can and must be responsible for our actions, and responsible for the outcomes of our decisions. And the “we” which we so easily invoke is an immense umbrella all of us must hold and under which all of us must stand. I’m talking about…

·      Those who own guns and use them appropriately;

·      Those who produce such weapons that can either protect or destroy;

·      Those who oversee the enforcement of our laws and ensure our safety;

·      Those who legislate the moral codes that demark our boundaries and freedoms.

“…people are hurting -- families are, parents are. ...as divided as our country is, this gun responsibility issue is one that we agree on more than we don't. …This should not be a partisan issue.

“There is not a Democratic or Republican value in one single act of these shooters. But people in power have failed to act.  So we're asking you and I'm asking you, will you please ask yourselves: Can both sides rise above? Can both sides see beyond the political problem at hand and admit that we have a life preservation problem on our hands?

“Because we got a chance right now to reach for and to grasp a higher ground above our political affiliations, a chance to make a choice that does more than protect your party, a chance to make a choice that protects our country now and for the next generation.”

My 1970s poster still grabs me when I let the words under the image sink in.  And Paul’s voice is as relevant—maybe even more so—-than when he counseled his 1st Century Church audience:  “when we became adults,” it is time for us “ to put an end to [our] childish ways.” So as I publish this essay it is in the sincere hope that a still-cool Texas actor has gotten more than just our passing attention. May his clarion call to this nation help us realize that the time for us to grow up—is NOW!