The Gun and I

One thing I always hated as a young child was guns. Still, likely from the time my eyes focused, I saw them everywhere. I was told not to touch them. I didn’t like the way they looked, and I had no desire to get near them, so that wasn’t a problem for me.

My dad wasn’t a hunter, so his guns were seldom used. Neither were my grandfather's used often. Yet it seems, most southern men must have something built into their DNA, going back to days when guns were needed for making sure there was meat on the table. In Mississippi in the forties, most men believed gun ownership was necessary.

I don’t think little boys are built with an aversion to guns. All of the little boys back then looked forward to getting their first toy gun. Having a cowboy outfit to go with it was even more thrilling. Most of them had cap pistols and BB guns. As much as I enjoyed playing with my Texas cousin, the summer he came with his guns and firecrackers, was a summer of misery for me. I got stung with the BB pellets several times. A boy in my class at school was forced to wear a glass eye, thanks to the careless use of these toys.

My other cousins from Detroit were no exception. Of those two boys, Charles was five years my senior, and Dick was two years older than I was. They didn’t visit quite as often, so I didn’t know them as well. When they did visit, they brought their toy guns with them. Uncle Eugene, their father, was a Detroit policeman, who seemed to enjoy showing off his weapon. He actually wore his pistol, strapped in a holster.

It didn’t seem to bother Uncle Eugene to walk into our house and casually lay his loaded gun on a table without a word of caution. Uncle Eugene was a stereotypical cop. He had a loud gruff voice and I was very uncomfortable around him. It didn’t help that he had lived in Detroit long enough to have picked up, what I thought of as, a Yankee brogue. This sounded harsh to my southern ears.

His own father, my grandma Lay’s first husband, who served as a constable, was killed by a gun before Grandma even knew she was pregnant with him. Eugene served in the Navy during WWII and settled in Detroit where he married a Canadian girl. Aunt Margie, too, had the Yankee accent, but she was plump and jolly and fun to be around.

Uncle Eugene would live to regret his assumption that leaving a pistol laying round was a smart thing to do, because in 1948 when Charles was 16 and Dick was 12, Charles would pick up his dad’s pistol while playing around with friends and say, “Who wants to play Russian Roulette?” He would then point, what he assumed to be an unloaded firearm, at his own head and pull the trigger. Thus ended the life of my cousin and the career of my uncle. The tragedy was too devastating for Uncle Eugene. He could no longer handle police work.

I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself, as this is still early in 1945. There was another incident relating to guns which I wanted to mention. This was something which could have been life altering for my family. It isn’t something I witnessed personally, as I was sleeping at the time it occurred.

We had a flock of chickens which we allowed to roam freely around in our back yard. We didn’t have a chicken house at the time, but Dad had put wooden apple boxes on a stand, making a place for the hens to lay their eggs. These nests were behind some evergreen bushes which had grown to around 15 to 20ft. The chickens used the bushes to roost in at night. Recently, we’d had problems with possums or foxes sneaking in at night and helping themselves to a chicken dinner. Dad was determined to put a stop to this activity.

He made sure the pistol he kept under the head of his mattress was loaded. At this time, we still had an outhouse in our backyard. Like most people with an outhouse, we kept chamber pots underneath the edges of our beds in case of nature calls during the night. These would be emptied and cleaned every morning. My mother was suffering from a stomach flu. Not wanting to risk an unpleasant odor, she decided not to use the inside pot. She got up during the night, without waking Dad, and headed for the outhouse.

On exiting the outhouse, Mom was near enough to the bushes to disturb the roosting chickens, and they sounded the alarm by cackling and crowing loudly. Dad heard the noise and grabbed his pistol and flashlight. It had only been a few months since the incident with our house being burglarized. Seeing a figure on the steps about to enter our house, Dad’s nerves were on edge. His gun was cocked and ready.  

As Mom started up the steps, she was shocked to hear the click of the pistol being readied for the shot, and as the bright beam of Dad flashlight blinded her, she screamed, “Don’t Shoot!” Dad dropped the pistol down, horrified to realize how close he had come to killing his wife. They were both trembling as they crept back to bed.

Even when people have been taught the proper use of weapons, accidents happen. Over the years, stories of teens who attended my high school dying in hunting accidents weren’t uncommon. In my early teens, I went through a period of trying to toughen myself up, knowing that I had some irrational fears.

I eventually decided if guns were going to be around me, I needed to know how to handle them. I talked my dad into teaching me how to shoot. He set up some tin cans for target practice and showed me the basics for using all of his firearms. I’m thankful no one in my family ever felt the need to own the type of guns that are usually involved in the mass shootings of today.

While I’m not for changing the constitution or getting rid of the right to bear arms, I would like to see assault rifles banned for civilian use. We certainly need background checks. The gun lobby has too much power, and the question of guns is considered a political issue. When are people going to start using some common sense and stop allowing a particular political ideology to dictate what they should know in their heart is right?