Huffington Post 16.Apr.07"I gave my gun away, because when I had it, every time something happened that made me mad, my mind would start circling around that gun, and I would be thinking about using it. So I got rid of it and I'm glad I did."Right up front I will say that I am opposed to casual gun ownership, but I also realize that Americans will always have guns. Period. It's a national fetish. But the mental state my interlocutor was describing years ago is the price we have to pay, along with, of course, the accidental deaths of children and other unprepared and careless people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and in proximity to the wrong gun.
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Jane Smiley lives in California, a hundred miles or so north of a place called "Los Osos", or "The Bears".
The origin of that place-name, in the early 18th century, seems to be the near starvation of the men at the presidio at Monterey, near where Smiley lives in Carmel Valley, and the response of the Spanish commandant in San Luis Obispo, who sent them food, providing a pack train loaded with bear meat, because the bears at Los Osos were plentiful, then.
Brown bears. Black bears. And grizzlies. There's a lot of people living around that area now, it's semi-suburban and at the margin of one of the most expensive real estate markets in the US - men women and children, going about their relatively comfortable lives. The idea of them living in proximity to bears now is ridiculous; but since the bears are gone, and have been for pretty much a hundred years, it doesn't come up for discussion.
What you have there, if you look at it from far enough away, is a progression, from having dangerous bears around and needing guns to deal with them, to not. It was never announced that "Now we no longer need to be armed against these ferocious and aggressive creatures." They left, or were exterminated, and after a while, and after a whole bunch of social change, so did the idea of going armed into the hills around the area. To the point that now most of the middle-class white people who enjoy hiking around there would be offended and angry to see someone coming down the trail toward them carrying a gun. That there are very few other mammals besides the small generalists like possums and raccoons and coyotes out there, and a vastly reduced bird count - tragically vast measured from the days of the Spanish presence - isn't important to the immigrants, Smiley and her demographic, who mostly just accept the landscape as they find it - rolling hills, beautiful seacoast, and one of the mildest climates in the world.
The birds they have are the birds that are there, and no one's making any big fuss about the disappearance of anything like bears or - heaven forfend - the Chumash and Salinan indians that once lived among and around those other, vanished, creatures, bird and bear, without feeling compelled to kill them all or accidentally reducing them to remnants and vanishing points.
What I want to illustrate here is the flow of change, the continuum, from guns at all times during the early Spanish Alta California period, to guns hidden away at home today, and active gun owners a minority, almost like smokers huddled in a windy doorway except they're way more intimidating, and far less ashamed.
And that's missing from Smiley's friend's rap - his mind circles that gun when he gets angry at someone, or did when he had one, but also, someone who's pissing him off will have to stop and consider that as well won't they?
Maybe I don't want to make this guy too mad, because he might be armed.
The flow of change from Spanish to present seems inevitable, because it happened and that's how we view things, but there's nothing that says this is how it will always be.
And there's another continuum. From relative security in the social landscape, to a steadily increasing anxiety and tension, as that landscape devolves and loses its cohesion. The question is are we riding another continuum, toward some time and place where guns may again be as necessary as they were when bears were living just a few miles away from where we slept? Big scary bears that didn't run away when they were shot at, and often kept coming even when they were shot point blank.
Also, what weaponry will protect us from this:
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