The thought of a firearm conjures up any number of images and ideas. Liberty, protection, murder, threat, violence, power. And yet, a gun is no more than an inanimate object, a cold, impersonal tool designed for putting small, heavy, fast-moving objects into other objects. I can think of few other things existent that carry a weight of symbolism so vastly disproportionate to what they actually are.
I own guns, several of them, although I wouldn’t classify myself as a gun owner. These include, in no particular order,
- A 1945 Remington-made M1911 U.S. Army surplus .45. I bought this at a gun store in Switzerland, specifically looking for something obviously used, that had “been to the wars.” I love old mechanical things, even if I don’t always muster the kind of patience or skill to maintain or restore them properly; case in point, my beautiful old 1945 cherry-red Moto Guzzi Airone 250 and 1952 Condor A580 motorcycles currently, sadly, in storage. The .45, bought at a gun store in Zurich run by a couple of friendly, aged gnomes, jams occasionally (need to get that fixed, there’s that whole time issue again) but shoots beautifully. The magnificently mustachioed master gunsmith who sold it for me, and who found me a supposedly rare black leather officer’s holster for the gun seemed reluctant to part with it, and every time I’ve had the chance to shoot it, it felt like I owned a part of history.
- A stainless steel SIG P220 chambered for .45 ACP. I inherited this from my friend Michele, a congenial gun nut who had a lot of tragic personal demons. Despite the fact that he gradually lost it and, sadly, ended up putting a hole through his heart in a forest near Santa Barbara, I don’t believe he ever would have threatened anyone but himself with his appreciable collection of arms. He gave me a whole suitcase full of guns when he last left for the U.S., insisting that it was a sale as he desperately needed money; I told him to consider it a security for permanent loan (I could not muster even close to the amount of cash that all the guns fairly would have been worth.) It’s a reliable, solid-feeling weapon, except for occasional jams that are more likely than not the result of my not cleaning it nearly as much as I should.)
- A Mossberg 500-series (couldn’t tell you the exact model) 12″ shotgun; I hadn’t realized how much fun it was to blow up inanimate objects until I took it to my local (unfortunately underground) range to put holes in computer cases and cardboard boxes. The ultimate goal of taking the beast skeet shooting is delayed indefinitely until such point as I find the time and location for it, but the combination of gigantic boom and having something explode in a dust cloud 10 meters ahead of you is breathtakingly satisfying.
- Two Swiss straight-pull bolt action army surplus rifles; a 1931 K31 carbine my father gave me for my 16th birthday, and an ancient Langgewehr 11 he once shot with. These are about as common in Switzerland as old Soviet SKS carbines in the rest of the world; the 8mm ammunition is cheap and plentiful (and government subsidized), and Swiss military ranges let you shoot any weapon that was once part of the official arsenal. You still occasionally see old-timers toting these beautifully machined, accurate guns on their backs, on the way to their regular shooting practice. One would imagine that a 90-year-old-man (the oldest gentleman at my range when I last lived in Zurich) would no longer feel compelled to go polish his marksmanship skills, but there you are, the armed, participatory citizenry lives.
Shooting these pieces is fun. The discipline required in getting a shot on target (an out of the ordinary experience for me), the smell of powder, the opportunity to handle mechanical gizmos, and the strict rules I’ve seen universally respected and enforced at every range I ever visited all add up to a great experience. For anyone who’s never fired a gun, I highly recommend visiting a local rifle or pistol range (if your country is not one of those bastions of nanny-state paranoia that wants to keep anything even vaguely threatening out of the hands of its constituents) and asking around; people are generally friendly and willing to help introduce the curious to shooting.
In discussions with Michele when he was still alive, we would argue the pros and cons of keeping a loaded gun in one’s household — why bother, he’d say, locking up a weapon, and keeping it unloaded? When someone’s breaking in, you won’t have time to fumble for the key to the trigger lock, find a full mag, quietly load it and defend yourself. Michele might have had the discipline and calm to face down an attacker with a firearm, but I personally prefer to use my guns for sport, potting away at inanimate objects. Who knows how any of us would react when confronted with an armed intruder? I certainly have no idea what I would do if I had a gun pointed at someone endangering me or my girlfriend, and while I wouldn’t think of judging those who do, it seems like such an odd sense of asymmetrical power to be able to extinguish someone with the pull of a trigger, bad guy or not. Even hunting, though I would never condemn anyone who actually eats what they shoot, is vastly beyond what I believe I would be capable of.
Guns are, 0bviously, weapons, designed to kill and maim. They occupy a weird sort of limbo in the sense that, sports shooting aside, they really have no purpose but to hurt people. Nonetheless, to paraphrase a tired cliché, guns are not intrinsically evil. They can be dangerous when inexpertly manhandled, badly maintained or irresponsibly employed, but shouldn’t that be a reason to demystify them? I’m entirely for gun control, but for me, this does not imply banning certain types of weapons or registering handguns by serial number or ballistic profiles, but rather, enforcing handling and range training requirements, background checks and no-exceptions criminal penalties for any illegitimate (i.e. non-sport, non-self-defense) use of firearms. I would rather see a responsible, educated and armed citizenry than a populace in nonsensical fear of boom-sticks, unable to even consider the eventuality of defending itself against crime, tyranny or threatening paper targets.