[Vision2020] The Gun-Crazed Hermit of the Applegate: Chinese Philosophy, Machismo, and Gun Violence (Part 1)

[Nicholas Gier]

Greetings Visionaries:

It's taken me a while to find my voice on this issue, but here it is.  The
full version filled up an entire page of the Feb. 5 issue of The Los Cabos
Daily News, the Moscow-Pullman Daily New's totally unofficial sister paper.
 I hope that Murf will publish the 650-word version (very, very painful
editing) for Palouse readers as well.

Instead of giving you the short version, I'm posting the full version in
two parts.  I'm usually just a "Just the Facts, Madam" writer, but I've
resorted to satire and sarcasm for this one. For the few that can't wait or
even care, the full version is attached.

Although I support universal, interstate background checks, no gun show
loopholes, a ban on assault rifles, and a limit of 10-round magazines, we
will need to address basic problems of our gun-crazed culture.

When I was hitch-hiking and climbing in the Swiss Alps in 1967, I was
invited into a Swiss home for a snack.  I remarked on the semi-automatic
rifle standing in the corner of the room, and my host said that nearly
every Swiss home had one. This guy also had enough explosives to blow up a
local bridge if there were an invasion.

But here is the catch: the Swiss have a gun death rate of 3.84 per 100,000,
but we kill at a rate of 10.2 per 100,000.  Only some violent Latin
American countries (where machismo reigns supreme) and Swaziland kill more.

The sub-titles for Part 2 are "The Final Straw (Bean?): Tofu and the Land
of Hindu Effeminates," "Lederhosen, Kilts, Barbies, and Mounties," "Balance
Yin and Yang for Less Bang," and "The Gun-Crazed Hermit of the Applegate."

Yours for a better balance of Yin and Yang,

Nick

*The Gun-Crazed Hermit of the Applegate:
Chinese Philosophy, Machismo, and Gun Violence*

*
*

*Guns may not kill people (on their own), but disaffected men*

* with easy access to guns and little understanding of how to
safely express their frustrations with the world certainly do.*

*
*
—Emma Gray, *The Huffington Post* (12/18/12)

*The school shooters and domestic terrorists all exhibit male rage.  They
attempt to resolve a crisis of masculinity through violent behavior,
demonstrate a fetish for guns or weapons, and represent a situation of guys
and guns amok.*

*
*

*—*Douglas Kellner, UCLA Professor of Education**


*The things of the world carry Yin [female]
on their backs, and embrace the Yang [male].
They exhaust their *qi *[cosmic energy] in harmony.*

*
*

—*Dao De Jing*, #42 (trans. Robert Eno)


            It was the summer of 1960, I was a naïve 16-year-old, and I was
smitten. Even though a family friend’s daughter had a mad crush on me, I
had been seduced by something even more alluring and far less complicated
than teenage romance.


            *A Guy and His Gun: A Love Story*


I had bought an army surplus .30-06 Springfield rifle and I was in love. I
spent many dollars on a new stock and a 3 x 7 Bosch & Lomb scope. A gun
smith had completely refurbished the bolt action and barrel. There was a
spring in my step when I picked up boxes of army ammo at the Railway
Express Station.


The single shot .22 rifle that my dad bought me when I was 12 was just a
plinker. This army rifle made me feel like a man for the first time.
Instead of having a picture of a girlfriend in my wallet, I had a picture
of my reblued, scoped rifle.

*
*

*The Bushmaster Man Card*


According a two-year ad campaign by Bushmaster, the maker of the AR-15
semi-automatic rifle, I was a “card carrying man.”  One of the principal
qualifications for getting your card is being able to stare down a
tough 5thgrader. Adam Lanza started with first graders, but I’m sure
that he was
still allowed to carry his Bushmaster Man Card.


If I could have bought an M-1 Garand, the semi-automatic assault rifle of
my gun-crazed days, perhaps I would become even a greater male.  But the
real men of today would be terribly disappointed with its 8-shot magazine.
 Today that unsuspecting deer, intruder, or grade schooler must end up like
Swiss cheese.


The .30-06 was gun enough for me.  There were lots of squirrels out at an
abandoned army base near my home town of Medford, Oregon.  Not realizing
the ricochet dangers, I shot up dozens of boxes of ammo at the squirrels in
the concrete foundations of dismantled barracks.  I don’t remember killing
a single animal, and I never became a good shot.  That and my poor fly
fishing skills have kept my karmic debt fairly low.


During my short hunting career I was lucky enough to get two deer at very
close range.  The one buck was lame (I kid you not). One chilly afternoon
in Oregon’s Blue Mountains, I shot my first and only elk, a 500-pound spike
bull.  I emptied my 5-round magazine on him and I was amazed that he
dropped.  All the machismo drained out of me, however, when I went over and
shot him in the head with my .22 revolver.  The hollow-point shells simply
bounced off his skull.

*
*

*My Slow Descent Into Unmanliness*


Thus began my slow but steady descent into unmanliness.  Any card-carrying
man can send a request to Bushmaster to revoke another man’s card.  If you
are “a cry baby,” “a cupcake,” “on a short leash,” or “just plain unmanly,”
you are unfit for male duty and cannot be trusted with a gun.


My first step on this slippery slope was a cowardly transfer from the hard
sciences to the soft humanities at Oregon State University.  Then I
received a Rotary fellowship for a year in Denmark, where the citizens,
softened by sissy socialism, refuse to protect their homes with firearms.


Denmark’s gun death rate of 1.45 per 100,000 stands in stark contrast to
the U.S. at 10.2, but that is a small price to pay for the freedom to pack
heat. For every Dane who kills himself with a gun, there are six Americans
who go out in glory with their handy firearms.


Bushmaster’s “short leash” must mean that proverbial wifely tether.  Well,
here I must also plead guilty. When we arrived in Moscow and settled in, I
brought out my .30-06 to show to my new Danish bride.  She was not
impressed. She told me that it was either her or the gun.  For 16 years I
chose her and a safe home for our wonderful daughter.  Homes with guns have
far higher child deaths.


Armed homes are not safe for women either.  A study by the *American
Journal of Public Health* concluded that women were eight times more likely
to be killed in the home by abusive men if they were armed. In the same
year Douglas Wiebe of the University of Pennsylvania found “that females
living with a gun in the home were 2.7 times more likely to be murdered
than females with no gun at home.”


To be continued . . . .
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