Opponents to the concealed carry law in Texas pointed to a coming “wild, wild West” and predicted that the increased bloodshed from gun violence would be staggering. So, what really happened? Gun deaths in the Lone Star State went down from an all-time high of 1,835 in 1991 to fewer than 1,000 in 2013.
One of my worst days as governor was March 24, 1998. While flying home on the Arkansas State Police airplane from a governors’ meeting in Washington, D.C., I received a call that there had been a shooting at the Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas. We landed shortly after that, and the details started coming in: Two boys, aged thirteen and eleven, had stolen guns from the young boy’s grandfather, taken a van from the older boy’s mother, and gone to Westside Middle School. One of the boys went into the school, pulled a fire alarm, and then ran to join the other in a wooded area close to the enclosed school playground. After the students exited the building for the fire alarm and the door locked behind them, the two boys opened fire with high-powered rifles, killing four of their classmates and a teacher and wounding ten others. I spent the rest of the day and evening in meetings with the State Police director, the Department of Education director, and legal counsel in my office and in phone contact with local officials, including the school superintendent. I spent the entire next day at the school, speaking with faculty and staff in a closed-door meeting, and then went to the hospital to visit with survivors of the shooting, their families, and as many of the victims’ families as were available to see me. The entire state was in shock.
The shock turned to rage when it became known that under Arkansas law, the two boys could be held only until their eighteenth birthdays. Even though they had committed one of the most heinous crimes in the state’s history and were among the youngest people in American history to commit mass murder, they were, by legal definition, juveniles. At no time in the 162-year history of the state—not at any time since the writing of the state constitution in 1874—had it occurred to anyone that we should enact laws to cover the possibility that eleven- and thirteen-year-olds would commit mass murder. Federal charges were brought against the boys that would allow them to be held until the ripe old age of twenty-one, but that was small consolation to families of the victims—or to anyone else, for that matter.
Jonesboro was one of the first school campus shootings in recent times, and the international news media swarmed there, overwhelming the town with coverage of the two boys and their cold-blooded killing of innocent classmates and a teacher. I was asked by Katie Couric on the Today show if I thought the shooting was indicative of some kind of “Southern gun culture.” Frankly, I found the question condescending and insulting, as if to suggest that Southerners were predisposed toward senseless killing and had a reckless disregard for responsible gun ownership. I told Katie that while Southerners frequently owned guns, they were most certainly not predisposed to murder people. I also noted that when Colin Ferguson boarded a train in December 1993 and started firing, no one suggested that he was part of a “Northeastern murder culture.” I then said, “Katie, last time I checked, that happened on Long Island, New York, not Long Island, Arkansas.” When I said that, Katie cut to break and my interview was over.
I’m still a bit sensitive when someone from Bubble-ville tries to portray those of us in flyover country as being “in love with guns.” I’m not at all in love with guns. I love freedom. I love my country and the Constitution. I love my family and would sacrifice my life to protect them. I would sacrifice someone else’s life if that person tried to harm them. If a gun helps me protect them better than I could with my bare hands or a knife, or by swinging a bat, or flailing away with a zucchini squash, then I’ll unapologetically use a gun. Any questions?
Unfortunately, much of the discussion over firearm ownership centers on hunting, with anti-gun activists always insisting their new restrictions would not infringe on hunting. Well, I’m a hunter. I hunt ducks, deer, and turkey and have also hunted antelope in Wyoming and pheasant in Iowa. But the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting. The Second Amendment is about preserving all the rights we possess as citizens. The Bill of Rights is not about restricting the activities of the people. There is absolutely nothing in the Bill of Rights that tells a citizen what he or she is prohibited from doing. The Bill of Rights explicitly tells government what it can’t do. The First Amendment tells the government to back off and leave people alone when it comes to their inherent right to free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to assemble, and even the freedom to protest the government. And to make sure the government didn’t dare try to take those rights away, our Founders followed up the First Amendment with the Second, which grants citizens the right to “bear arms” (not to be confused by my spelling-challenged redneck friends as “bare arms,” though we still have no federal law against that, last time I checked). As radical as it sounds to us today, the purpose of the Second Amendment was not to guarantee us the right to hunt deer, but to make sure we can protect our freedoms from those who would take them away—including our own government, should it become as tyrannical as the one that launched the revolution in the first place.
If you watched the first season of the mesmerizing AMC television series Turn, about spying for George Washington during the Revolutionary War, you saw the occupying British forces in Setauket, Long Island, manufacture a pretense to round up all the guns of the people who lived there, to keep them helpless in case the rebellion came to their town. Anyone disobeying the British command would be hanged for treason. Americans who fought to free themselves from this kind of tyranny would have been the last people to restrict gun ownership within the populace!
On three different occasions I’ve been to Auschwitz and Birkenau, the infamous Nazi death camps about an hour from Krakow, Poland. I’ve made repeated trips to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, and to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. A haunting question has always been, “Why did the Jews obey the Nazis and march from their homes and businesses to the train stations, boarding cattle cars so they could be hauled off to camps of mass murder and torture?” The inescapable conclusion, at least in part: because the Nazis had guns and the Jews didn’t. The Nazis had systematically removed all firearms from Jewish homes. Ownership or possession of guns by Jews was outlawed. From The New York Times on November 8, 1938:
The Berlin Police president, Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, announced that as a result of police activity in the last few weeks, the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been “disarmed,” with the confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons; 1,702 firearms; and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Any Jews still found in possession of weapons without valid licenses are threatened with the severest punishment.
On November 9, Adolph Hitler, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, and other Nazi chiefs took the next step by issuing this order:
All Jewish stores are to be destroyed immediately. Jewish synagogues are to be set on fire. The Fuhrer wishes that the police do not intervene. All Jews are to be disarmed. In the event of resistance, they are to be shot immediately.
And on November 10, headlines read, NAZIS SMASH, LOOT, AND BURN JEWISH SHOPS AND TEMPLES. Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) shattered more than glass. It shattered the last vestige of freedom held by the Jews.
But how did the Nazis know which Jews had guns? It wasn’t hard to figure that out. In 1928—before Hitler came to power—the Weimar Republic had passed a gun law requiring the police department to keep detailed records on gun owners. Hitler had passed even more gun control laws in the first part of 1938.
What little resistance they met was from those who’d kept their weapons despite the demands or who had found a way to secure more weapons by bartering or stealing them. The most significant resistance was the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, when a handful of Polish resisters fought valiantly with a limited number of handguns. Of course, they were vastly outgunned and outnumbered by the Nazis, but their resistanc
e was a setback to what the Nazis had planned as a simple mop-up operation.
My friends in anti-gun cities like New York typically give me strange looks if I talk about guns. I’ve had conversations that became awkward because I knew that my owning guns—quite a few of them, actually—made them uncomfortable. You’d think I had an opium den in my home! These experiences leave me wondering how people can hold such definite views on something they know so little about.
The late actor and former NRA president Charlton Heston must have had that feeling constantly, living in the limousine liberalism of Bubble-ville. Many of his showbiz colleagues who knew nothing about firearms (but hated them passionately and supported every new gun law) were slapped hard by reality during the 1992 LA riots. Heston loved to recall how his anti-gun friends called and frantically begged to borrow one of his guns to protect their homes and families. They wailed, “I tried to buy one, but they have this waiting period!” [GunsEditor.word-press.com. April 17, 2010] I guess it had never occurred to them that anyone who really needs a gun for self-defense probably needs it now, not two or three weeks from now.
In the 2008 Presidential campaign, I had a meeting/interview with the executive news staff of the Associated Press in Washington, D.C. One of the editors turned the conversation to gun control, saying matter-of-factly and with a certain tone of harrumph in her voice, “Well, surely, you agree that we ought to ban ‘semiautomatic’ weapons because no one needs a semiautomatic gun to go hunting.” Stunned at her ignorance, I replied, “Ma’am,”—the use of “ma’am” as a way to express contempt in the nicest possible way is another Southern thing—“Ma’am, I duck hunt with a semiautomatic shotgun, a Benelli Super Black Eagle .12 gauge.” The shocked look on her face didn’t reveal that she’d been caught with her brains in her back pocket (although she had), but that she imagined me shredding ducks on the wing with something akin to an anti-aircraft gun. I asked if she knew what “semiautomatic” actually means. Her silence was a very loud answer. So I tried to explain that semiautomatic simply means that the gun automatically loads the next shell to save me from having to manually pump, cock, or reload the gun, but that my squeezing the trigger is still necessary for each individual round fired. I tried to explain that something being “semiautomatic” has nothing to do with lethality or power. It’s just a type of gun. In fact, it’s practically every type of gun. The concept has been around since 1885. I don’t think she got it. But then, most of the media people writing or blabbing about guns have no clue what they’re talking about.
The term “assault weapon” is one of the most misunderstood designations for a firearm. In a sense, all weapons are “assault” weapons—even a rock, if it’s being hurled at someone! When people throw out that term, they typically mean a rifle that looks scary because it resembles the military-style rifles carried by soldiers and SWAT teams. Immediately after the Sandy Hook tragedy, I was in a meeting in New York when the subject of “assault rifles” came up. The general consensus among those in the meeting was that such a weapon was way too powerful for individuals to own. When I mentioned that I owned more than one, I thought people were going to dive under the table for protection. I explained that an AR-15 shoots powerful shells for sure, the .223 or 5.56 caliber, but it’s actually less powerful than the Weatherby .300-magnum rifle that I hunt deer with. Most people expressing their disdain for the AR-15 do so on the basis of it being called an “assault rifle” or because its various features give it a serious or even sinister appearance. Most all those “scary” features are actually quite practical, like the adjustable stock or the flash suppressor on the barrel, or various options such as a pistol grip on the stock. None of those features have a thing to do with making the gun more deadly. Some even make it safer. They are practical features that offer better stability and make the rifle lighter, more adjustable for people of various sizes, and less likely to overheat. There are many rifles more powerful, but the popularity of the AR-15 is due to its versatility and adaptability—not because it’s more dangerous than others.
I’m not trying to sell the AR-15. My point is that the breathless attempt by the “Bubble” crowd to ban it is based on ignorance and fear—the very things that the “Bubbas” are accused of being driven by. What irony!
I remember when GOP Presidential candidate Phil Gramm, then a U.S. senator from Texas, was asked how many guns he had. His classic reply, delivered in that characteristic Texas drawl of his, was memorable: “I own more shotguns than I need, but not as many as I want.” [CBS News, December 19, 2012].
I don’t expect that everybody living in urban areas will come to understand life in the land of God, guns, grits, and gravy. But if you don’t understand it, and have no clue as to why we live or believe as we do, then, please, just leave us alone and let us go on believing that the Second Amendment exists not so we can “hoard guns,” but so we can hoard liberty.
Do us that favor, and when the barbarians show up at your door and you frantically phone us for help, maybe we’ll loan you a gun.
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The Culture of Crude
IN THE 1960S, the then-avant-garde television show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In was a groundbreaking mix of political satire and wacky comedy, with recurring features like the “Flying Fickle Finger of Fate” focusing attention on some quirky news story of the week. Millions tuned in each week to see how far the ensemble cast, led by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, would push the boundaries of topics and taboos. Dick Martin would “bet [his] sweet bippy” as the laugh track went wild and we all speculated as to what a “bippy” might be. The talented cast included Goldie Hawn (who danced innocently in body paint and a bikini), Henry Gibson, Arte Johnson, Jo Anne Worley, Ruth Buzzi, and Lily Tomlin. It was cutting-edge humor but done with a light touch, occasionally controversial for the late sixties but considered tame and sometimes even lame by today’s standards.
Fast-forward to 2013, and the MTV Video Music Awards, where television audiences were treated to the “Flying Fearless Finger of Foam” as Miley Cyrus contorted her barely clad, barely legal-age body in a disgustingly pornographic performance that showed just about everything she had—except talent—and focused national attention on a new term, “twerking,” which describes a vulgar movement better saved for a stripper pole than prime-time television. Her awkward choreography and intentionally nasty gyrations, which involved her use of a giant foam finger as a prop to simulate pleasuring herself, were her way of shedding not only her clothes but her Disney character “Hannah Montana” once and for all. In the very year that child stars from long ago like Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney were dying off, the next generation of young “stars” were making their mark in the entertainment industry, not for any display of exceptional talent, but for the shameless and tasteless display of their quite ordinary private parts. Every human being has sexual parts, but not everyone is endowed with truly great talent for singing, dancing, acting, or playing an instrument. Removing one’s clothing is not especially unique—most people do it every day. But to celebrate an especially vulgar and graceless way of undressing by making it the centerpiece of a stage act is a sad substitute for real talent.
Even sadder is that our culture has sunk so low that lewd behavior is rewarded in the marketplace with increased sales. The Miley Cyrus hit “Wrecking Ball” went to number one. (She also made a music video for that song in which she was completely naked.) Talentless young women become “famous for being famous” and get their own reality shows (truly a topic unto itself), contracts for product lines, and lucrative endorsement deals after turning up in sex tapes that “somehow” get “leaked.” We truly have become the “Culture of Crude.”
When I was growing up (admittedly a while back), the first hour of prime time TV was called the “family hour.” Back in the day, most young children actually had bedtimes—now an outmoded concept for many—and it was assumed that they might be allowed to watch just that first hour or so before heading off to bed. So that hour h
ad strict broadcast standards for—get ready—decency. Maybe some of the restrictions seem ridiculously quaint now, but we’ve gone 180 degrees in the opposite direction. It’s during the “family hour” that the sitcom 2 Broke Girls broke all barriers of good taste with the crudest and (by now) most predictable sex jokes imaginable. Really, you don’t want me to quote even the tamest of these; trust me on this. And that’s just one example; I could certainly cite others.
I love really funny, insightful stand-up comedy. It’s great that women have come into their own in that field, both as stand-ups and as comedic actresses, and there are some fantastic examples. But today we have a number of female stand-ups who spout the crudest possible lines about their own sex lives. In fact, that’s pretty much their whole act! Maybe they looked at some of the male comics who also work blue and decided that’s what you have to do to succeed. They wouldn’t want to work clean and become failed nobodies, like Bill Cosby and Jerry Seinfeld. (Funny women such as Rita Rudner, Elayne Boosler, and Carol Leifer also did pretty well without resorting to filth.) Is this what “equal opportunity” for female comics means now? If so, it’s brought the whole profession down.
Some rare comic geniuses like George Carlin or Richard Pryor used dirty words as part of a satirical examination of societal taboos. But most comics just use them to get a cheap, easy laugh because creating witty, original humor is hard. Broadcast standards once forced comedians to be funny without being filthy if they ever wanted to land that big break on The Tonight Show. Today, smutty jokes that used to be relegated to smoke-filled clubs appear regularly on major networks during the former “family hour.” If these comedians had to work clean, I don’t know what they would say. Their “stand-up” would consist of nothing but them simply standing up on stage for twenty minutes.
God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy Page 4