Guns and Clubs

by The Windjammer

I have pored over some of the crime data which the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have poured out and have now reached a conclusion.

Guns in and of themselves aren’t any more deadly than clubs, knives, ropes, duct tape, plastic bags, scalpels, knotted pillow cases, hatchets, hammers, automobiles and sundry other implements used in doing away with the one you love or the one someone else might accidently love.

None of the above nor any other implement exerts a whole awful lot of influence on the commission of violent crime when you get down to the nitty-gritty and not a single weapon of any kind has ever caused an intentional homicide, regardless of its category.

A club, according to the book by which I try to pattern my life (I hate to come right out and say "Bible’ because that might lead to legal problems with the weak-kneed among us), caused a twenty-five percent reduction in the reported total population at the time. I’m not even sure that it was a club which Cain used to do in his brother, but someone else suggested that was the weapon of mass destruction of that day and time. No sawed-off shotgun has ever had such a disastrous effect on such a large percentage of the population as that sawed-off shillelagh.

The obvious argument will be that guns are readily obtainable, which makes them the weapon of choice for some nut who believes he/she has the exclusive right to do someone else in. That much is somewhat true.

I have talked with law enforcement personnel in at least one country other than my own which has restrictive gun laws. Those people have told me, without exception, that violent crime in their bailiwicks has become more violent since such laws went into effect. They agree that if a person is bent on mayhem, he will use whatever weapon is at hand. The victim is just as dead from a thumb and forefinger wrapped tightly around a throat as he/she would be if shot with a .44 magnum. The process takes a little longer and is usually accompanied by a furious desperate struggle. You can substitute any method for the thumb and finger and the results come out the same.

The gist of the conclusion is that only people kill people.

We have guns here in the Mountain State, most of them by far being sporting firearms, and some of us inherited the genes which allow us to instinctively use them for the purpose for which the manufacturers intended. I even tried to teach my wife and daughters how to use them properly. I also reached the conclusion that I’m not much of a teacher.

I took my wife and older daughter to the top of Cheat for grouse hunting one beautiful fall day. My daughter proved my point when she spotted an inbound pheasant (that’s what we oldsters call grouse here) and said, "There comes a big bird, Dad. Shoot him!"

My wife liked squirrel gravy on her hot breakfast biscuits and the only way I know to get squirrel gravy is to shoot the primary ingredient, hopefully without getting too much of that environmentally-unsafe foreign matter (which can knock the enamel off an unsuspecting tooth faster than you can spell ‘squirrel") scattered through the meat. If she wanted gravy, she would have to earn it.

She has an eye problem, not with keeping them open, but with keeping one of them shut. She shoots cross-handed. When the gun went bang, the squirrel dropped like a rock. It was my wife who was bleeding. The little shotgun did what any good shotgun would do and busted her lip when it got in the way of the recoil. She still carries the scar, but it didn’t stop her from liking squirrel gravy.

I no longer do what I started when I was barely eight–hunt the meat that went on the table. Age took care of what the antis have tried for decades to accomplish. The age had a little help from a broken back and the various infirmities which often accompany the condition.

I have sold my hunting guns and given my bows (3) and arrows to unsuspecting relatives who I know will never use them in a fashion of which I would not approve.

All of which only goes to prove that guns have their proper place and use.

Taking them by over-regulation or prohibition will not solve the crime problem. Crime, violent or otherwise, is always committed by criminals. If not before the dastardly deed, then certainly during and after.