The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Let’s talk guns! I’m betting most of my card carrying liberal pals, guys like Two Toke Tom, will never in a dozen lifetimes understand why anyone would own a gun, much less a couple of dozen or more. Or 36 like the killer in Vegas last week who killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more…. They want gun control. Half would like guns banned outright. Tom would, for sure.

I had a neighbor who didn’t like me much (I know, hard to believe!) who announced, apropos of nada, that he always carried a pistol and kept a loaded one by his bed. Just in case I was contemplating a late night break-in burglary. When I asked why he ‘packed’ during the day, he said dogs. Packs of dogs. The .38 was dog spray for he-men. I hate to extrapolate from one case study, but my sense is people keep guns out of fear. Dogs, burglars, gays, rapists, Muslims, the Chinese Mafia. You laugh maybe at the Chinese Mafia but I have a pal who, devout Christian that he is, struggled mightily with whether to buy a gun for protection. “Protection from what?” I asked. “The island is pretty much violence free.” He said gangs of the Chinese Mafia. Them and the Muslim Caliphate.

It’s hard to argue against folks’ fears. They’re real even if the basis isn’t. TV news is half reportage of violence. Movies and TV and video games are full to the cerebellum with mayhem. The cities are war zones, gangs rule entire neighborhoods, drive-by shootings are commonplace —— or so we believe. There’s talk of endtimes, societal breakdown, dystopia and riots in the streets. One gun isn’t gonna do it!! Not when the zombie apocalypse or the Chinese Mafia roll into the pastoral South End.

My Christian buddy decided not to arm himself. No killing, the Bible admonished and he was pretty certain he’d be going to heaven if the Mafia did kill him. My neighbor, though, shot himself in the head. Any way you parse it, that’s tough gun control, one that Two Toke might not endorse, but I say it’s a good start. And no, I didn’t pry the gun out of his cold dead hands. Let’s have a modicum of respect for the dearly departed.

Hits: 126