The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Naw, guns don’t kill people, insanity and hatred kills people. Or in the words of one Ohio state representative, trans and gays were the real culprits in this weekend’s mayhem and mass murder. One Congressman claimed it was video games. Another pointed the finger at drag queens and marijuana. Former Arkansas Governor and Fox Gadfly Mike Huckabee says it’s a lack of thoughts and prayers. Me, I’m gonna go out on a long limb here, call me crazy, call me gay, call me an atheist, dress me in women’s clothes, and say it was guns. Yup, I think it was guns.

I grew up with Roy Rogers, cowboys and Indians, shoot-em-ups, all those wild west westerns where a 6 shooter kept the crooks from taking over everything but Boot Hill. I’ve owned guns, still do. I’ve hunted squirrels and rabbits and deer until I got in touch with my touchy-feely side and couldn’t do it anymore. I still kill crab but I don’t need a gun to do it. Touchy-feeliness only goes so far and I draw the line on Dungeness.

And trust me, I don’t have the solution to gun violence in America. There are more guns than people and there are people who like their guns better than they like other people. I just don’t think they ought to use their guns on the folks they don’t like. But now we got assault rifles, military weapons, more firepower than the police. We got folks like my bipolar buddy, Fast Freddy, who flew back to his home state on his last visit to buy a titanium .44 pistol and an AR-15 assault rifle. He was more manic than an amphetamine monkey but the gun shop sold him both. Something wrong with that picture if you’d seen Freddy at the height of his departure from lithium. Only picked up 32 times by the local police on his long trek out to our place. They knew he was off his rocker, I bet the gun store clerk did too.

Happiness may be a warm gun to some, but there are plenty of families who would beg to differ. Suicides, spousal killings, mass murders, accidental shootings. Gee, you think we should do something about this?

Let me assume for a South End minute that we actually do have the right to bear arms. I can’t keep a rocket launcher. I’m not supposed to have an automatic weapon. So is it such a far reach that we could outlaw — I know, I know, only the outlaws — assault rifles and military weapons? Maybe put some restrictions on dum-dum and armor-piercing ammo? The answer, if you’re not an NRA true believer, is fundamentally yes. Nobody’s taking ALL your damn guns, Bubba. Keep more than one by all means.

But sometime, somewhere in this fairy land we call America, we have to face the fact that blood is in the streets, in a community near yours, and people are dying, families are devastated, the carnage is real. And here’s some news for my Republican apologists. It ain’t the trans, it isn’t the gays, it isn’t violent video games, it isn’t insanity and hatred pulling that trigger. And no, Mike, it’s not a paucity of prayers. It’s guns. Wake up and smell the cordite.

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I lived a fairly large chunk of my formative years in the dairy state of Wisconsin so naturally I follow their politics which is everything important to the Dairylanders outside of the Green Bay Packers, fishing and hunting. In recent years the good folks of Wisconsin have gerrymandered their districts to such an algorithmically fine degree that now the GOP has gained full control of the legislature, the governor’s office and the judiciary, the whole shitaree. The pigs are definitely at the trough, to use an agrarian phrase … which may be why some lawmakers are hoping to change the license plate logo that now reads AMERICA’S DAIRYLAND. I’m not sure what they have in mind for a replacement, maybe something along the lines of LET THE RICH RULE.

Every week or so I come across some article in the newspaper concerning my old homeland. This week a buddy who is also an ex-pat escapee sent me one concerning legislation to allow children of all ages to hunt deer. You know, if they had an adult monitor of course. Maybe you never hunted with a kid in tow, some feisty fellow with a .30-.30 he can barely lift up to his bony little shoulder, safety probably OFF and excited as hell for the first opportunity to kill something bigger than himself. I have. Trust me, it’s a horrifyingly frightening experience. So frightening, in fact, that I quit hunting in the woods of Northern Wisconsin right then and there. I’d rather hunt Siberian tigers with a Bowie knife than hunt near a kid with an itchy trigger finger and no sense of firearm safety, I don’t care if he has 15 adult monitors in the brush with him all sporting NRA logos tattooed on their asses. He’s going to shoot at anything that moves more than likely.

I’ve known people, adult people, who have inadvertently shot and killed their hunting partners. One shot his father. Another shot a brother. The NRA will tell you guns don’t kill people. And they’re half right. But totally wrong. What is true is how it changed some lives forever. The father killer went crazy. The one who shot his brother couldn’t live with the guilt and eventually killed himself. I’m not sure how many stupid deaths will result from grade school hunters. But if you think Wisconsin’s GOP legislators aren’t on top of this, consider the bill this weekend that seeks to ban abortions because abortions would reduce the future workforce of the state. You have to admire the problem-solving tenacity of these lawmakers.

Given that admirable ability, allow me to offer a new license plate option to my favorite Red State legislators: KILL A FEW SAVE A FEW. Compassionate conservatism still lives in Wisconsin.

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Now here’s an idea whose time is long overdue. Murder insurance!! You got a house full of guns and maybe shoot the mizzus, thinking she was an intruder and next thing you know, the neighborhood is critical, the lawyers are gunning for you and the whole world seems to be against you. What’s a gun owner gonna do?

Well, the National Rifle Association is there for you. They’re now offering insurance policies to protect you against those litiginous victims, what else! For a small annual fee you get peace of mind. Nobody needs to be wondering in those wee morning hours when the noise from the backyard invades your sleep, whether to take the safety off the AR-15 and risk losing the advantage over your would-be attacker because you were worried it might be the neighbor’s kid coming home late after a party. No, you need to be Ready, you need to be Focused, you need to be Alert and you definitely need NRA insurance!

You have insurance for auto accidents, why not gun accidents? Isn’t a little peace of mind worth the small price of the policy? Accidents happen every day in an armed America so why become the victim too in those unfortunate but understandable events? One victim is plenty, no need to martyr yourself to some ambulance chasing lawyer’s attacks. Take the anxiety out of home protection! Sign up today! And for a few dollars more, they’ll insure the entire family. Guns don’t kill people. But sometimes you might. Don’t leave yourself defenseless when you have an arsenal. Murder Insurance. Because you have the right to kill without worry!

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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.

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