The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I read in the lying, failing press today that gun sales in the Don’t Tread on Me, Yew Ess Aye, were up 15%. All I can figure is the buyers were inspired by the recent burst in mass killings. That, or they have deduced that if they own a semi-automatic military assault rifle, when the next Democratic president is elected, they will be asked to sell it back for a handsome profit in a government buyback.

When Obama was elected gun sales went through the roof, folks so alarmed that he would take away white folks’ weapons. Ragin Cajun Roy, down at the South End Pawn and Loan, claimed he was mostly in the arms trade back in those heady years. “Hell, Skeeter,” he told me when I asked how biz was, “I get six guns a day coming in from yahoos scared the damn government’s going to confiscate them soon as Obama gets in office and I sell six to the boys who think it’s high time to stockpile weapons. They think the revolution is coming.”

Well, Obama didn’t set his sights on gun ownership, looks like in hindsight, but there’s something deeply paranoid in the Heartland, apparently. The NRA is worried, that’s for sure. And a few Republicans can see the writing on the bullet sprayed walls of high schools and tabernacles. Gun regulations are like whisky prohibition back in the early last century. The men want firearms and firewater, the women want to feel safe in their homes and know their children are safe in their schools. It’s a gender schism, all right. And I don’t know about you, but down here in the shooting ranges of the South End, not too many of the ladies are packing.

Hunting seems to have gone out of favor too. We let the deer munch merrily on our gardens and orchards and flower beds rather than fill the freezer with venison. Once in awhile we hear the soft pop of AR-15 gunbursts, not exactly reassuring, but this is, after all, the country. Or so I tell the mizzus who always seems agitated by gunfire, can’t say why. She might be thinking of my old buddy Bipolar Jim who visited recently, manic as a meth addict, then hurried back to his home in Chicago to buy an assault rifle and a titanium .45. They sold him both even though it would be obvious to anyone he was out of his head. Probably just making a savvy investment. You know, for when the government police pay him handsomely to sell them back. Smart guy, Jim. Meanwhile, he’s spinning the barrel of that cute titanium.

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