The first concussion comes a little after nine a.m. Will there be more? A fusillade? Or just the one gunshot, at a snake most likely.
On the Fourth
of July weekend you expect a variety of explosive punctuation. The rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in
air:
It’s the way
we have chosen to remember our nation’s stubborn survival under fire. British
fire in 1814. Two hundred and two years ago.
In the
meantime, we have built a nation of unparalleled opportunity for a greater
proportion of citizens than any other. And still we celebrate ourselves with
words describing combat.
We like to
think about war, don’t we—those of us who haven’t experienced it first hand? We
like to feel the adrenaline rush of safely witnessed mayhem. We like to imagine
ourselves as the underdog, surviving clear and direct danger against all odds.
Our taste in
films and video games certainly suggests that. Our love of fireworks, too. We
like to feel the power in each explosion on screen or overhead, although we’re
just watching.
Except, of
course, some of us here in the malls and towns of America aren’t just watching.
We’re buying guns and using them.
We have
those guns for a variety of reasons. Hunting, which includes putting meat in
the larder. Defense of property. Criminal activities. Suicide. Hardly anyone
buys weapons with the intention of mass murder.
In our
neighborhood, fun is the largest reason. Round Top has its historical Shutzenverein, or “marksmen’s club.”
During deer and dove season the hills around us reverberate, morning and
evening. Distance reduces the concussion to a series of pops, like popcorn cooking
on the stove. Closer to hand, a friend nearby has his own target range in the
back pasture.
I learned to
shoot targets as a girl. My daddy told me that his father, at one time a Texas
Ranger, could draw his pistol and hit a silver dollar flipped in the air. It
may have been true.
I never
tried to do that, but I became quite good with a rifle. So good that I
surprised a new boyfriend the first time we shot skeet over his parents’ stock
tank. I’d never used a shotgun before, but it felt natural.
A few weeks
later, we graduated to doves. In the sky, a dove didn’t look so different from
a clay pigeon.
When my
friend went over to scoop up the harvest, he ripped the head off the first bird
and I had a revelation. I had shot a living creature. I had killed an innocent.
Just to show off how good a shot I was. Pure
ego, in other words.
It made me
sick.
I thought
about this recently when I saw a video on Facebook of a young girl striding
through what had once been a grove of trees, pulverizing targets on every side,
relentlessly, with her semi-automatic weapon.
Oh, the
power! So young! Gee.
I wonder
when she will realize that those targets she’s praised for blowing up represent
human beings. And why has she been trained to do that, presumably by her
father? No need for that kind of weapon to hunt deer. Kill elephants, maybe…wade
into a herd and mow ’em down. Not likely she’ll find a herd of elephants in
Texas, though.
Has it been
for fun? Can there still be fun in simulating what has become a terrible
reality?
Fun is a
poor enough excuse for shooting innocents; and madness an infinitely worse one.
Allowing the first to enable the second feels obscene.
That’s why
this year the Fourth of July lost its innocence for me. The explosions of
fireworks all around us that weekend no longer recalled childhood amazement.
Instead, I could see a nightclub, an elementary school, a movie theater—places
of tragedy that have become known by names we should not forget: Orlando, Sandy
Hook, Columbine.
I suspect I
was not alone. Those horrible events have a way of worming themselves deep into
us. The fact they happened has changed us.
And so, when
our neighbor set off the barrage of annual fireworks in his pasture that Monday
night, I wondered how we would know the difference, ever again, if we couldn’t
see the colorful phosphorous blossoms overhead.
--0--
(This essay appeared in July, in the Fayette County Record.)
