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If anyone needs further proof that America is by far the most entertaining nation on earth, consider this: At the same time that some cities are contemplating suits against gun manufacturers for making their products too available, some of those same cities are selling used and confiscated guns.
Some of those firearms end up in criminal hands, of
course, and so this domestic arms race continues.
Actually, arms race
isn't the right word. Calling
something a race
implies that there's a finish line.
This is more like an endless treadmill.
One recurring feature of recent commentary is that
guns are too available,
a clause which is generally
employed when a gruesome massacre is committed by youthful
shooters.
The implication is that once upon a time, in those halcyon days of yore often invoked by Republican orators, it was very difficult for young people to get their hands on guns.
But now -- as a result of a cabal involving Woodstock, Murphy Brown, Gloria Steinem, the World Trade Organization, the Militant Homosexual Agenda and the Biased Liberal Media, among others -- American society has degenerated to the degree that mere children can acquire weapons.
While society may have indeed degenerated -- after all, no polity with a shred of decency would consider Donald Trump for any position of honor or trust -- it's not on account of enhanced juvenile access to tools of destruction.
The truth is that it's a lot harder for youngsters to acquire guns and the like now than it was when I was a kid, back when school shootings were almost unknown.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, gearhead magazines like Popular Mechanics and Mechanix Illustrated were full of ads that offered surplus military weapons -- German Mausers, American Springfields, British Enfields -- by mail order to all comers. Any kid could have ordered one.
According to the Warren Report, that's how Lee Harvey Oswald acquired the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle used to kill President John F. Kennedy. As a result of the assassination, such mail-order sales were eventually banned.
But kids could still buy guns. I can testify from personal experience. I remember going to the Gamble's store in Greeley and buying a .22-caliber bolt-action rifle when I was 14 or 15, then walking back to my dad's laundry to go back to work.
A year or two later, I bought a .30-06 deer rifle pretty much the same way, except at a sporting-goods store instead of a hardware store. Pistols may have been different, but for a rifle, you could just walk in, put money on the counter, and walk out with a deadly weapon. Nobody even asked for your ID, so there weren't any background or age checks.
Granted, I wasn't a stranger in those stores, and my dad knew the people pretty well, so perhaps we could ascribe the ease of those purchases to the Mayberry Factor.
But that doesn't explain how easy it was to purchase dynamite in 1967, when I was in high school. That spring, I'd gone to Engineers Day at Colorado School of Mines, where I met a friend who was a couple of years older and in college there.
Our conversation turned to a topic that arrives
naturally when you're considering a career as a mining
engineer, and he was incredulous that I didn't know how to
use dynamite. A trip to a hardware store, followed by a
field demonstration at an old quarry, cured my ignorance.
For further education, he insisted I buy a copy of The
Blaster's Bible
at the campus bookstore.
Upon my return to Greeley, I still couldn't quite believe that firecrackers were illegal in Colorado but that anybody could buy dynamite.
All I had to do, though, was go to a hardware store and tell the clerk I wanted a roll of Bickford fuse, a box of primers and a case of 40 percent Gelex No. 2. No ID, no forms to fill out, just cash on the counter, and I was a 16-year-old with dynamite.
During a fight when I was about to strangle him, my little brother Kurt ratted me out to my folks. My father's response was wonderful. He wanted me to show him how to use dynamite, and then we had a fine time removing tree stumps, shredding some rusting car bodies on a friend's farm and making a lot of noise out in the country.
I haven't bought any dynamite since then, but I gather that it's an involved process involving permits and licenses for adults, and that no teenagers need apply.
So the truth is that it is now much more difficult for any Americans, especially teenagers, to get their hands on guns, ammunition or explosives, than it was 30 years ago.
This should mean that the public discussion would move
to some topic other than availability.
But don't
hold your breath.
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