As a child in our migrant camps in the South and Midwest there were few opportunities for entertainment other than listening to the adults around the dinner table talk about their personal insights as well as make fun of each other’s life experiences. When it came to guns, everyone turned to my father and asked about his exploits along the Rio Grande River border during Prohibition.
Those were violent times as the border was filled with contraband liquor and armed men doing business. My father’s favorite weapon was a 38 blue steel automatic that he, at the time, carried under a denim jumper jacket worn even during the hot days in South Texas.
I remember a time on the side of a hill in the State of Arkansas when I saw my father teach my mother how to shoot a 22-caliber pistol by firing at targets. Those early memories taught me to respect firearms and what they could do.
Since there was no work during winter, the men spent a lot of time hunting to put meat on the table. In this regard, grandfather had bought a canning contraption that was used to process and preserve what was brought home. I thought it was funny that the family would can the meat and almost immediately begin to open the cans to make a meal. I thought of all the trouble people went to do the canning only to undo the work so soon.
As distant as those memories are, they and the western novels I read, set my perspective on guns. I have always associated guns with banditry stories, hunting and war. So, when I hear and see the gun violence in America, I tend to look at the events associated with that violence through the lens of the three categories. Yet it is more than that as gun violence is tolerated in its most violent and lethal form.
Why do we allow so many people, especially children, to die at the hands of men and women carrying guns to do harm? When I ask this question, I am told over and over again that “guns don’t kill people, people do.”
That rationale takes me back to the three categories made up of bandits, hunters and war to look for answers. The closest I have come to a reason comes from looking at history and finding that bandits can become insurgents and insurgents can become revolutionary fighters for outlawed causes.
In most countries, carrying guns of all kinds without a permit is illegal. So those that seek to make war within their own community tend to dedicate their lives to the possible destruction of what we have in order to create something more to their liking.
In the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution provides for that kind of thinking. It goes back to a British government that was unresponsive to the wishes of its colonies in North America that, in part, created the conditions for the American Revolution.
Our founders fear that it could happen again also created a monster that does not respect even the “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” notion of the Declaration of Independence. Furthermore, it is killing innocent adults and children by the thousands.
The peaceful use of guns has taken a backseat to a political movement that seeks to undermine our freedom to maintain power. Meanwhile people are dying by the thousands in a violent America as a result of a freedom covered by the Second Amendment.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of La Voz Bilingüe. Comments and responses may be directed to News@lavozcolorado.com.
