The gun is a friend to the family. It keeps Daddy secure. Sometimes men need a buddy to tell them they are strong and manly. Viagra only works down there. It doesn't work up here in the head.
Everybody remembers Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver saying “Are you talking to me?” Very few people remember him saying, “Some day a real rain will come and wash the scum off the streets.” Travis Bickle is back in town, and he's taking fares from the gun club. Let's go along for the ride.
Here's a rethink of an old saying. 'Guns don't kill people. Anonymity does.' Guns bring people to life. To be fair, that's only true in a deeply metaphorical way. Guns do kill people. It's just that we only notice them once the trigger has been pulled. But even that is tenuous. We don't notice most shootings, only the gaudy ones. And the people come to life in our imaginations: the victims, but mainly the shooters.
“Are you talking to me?” That's the key to Taxi Driver. The gun spoke to Bickle. It empowered him. He figured it all out on the most basic level. All he had to do was pull the trigger. You can't even find the awesome 'real rain' riff on You Tube.
Anonymity is deadly. If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? And if someone lives and there is nobody there to witness that life, is it really a life?
Time to stop the taxi and take a look at what's happening on this particular kerb. Here's an interesting fact: if you ignore someone long enough, he or she starts shouting. Scope the homeless guy over there, pushing his cart, shouting his litany of rejection. He's not as loopy as he looks: there's method in his madness. If he sees that we notice him, he knows he must exist. Good thing you need money for guns. Good thing homeless guys don't have disposable income. Breathe a sigh of relief and let's drive on.
The gun shop is down there. It's a store that fits well between home hardware and home décor. Let's look in. Tasteful wood and exciting high-tech blued steel. Big and small. Normal bullets, long bullets or funky bullets with the mods that make them do interesting things. But this is not where guns belong. Drive, Travis. Drive.
Suburbia. Stop here and let's get out. Guns belong in the home. There is nowhere better for them than in the company of the designer blender, the brass praying hands and the flounces of chintz in feminine mauve and avocado. Where else would you want the gun to be? Tucked in Daddy's waistband as another day at the office takes too long to grind by? In Mommy's handbag, ready to negotiate the tag on a little red dress in the local boutique?
The gun is the last ditch home appliance. It's there if you forget to lock the back door. It's right and ready and snug in the hand if someone pops the lock: fists and clubs aren't always enough. The gun is a friend to the family. It keeps Daddy happy. Sometimes men need a buddy to tell them they are strong and manly. Viagra only works down there. It doesn't work up here in the head. Hey, if you really need another reason, it can keep the insurance excess down.
Guns belong to the home, like the dog in the backyard, or the guy who comes in year after year to do the garden: they don't come out in polite company, though we know they are there. Yet sometimes families cease to be, and sometimes friends stop coming by. And then the gun becomes the only friend, to people like the homeless guy: people who need to exist, who have something to say, but nobody to listen to them.
And after a while it all mounts up. Perhaps, like someone I once knew, with nobody to talk to, someone you may have known, the gun takes the sadness away away. Or perhaps like all those people who make the news, the gun makes other people sit up and pay attention.
We don't notice the guns anymore, nor the anonymity. Only when the trigger is pulled again and again, as some shooter makes a statement that is exciting enough for us to sit up and take notice.
Guns don't kill people. Anonymity does. In the next week, in the next month, there will inevitably be someone with something to say. We need to take away the gun. But we also need to think about that person.
No comments:
Post a Comment