Whenever I sit down to consume the news of the day, just to catch up on Monica and Bill, or what multinational telecommunications conglomerate AT&T is buying this week, or why basketball players with contracts the size of the Powerball jackpot plan to strike for a better deal, some nut case with a gun shows up and spoils the whole thing.
There's this guy who mounts a one-man assault on Congress because he can't get the CIA to remove the land mines it buried in his back yard. And there's the loving couple from Eastern Kentucky who gets drunk and argumentative at their high school reunion. She wants to go home and he wants to get drunker, so she gets naked, heads for the highway and hitches a ride. He chases them down and rekindles their romance by blowing away the driver. It's comforting to know that up in them thar hills, first cousins are breeding and their spawn is born with a shootin' iron in each fist.
Forty people died from gunshot wounds in schools last year. The only reason we haven't heard lately about some kid trying to waste the population of a middle school is that classes are out for the summer. But stay tuned, year round schools are on the way. Can you imagine what will happen at the high school reunions 20 years from now?
You can't go anywhere anymore without encountering the repercussions from all these nut cases with guns. Every building has a sign saying "No Firearms Allowed." Armed guards standing at the door are common, and personal searches are becoming routine. Metal detectors sell better than slot machines. Congress is now considering a $120 million underground visitor center for the Capitol to keep the crazies out, unless someone voted them in. The rest of us will be frisked; so much for personal freedom.
Are the media to blame for publicizing, dramatizing, and glorifying nut cases with guns? These stories are legitimate news events; let's hope they remain unusual. But that's not the case in Miami where tourist hotels removed a local TV station from their cable systems. Its news policy of "If it bleeds, it leads." became so excessive that guests were checking out early to return to Newark. It's not any safer there, but you can be terrified at home and save 200 bucks a day, enough for a down payment on a good used Uzzi.
The entertainment media and paying customers alike find stories of nut cases with guns compelling drama. This is not new. Criminals have long been a fixture in our media culture, all the way back to the dime novels, songs, and sensational press accounts of 19th century outlaws more famous and admired than presidents. An old ballad about Jessie James goes: " Jessie had a wife who mourned for his life, three children they were brave. But that dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard, he laid poor Jessie in his grave." Who's the bad guy?
A British friend once asked me if I owned a gun. I replied that I live in the woods where I could encounter an occasional poisonous snake or rabid animal, so I have a shotgun. Then there's Kate's old target rifle from her sharpshooting days, growing up on Air Force bases; and a couple of antiques that look nice on the wall; and the BB pistol we use to chase squirrels off the bird feeders. From the look on his face, I could tell my friend believed I was armed to the teeth.
Since 1776, the Brits have thought all us Yanks were nut cases with guns. Maybe they're right.