A Marvelous Gun Unshot

Putting down the bag of peaches, he said he’d been back there shooting a new gun. You might give that shoulder a chance, I said. You’re going to love this pistol, he said. It’s a smooth shot, man, aim sure to fifty yards and more. Illustration by Ratbee Press, 2016.

He let himself in the house without knocking, as had become his habit, and placed a bag of peaches on the counter—a present from the farmers’ market. His arm was in a sling from shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff, an injury from shooting his assault rifle at the outdoor gun range repeatedly and rapidly, wishing it was an automatic, until he lost his balance, stumbled a few paces, and tripped. Putting down the bag of peaches, he said he’d been back there shooting a new gun. You might give that shoulder a chance, I said. You’re going to love this pistol, he said. It’s a smooth shot, man, aim sure to fifty yards and more. He pulled it from his coat pocket and handed it to me. I stopped cutting onions and gripped the blue-black pistol by the wooden handle. I was surprised, as always, by the weight. It’s not loaded, is it? I felt compelled to ask and wanted to remind him not to bring a loaded weapon into my house. It’s a Nazi officer’s gun, he said. It even has the bird on the side, and the crest. And there they were.

I had attended two gunshows with my then-father-in-law and had been shooting with him twice at the ranges as well. Evidently, it was only a small extension from these outings to conclude that I would enjoy shooting a Nazi pistol. The thought was dizzying. You won’t find me shooting it, I said, handing it back.

I liked David—like him still. We never had much in common, politically or culturally. But we got on in our way despite the experiences that divided us: he spent his youth in the backwoods of Oklahoma, and I spent mine, some thirty-five years later, in the suburbs of Dublin. He seemed comfortable with the easy language of punitive violence—some people just need killin’—whereas these comments sounded overconfident to me, both moralizing and irresponsible. He told a story of a lynching that happened in his youth; the victims were caught rustling cattle. Most of the violence I experienced growing up didn’t bother to conceal its cruelty and contempt, whether schoolyard bullies, Christian brothers, or mothers wielding wooden spoons. Guns were those hillside weapons pointed at our car through slots in green bulletproof glass when we crossed into Northern Ireland in utmost silence.

He enjoyed provoking people. It was generally amusing or harmlessly annoying. It could even be civic—he wrote a barrage of letters to the editor to save an aged oak tree from commercial development. He affectionately called his daughter a pinko. And he took great pleasure in provoking his motorcycle buddy with what he had learned about leather chaps from two gay family friends. They had recently come out to their disappointed families and had nowhere to go for Christmas break. When David appeared in his riding gear, the seat of his blue jeans framed neatly by the black chaps, he met their merry laughter. His buddy didn’t take the news so well.

But the Bush years, and the wars they brought, made things harder for us. I became serious, somewhat paranoid, and impatient of cavalier talk. He guffawed alone. I wondered in an Old World way if surveillance, war propaganda, and torture required we find words to describe modern fascism. He had no such qualms. American culture increasingly appeared to me to be held together with blustering threats of violence, whether political opponents (put him in your sights), overheard bar chat (we need to turn the goddamn desert to glass), or policies that scapegoated immigrant laborers. He sent me an nra membership application and sticker in the mail...