Talking about guns in the Texas Panhandle
It’s damnable that any reflection on American gun violence is quickly out of date. I was in Texas when the October 1 shooting occurred in Roseburg, Oregon, leaving 10 dead including the gunman. I was revising an article provoked by that shooting when 14 were shot dead December 2 in San Bernardino, California. Now there are two statistics I can’t get out of my mind: first, mass shootings (resulting in four or more deaths) occur at a rate of more than one a day in the United States. Second, more American gun deaths have occurred since 1970 than American war deaths since 1775.
This is insane. What’s wrong?
What I heard and saw in the Texas Panhandle in early October is revealing. According to legend, the day before his 1952 suicide by .38-caliber Colt revolver, the newspaper publisher in my Texas hometown ended his popular column with an early Texas saying: Sam Houston made us free, Sam Colt made us equal. Equal in power? That’s the world I grew up in but didn’t know. As a teenager I sometimes drove past a gun shop in a poorer part of town where my dad was part owner. I thought nothing of it. I didn’t know that he, a hunter, kept rifles in his closet.
