Guns

by Martin Kleinman

 When I was a kid, me and all my friends had toy boxes full of toy guns. I had a toy M-1, a toy flintlock pistol, a toy .45 revolver, a toy snub-nosed .38, and a variety of water guns shaped like Lugers, Tommy guns, .22 automatics – even a “space” gun molded with Flash Gordon-like lightning bolts around its cherry-red plastic body.

When I was a kid, we played war with tiny toy soldiers. We had Civil War soldiers, World War I soldiers, and World War II soldiers, and all their field accessories: Jeeps, field artillery, tanks, and more. We played in the dirt across the street from our University Heights apartment house, or in the backyard, on top of the stone-and-concrete retaining wall that separated our building from our neighbors.

When I was a kid, I joined the Boy Scouts. We read “Boys’ Life”, the BSA’s official publication. It was packed with outdoors lore. Fishing, camping, marksmanship. It was monthly manna for us city kids.

When I was a kid, I begged for a BB gun, specifically the Daisy Red Ryder. It was advertised in “Boys’ Life” and, to me, was the epitome of little kid fire power.

“No,” my father would say. “It’s against New York City law. If we lived in Westchester, it would be a different story.”

“No,” my mother would say. “You know, your grandmother got shot in the leg with a BB gun on Vyse Avenue, back when they were still legal.”

“But….”

“NO!!!” she screamed. “YOU COULD LOSE AN EYE!!!”

When I was a kid, we had guns in the house. My dad’s job in the 135th Ordnance MM Company during World War II was field fixes on firearms up to .50 caliber. He somehow came home from the war alive, and with four functional weapons: a .22 LR Walther single shot sporting rifle with gorgeous hand-checkered stock, a German Luger 7.65x21mm Parabellum, a .25 automatic pistol and a .45 automatic.

When I was a kid, my dad taught me the manual of arms. He had me marching around the house with my wooden toy M1. Ten-HUT. Present ARMS. Right FACE. Left FACE. About FACE. Forward MARCH.

Soon afterward, my mother made my father sell his pistols, which he was loathe to do. Family folklore says he unwillingly sold them to a gleeful co-worker for a grand total of $100.

When I was a kid, the .22 Walther rifle was in my Dad’s coat closet, in a green rifle bag. He kept a Hoppe’s rifle cleaning kit on a top shelf, behind his fedoras. It had a three-piece cleaning rod, various tips, tiny cotton cleaning patches, lubricating oil, and Hoppe’s No. 9 gun bore cleaner. It smelled so great, that bore cleaner, when I opened that kit. It smelled like excitement. It smelled like danger. It smelled like manliness. After all, it was Dad’s.

When I was a kid, my Dad never knew I knew where the rifle and accessories were.

When I was a kid, I went to Boy Scout camp at Ten Mile River one year. This was north of Port Jervis, outside of Narrowsburg, in upstate New York. The Delaware River separated New York from Pennsylvania. We swam, fished and camped out in and around the river.

When I was a kid, one day our camp leader asked if anyone wanted to go skeet shooting. I thought my heart would blast through my chest. “Me me me me!!!” I gasped.

Minutes later, I had a real .410 shotgun in my hands. I learned all the safety precautions, how to yell “Pull!!!”, how to sight the gun, squeeze the trigger, and knock down those flying clay pigeons. I never got less than four out of five. I was a natural.

It was SUCH FUN.

When I was a kid, I told my dad about the skeet shooting. He took his .22 Walther out of the closet and showed it to me. He taught me how to field strip it, clean it, reassemble it. I felt as if I had arrived. I was accepted into Dad’s secret world.

Then he read me the riot act and taught me all about gun safety, and how to properly store and carry a gun in the field.

When I was a kid, in my twelfth year on the planet, my Dad said we were going to visit his family, in Fairfield County, Connecticut, which back then was fairly rural. My cousins and I would traipse about the woods behind the house.

This year proved very different.

My Dad packed the .22. Off we went. The next day, my Dad and his brother spoke in low tones. Then my uncle called all the surrounding neighbors. Eavesdropping on his phone calls, I heard him say something about “shooting” and “please keep the kids inside” and “thanks, just a half hour.”

We went down to their basement, which opened out back and onto the woods. He unlocked a closet. Out came a World War II Mauser. Out came a Luger. Out came a Ruger .44 Magnum.

Out came a bevy of empy cans and Clorox bottles.

Dad pulled his .22 Walther from its sheath. My cousin grinned as he set up the “targets” down in a ravine. We shot down into that little valley.

I fired everything except the .44, which was a nearly uncontrollable cannon.

Best of all was the smell. The smell of gunpowder, to me, was even better than Dad’s Old Spice cologne.

When I was a kid, I attended De Witt Clinton High School. Back then, in a basement room, was a rifle range. A kid in my home room asked if I wanted to join him on the rifle team. “There’s a rifle team?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yep. Got a gun?”

Did I have a gun? Dad’s .22 Walther! As unbelievable as it sounds, I carried my book bag and the cased .22 to school, on the Woodlawn Road train, with the rifle’s bolt and my ammo separately stashed in my coat pocket. People on the subway stared at me, a sixteen-year old lugging a black plastic gym bag for my books in one hand, and a rifle in the other.

I asked my homeroom teacher to please stash my gun in his locking coat closet until the end of my day. He kept a straight face, blinked hard, and gingerly took the weapon from me. It was safe and sound when I picked it up from him after the last period.

The rifle range was neat, but the other fellas had super accurate, heavy, specialized target rifles with peep sights. The Walther had open sights, and I did fine, but not varsity-level.

I never fired a gun again until decades later, when I led a team of reporters on an Alaskan junket for my client at the time, Audi. Our guide in the rugged, bush country, riddled with bears, wore a holstered Ruger .44 Magnum. The cannon.

One day, a woman reporter sheepishly asked the guide about the gun. Then another, and another, until the guide caught on.

“Who of you would like to fire the pistol?” he asked.

Everyone’s hand went up.

After a serious safety lesson, we all took turns firing a few rounds at a carefully placed target our guide set up. I’m proud to report I was the only one on the trip to hit the target, but man, that thing had recoil!

So what’s my point?

Safe, responsible gun ownership is OK. Firing a gun is not everyone’s idea of a good time, but target shooting can be fun. I’ve never hunted game, but I can understand the serious hunter, who respectfully kills, cleans and eats his game. And, yes, I’ve eaten duck, and venison, courtesy of my hunter friends, and it tastes great.

What’s not OK, in my opinion, are lax laws on background checks and ownership. In Iowa, legally blind people can own a gun.

What’s not OK, in my opinion, is civilian ownership of military grade semi-automatic weapons with high capacity magazines, which are not for target shooting or hunting. They’re for the battlefield. They’re readily available, and I think there is no place for that.

“Why not?” some will argue. Well, why not own a bazooka? A stinger? A mortar? A tank? Where does one draw the line? Is a 42-round AR-15 magazine for less than $12 a wise thing to sell?

When I was a kid, we all played with toys guns, and dreamed of firing the real thing. What we couldn’t imagine is the per capita civilian ownership of firearms in this country, 89 per 100, which leads the world. The runner-up is Yemen. The USA accounts for 48 percent of the world’s civilian owned firearms.

When I was a kid, who could imagine the rise in mass shooting injuries over the years?

When I was a kid, who could imagine the gun-safety orientation of the NRA would give way to the political machine it is today?

When I was a kid, it seemed as if every Dad had been in the military, where gun safety was learned and reinforced. Today, fewer than one percent of all Americans serve in the military, versus about nine percent in World War II.

When I was a kid, war was a game we played, in the dirt across the street, and guns were the toys used in that game. Then, we became adults, and parents, and we knew very well the bitter cost of war.

Where has that attitude gone? Where are the adults in the room, to say “NO!”