Rifles and Pistols and Guns, Oh My!

I received a comment in response to “Thank God Our Elected Officials Are Looking Out for Us!” It came from a man with impeccable credentials in various fields, a man who is nobody’s fool, but he said one thing I take exception to:

“I personally do not find anything aesthetic about [firearms] (though I know others do rever [sic] them as works of art).”

If you’ve ever read this blog, you know I love firearms and make a portion of my living writing about them. I suspect this love of firearms is a result of my father patiently and consistently taking me to the arms and armor galleries of countless museums when I was a child. This almost certainly had less to do with his own interest in firearms (which was less than zero) and more to do with his understanding of how to get a small boy drugged on art and culture in general. My father was an extraordinary man; take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.

In addition to a love of firearms (and knives, swords, armor, the whole nine yards), one of the consequences of this early exposure was a fascination with any tool that is also a functional work of art. A quick list off the top of my head would include firearms, knives, saddles, bits, spurs, certain silver items, equine tools such as headstalls and mecates out of braided rawhide or horsehair (a process called hitching), certain antique cars, and I’m sure there are others that haven’t swum across my ken.

I could make an argument that an AR15 is as aesthetically pleasing as a hammer or wrench or any other tool that is perfectly distilled down to its functional essence to make it as efficient as possible, but let’s go for the more obvious examples.

Consider the lines of a fine side-by-side shotgun, a tool that has also been distilled down over the last one hundred and fifty years to its functional essence. Forget any fancy metal work or wood work; just look at the spare elegance of an Abbiatico & Salvinelli round-action shotgun,

or the classic lines of  Lebeau-Courally bolt action rifle Hemingway would have been proud to carry.

Both of these display the same kind of elegant and functional simplicity you might find on a Clovis arrowhead; all three, shotgun, rifle, and arrowhead, are made aesthetically pleasing by being perfectly designed for their purpose, with nothing extraneous or distracting. Still not convinced? Let’s take it a step further and look at some engraving.

Ken Hunt’s magic on a Purdey action.

McKay Brown’s adaptation of the classic Celtic knot.

A Civil War battle scene on a Piotti.

A Westley-Richards sidelock.

A mule deer by Tommy Kaye on a pistol grip cap.

Charles Lee’s engraving on a Dale Tate shotgun.

You may not wish to own such things—or any kind of firearm, for that matter—but no one can deny the artistic merit of these most basic tools.

Take a moment to check out the workmanship of some of the greatest artists living today at the Traditional Cowboy Arts Association http://tcowboyarts.org/ the American Custom Gunmakers Guild http://www.acgg.org/ and the American Bladesmith Society http://www.americanbladesmith.com/

The tool as art is one of the greatest accomplishments of the foolish human animal.

I live in California. There was a time when saying that would have made me the envy of practically everyone in America who didn’t live in California. After all, what’s not to like: lovely, temperate climate; beautiful and varied terrain, with something for everything; almost a thousand miles of breathtaking coastline; vineyards galore; world-class restaurants in practically every city; some of the greatest universities and colleges in the world; some of the most spectacular natural wonders the world has to offer, from Yosemite to giant sequoias to the redwood forests to… The list goes on.

Unfortunately, all of those positive delights are outweighed by the negatives, which can be summed up in one word: politicians.

Pretty much of all of them stink, but one of our state senators, Dianne Feinstein, has raised the bar for egregious hypocrisy and stupidity. Let’s take a quick look at the hypocrisy first.

Senator Feinstein has gone on record as stating that, if she could, she would confiscate every firearm in private hands in America: “If I could have gotten one more vote in the senate, it would been, ‘Mr. and Mrs. American, turn them all in.’” And yet, while she was still a supervisor in San Francisco, she herself had a coveted concealed carry permit and carried a handgun.

No hypocrisy in that. I’m responsible and trustworthy, but you, little insignificant you, are not.

“As a supervisor, I had no protection, so I got a gun permit and learned to shoot at the Police Academy. When I became mayor, I succeeded in passing a measure banning handguns in San Francisco…”

And certainly no hypocrisy in that statement, by golly.

Of course, one could argue that whatever training she received at the Police Academy was just enough to make her almost as much of a menace to society as getting elected, because she clearly didn’t learn the fundamental rules of gun safety, such as never, ever putting your finger on the trigger of a firearm until you are ready to shoot. Look at the photograph above. It does make you tremble to think about those law enforcement officers in the city by the bay.

Now let’s take a look at the stupidity.

Senator Feinstein’s “Assault Weapons Ban,” (and I won’t waste your time enumerating the fallacies and inaccuracies of her bill) was delayed when Senator John Coryn (R-Texas) tried to include a provision that would allow military veterans to purchase “assault weapons” the same way that retired law enforcement officers are allowed to. Here is Senator Feinstein’s verbatim response to the proposal:

“The problem with expanding this is that, you know, with the advent of PTSD, which I think is a new phenomenon as a product of the Iraq War, it’s not clear how the seller or transfer of a firearm covered by this bill would verify that an individual was a member or veteran and there was no impairment of that individual with respect to having a weapon like this.”

Try parsing that sentence. English we speak here very much. But let’s examine the content of her garblings. If you’ve read my memoir, An Accidental Cowboy, you know that I spent ten years dealing with the effects, both direct and corollary, of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, so this is something I feel qualified to comment on. PTSD is not merely the product of war. It can be caused by rape (which might have been prevented, had the victim been allowed to carry a firearm), by a non-fatal assault, a natural disaster, a car accident, virtually any traumatic experience which causes the victim to feel helpless. It can even be caused indirectly by, for example, the sudden death of a loved one, or witnessing a traumatic event. So while PTSD is certainly most commonly associated with war, it is not the exclusive provenance of man’s inhumanity to man.

But what really caught my eye and made my blood pressure go up into quadruple digits was the phrase, “…with the advent of PTSD, which I think is a new phenomenon as a product of the Iraq War…” I mean, how ignorant do you have to be to get elected as a public servant? It just so happens I am currently reading Son of the Morning Star, Evan S. Connell’s coruscating portrait of George Armstrong Custer and the battle of The Little Bighorn, and the evening before I stumbled across Senator Feinstein’s eloquent and graceful and oh so insightful thumbnail of PTSD, I read about Captain Thomas Weir, one of the very few survivors of that horrific day. This is Connell: “Less than six months after the battle he died. He was thirty-eight. His physician told Elizabeth” (Custer) “that when Weir arrived in New York he was depressed and nervous. He spent most of his time in one room, avoiding everybody. Toward the end he became so nervous that he was unable to swallow.”

“The advent of PTSD?” “A new phenomenon?” “A product of the Iraq War?” I think we can safely say that PTSD has been with us as long as war has.

Senator Feinstein continued: “I think we have to—if you’re going to do this, find a way that veterans who are incapacitated for one reason or another mentally, don’t have access to this kind of weapon.” Incapacitated?

Well, well, well. Ms. Feinstein, my dear Ms. Feinstein, wouldn’t it be nice to have at least some rudimentary grasp of issues before you pontificate on them? First of all, your implication is that PTSD is the exclusive provenance of veterans. Do you really think that police work is such a stress-free walk in the park that retired law enforcement officers, who are allowed to own what you inaccurately refer to as “assault weapons,” are invariably free from any of the residual effects of shooting and killing people, or being shot at, or just by seeing some of the unimaginable horrors that make up their daily work? And what makes you think PTSD is universally and invariably “incapacitating?” Was William Manchester, who suffered from PTSD and its corollary depression (a result of his service in World War Two, before PTSD existed, according to you) “incapacitated?” (You might want to read his brilliant account of his “incapacitation,” Goodbye Darkness.) Is your colleague, John McCain, “incapacitated?” How about British comedian-actor-writer Spike Milligan? He managed to accomplish quite a lot in spite of being “incapacitated.” My wife claims I am incapacitated every time I try to balance the checkbook, but leaving that overrated activity aside, I’ve managed to hang on without perpetrating any grotesque crimes. How about the countless thousands upon thousand of veterans who have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD who live quiet and productive lives and are at least as responsible as any idiot who poses in the senate with her finger on the trigger of a gun.

January 19^th, 2013, has been designated as “Gun Appreciation Day.” Uh, no, not by the federal government; by a coalition of groups that all support the second amendment of the U. S. Constitution. Some of these groups I belong to or support; some I have only heard of; some I’ve never heard of; some I have heard of, but they seem a little too far over the top—or to the right—for my taste. But what’s interesting about this is that it appears to be the first ever (that I’m aware of) attempt to show legitimate, quasi-mainstream (to the extent the internet can be considered mainstream) support for gun ownership. Which brings us to the crux of the issue.

Chris Dorsey, CEO and President of Orion Entertainment, an outdoor television production company, once told me that when he was in high school in Wisconsin he and his best friend used to ride their bikes to school during hunting season with their shotguns on the handlebars. At school, they would give the guns to the principal, who would lean them up in the corner of his office, and after school Chris and his friend would pheasant hunt their way home. That was only about thirty years ago, but it seems now like such an old-fashioned, long ago and far away thing for boys to do, Huck Finn drifting down the Mississippi on his raft. And yet it was in most of the country, until recently, just as much a normal, quintessential American activity as playing baseball, the kind of scene Norman Rockwell might have painted.

How did the gun, any kind of gun, become demonized? Why have so many Americans, primarily white, liberal, affluent, urban and suburban Americans, become so virulently afraid of guns?

Gun control of any kind is, by definition, racist. The vast majority of violent crime occurs in impoverished, inner-city areas. The vast majority of residents of impoverished inner-city neighborhoods are minorities, primarily black and Hispanic. Should those residents not be allowed to protect themselves? Are so many white, liberal, affluent, urban and suburban Americans really so racist that they consider minority lives snuffed out in ghettoes a small price to pay for their own safety?

Gun control is, by definition, sexist. Women are usually smaller and less able to defend themselves than men. Rape and sexual assault are becoming “more common throughout the world” (Source: Wikipedia, quoting a United Nations survey), with approximately one out of every six (or seven, depending on your source) American college women reporting a rape, yet nine out of ten rape victims never tell anyone what was done to them. Those are college women. I have no reason to believe the situation is better for poorer women unable to afford a college education. Do white, liberal, affluent, urban and suburban Americans care so little about their wives and daughters that they would put their own safety first?

And the ugliest truth of all is that gun control is, by definition, elitist. Most victims of every type of crime, violent or non-violent, are those people who are least able to protect themselves, physically or financially. Politicians and celebrities and the wealthy or well-connected can afford armed bodyguards; they and the affluent can afford to live in neighborhoods with low rates of crime; they can afford to live in homes with alarm systems. Are white, liberal, affluent, urban and suburban Americans so arrogant and callous as to believe they are the only ones who deserve to be protected?

Ever since the first ape whacked another ape over the head with a bone and got more of the berries to eat, man the tool-using animal, has always been armed. It was only toward the end of the industrial revolution, when lifestyles and living patterns throughout most of the world were changed by industry, and more people became more affluent, that for the first time in history a man would or could go out without an armed retinue to protect him, or, if he were less wealthy, with a sword or a pistol on his belt to do the protecting himself. Is there any white, liberal, affluent, urban or suburban person out there so naïve as to believe that countless hundreds of thousands of years of evolution can be undone in a handful of generations? Or, more ridiculously, by the scribbling of a presidential pen? Focusing on the gun as a casual agent is completely inexplicable. If you follow that logic, the next time you go to a concert, wait until Yo Yo Ma leaves the stage and then applaud his cello.

Now, according to columnist Philip Rucker, writing for the Washington Post, “…the White House is working with its allies on a well-financed campaign in Washington and around the country to shift public opinion toward stricter gun laws and provide political cover to lawmakers who end up voting for an assault-weapons ban or other restrictions on firearms.” Is the current administration so elitist as to believe they are the only ones who deserve to be able to protect themselves? Are they so naïve that they really believe they can pass more laws to make crime more illegal? Are their own careers more important to them than reality?

I posted a blog a while back in response to someone’s criticism of me for making my living, in part, by testing firearms. In retrospect, that was only a half-honest response, because in the same batch of emails was one from a person who expressed interest in reading some of my gun writing. At the time, I sort of dismissed the writer of that second email as just another loosely hinged right-wing extremist loony in a tinfoil hat, just like me, but then I got another request to read what I had to say about guns. So, with that in mind…

Astute and observant visitors to this web site will already have noticed that the “Short Stories” tab has been changed to the “Other Writings” tab. Since profiles of my erstwhile co-star Gerald McRaney or bullfighter Rob Smets, or—for that matter—a profile of a firearm, hardly qualify as short stories, I felt it better to expand the meaning and possibilities of the title.

I’ll start with something out of the ordinary.

Cowboss

In cattle country you learn that it is not unusual for a cowboy to drive—or ride a horse—many miles out of his way to talk to you face-to-face rather than use the telephone, so I wasn’t surprised to see a beat-up truck with an even more dilapidated stock trailer drive up the lane toward my house. It was late evening, all coral and turquoise, the last day of quail season. Normally, I would still have been out somewhere with my goofy Pudelpointer, but I had just had my shoulder rebuilt and couldn’t lift a shotgun, and my old dog was so arthritic that he was almost as useless as his owner, so I was at my desk, trying to make the best of a bad situation.

I didn’t recognize the truck or trailer. When they stopped in front of the house I could see two horses silhouetted, one still saddled, both drooping with exhaustion. When the driver got out all I could really identify was a mountain of man, but that only narrowed it down to half a dozen possibilities. He had a gun case in one hand.

What happened next is absolutely true, but I have changed all names, all identifying characteristics, numbers, provenances, everything that might give away the cowboy’s identity. This is at his request, and I don’t question his motives.

I shall call him Joe. I’ve known him for several years and I once almost bought a horse from him. He has a reputation in our neck of the woods as being one of the best all-round cowboys there is: good horseman, good cattleman, good ranch manager, good steward of the land he is responsible for, honest, and bull-tough. You wouldn’t want to be rude to his wife or daughter.

He limped into the house. Like all cowboys, he has had his share of wrecks, but he looked even more crippled up than usual. He refused anything to drink, and chatted with my wife for a moment, and when I commented on his looking especially tired and busted-up he grinned.

“Yeah, we were gathering out on _________’s place and I knew it wouldn’t take too long so I brought my shotgun along, got a last limit of quail. I’m getting a little old and fat to be hauling my carcass up and down these hills without a horse under me. But that’s what I wanted to see you about. __________ said I should show you this gun, said you know a lot about guns.”

“Joe, I don’t know a lot about anything and the older I get the less I know about everything, but I’m happy to do whatever I can for you.”

We went into my office and he laid the case across the arms of a chair and sat in another.

He said, “Let me tell you first how I got this. Back when I was riding for the…” he named a ranch about two hours away “…there was this old boy owned a small piece of land that bordered the ranch. He was a retired college professor, no cowboy or anything like that, so when some cows busted through the fence one Sunday, I went over and got them out of his tomatoes, fixed the fence and all, and this old boy and I got to talking. Make a long story short, we kind of got to be pretty good friends. I did a couple favors for him over the years, went along and held his hand once or twice when he had to get his grandson out of jail, a few other things. And that’s how I come to have this. See, the professor’s son died a while back and the only kin the old boy had was the grandson and he’s about as worthless as man can be and still be breathing. Drugs and stealing and all like that. Well, the professor come down with some lung trouble and he knew he was on his way out, so he called me last year, said the damned grandson was going to get everything, but the professor didn’t want him to have this shotgun. Wanted me to have it, on account of our being friends and all. Said it had been made special for his daddy a long time back and was pretty valuable. And now _________ says he thinks it’s valuable, told me to come see you, find out what it’s worth.”

I have been down this road many times. Everyone who has ever found an old firearm in Grandma’s attic is convinced he has a priceless treasure. It may happen, but not to me or anyone I know. The owner of the local tire shop in my town went to a garage sale where an elderly gent was selling two rifles and a shotgun. The tire dealer only wanted one of the rifles, but the old boy wouldn’t sell them separately; it was all or nothing. I happened to drop by to get my tires rotated a week or so later and it turned out the shotgun was a Parker VH, not in the best condition, but probably worth about twice what the tire dealer had paid for all three guns. That’s the closest I’ve ever personally come to treasure in the attic, and I had no reason to believe this would be any different.

But the human animal is by nature an optimist. PBS has done very well capitalizing on that fact with their Antiques Roadshow. Joe heaved himself up and unzipped the canvas case.

The value of a thing is dependent on many factors, but the quality of a thing is much easier to recognize and quantify. It has nothing to do with personal choices. You may not wish to hang a Rembrandt in your living room, but unless your IQ is smaller than your hat size you’ll recognize the quality of one regardless of whether it’s in pristine condition or in need of major restoration.

What I saw lying in that old-fashioned canvas slip-case was pure unadulterated quality. It was a sidelock over-and-under with double triggers, and I’m not a particular fan of over-and-unders, preferring side-by-sides, but it made no difference. The lines, the proportions, the elegance of the thing were overwhelming. The damn gun had charisma.

I moved the case to my desk and turned on the table lamp. Somehow, unlikely as it may seem, I had a pretty good idea what I was going to see. The top barrel was engraved, “Boss & Co., 13 Dover Street, Piccadilly, London, England.”

In case there is anyone unfamiliar with Boss shotguns, let me say that most of the truly knowledgeable and wealthy gun collectors I have ever met consider Boss to be the ne plus ultra of shotguns. Throughout its long career (dating back to 1773 or 1812, depending on how you look at it) the company has never built anything other than a ‘best’ gun, and never compromised their quality. Or their prices: the company itself proudly quotes no less a gun enthusiast than King George VI, who wasn’t exactly strapped for cash, but when asked if he had ever thought about ordering a Boss, he replied, “A Boss gun! A Boss gun! Bloody beautiful, but too bloody expensive!”

On my desk lay a gun too good for a king.

In four decades of mooning over high-end guns I couldn’t possibly afford, it was one of only two or three Boss shotguns I have ever laid eyes upon, and the first over-and-under. It was also the first time I have ever held one, and I began to appreciate the mystic that makes them so desired.

In addition to their reputation for the ultimate in quality and high price, Boss are famous for their over-and-under design, which is slimmer and shallower than any other. They achieve this by machining bites into the barrel face, allowing the bolts in the breech to enter the bites, eliminating any need for underlumps. The result is a low profile that allows the gun to be fitted with a straight grip and splinter fore-end that aligns the shooter’s hands as perfectly as a side-by-side. That design was created by John Robertson, who became a partner in Boss in 1891 and who eventually became sole owner. Robertson also created a unique ejector, and a single trigger design that became the subject of a lawsuit between Boss and Purdey.

This particular gun had twenty-eight inch barrels, delicate rose-and-scroll engraving, two Robertson patent numbers (for the fastening bolt and the ejector; if it had had a single trigger there would, presumably, have been a third Robertson patent number), multiple proofing numbers, and a gold oval with the initials of the man for whom it was originally made. The serial number placed the date of manufacture after World War One and before the Great Depression. (It actually placed the gun to a specific year, but I’m not eager to have Joe appear on my doorstep in a bad mood.) The gun showed the kind and degree of wear consistent with hard use and good care.

And that was it. I did some research for Joe, gave him what information I could, and then he drove off with his tired horses and his piece of perfection. I’ve asked him to consider adopting me, but I don’t think that plan is working so well.