The Culture of the Gun

It was back in 1953 I was, 36 and working in New Jersey for The Mine Mill & Smelter Workers union. The Unions number 1 Local at the Anaconda Copper Company in Butte Montana had been decertified. I was asked by the Union President if I would lead the campaign to get the Union re-certified. That meant a petition to the NLRB for a vote.

I was welcomed to Butte on a January night with 20 degrees below zero. Just kept mumbling, “what the hell am I doing here.” I wasn’t in Butte more than a week when I was introduced to Bob Ellenburgh. He was probably 60 a giant of a man who had spent his life working in the mines and was “dusted.” That meant he had Silicosis from the dust in the mines. The miners who saw me with “Big Bob” as he was known said “kid you got a hellova friend there. Listen carefully to what he tells you.”

In a few weeks of early organizing meetings Big Bob invited me to his home for a “family cooked dinner.” As we sat in the tiny living room of this A frame miners home he said, “son I.m gonna get you a couple things from the attic so you just set there and enjoy your drink.” He comes down with two guns. An old double barrel shotgun and a Smith and Wesson revolver. Big Bob chewed tobbaci. The house had conveniently placed old brass spittoons and he never ever missed a sssspit. He handed me the guns.

“Now son what I’m about to tell you is dam impotint.” (There was something very protective to being called “son.” I liked it.) “You gotta understand this town. Your from New York. People here think that’s a place of a bunch of whinin yellow belied sissys. If your gonna win this here election you’re gonna need to be one toughsonofbitch. That’s what these guns are gonna help you do.”

“What am I supposed to do with that shot gun?” “You keep that on the front seat of the car so everybody can see it. The hand piece you keep in the glove box. And now boy this is impotint. If anyone takes a shot at you. They don’t mean to kill ya. Just scare ya. You just shoot em back even if it’s up in the sky. This is who we are out here son. Everybody carries a gun.” The Montana Standard, company controlled newspaper, referred to me as, Double Barrel Schrank. Bob Ellenburgh just loved that.

That was my living experience of “the culture of the gun.” The people of Butte in 1953 were still living the myth of the “Wild West.” I believe the most telling cultural icon of the U.S. is “The Western Movie.” From Tom Mix, when I was a kid, to the High Noon showdown between good and evil Our movies regularly keep acting out this myth. That crazy man in Tucson has a twisted mind. He is probably hearing voices telling him that Gabreil Giffords is evil. So, it’s okay for him to go shoot her
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The people of Arizona live on the border. Many of them like to believe that all evil is coming from across that border. Not unlike Frontiersmen who lived near the Indians. They really got themselves to believe, “the only good Indian is a dead one.” “That’s why we gotta carry guns to church, bars, restaurants schools wherever cause we need to protect ourselves from those evil ones who want to destroy us.”

Oh, you think I’m exaggerating? Listen to the Governor of Arizona, “we may be down but we’re not out.” Now what does that mean? It means, “lurking out there in the dessert between us and the border there are these bad people who want to destroy our way of life.” Fact is they are coming here looking for work. Or, yes to sell cocaine as we are the biggest market for the stuff. The drug trade is destroying Mexico. Their only solution is LEGALIZATION.!

Our Country is presently suffering one of its regular bouts of powerlessness. I have seen this phenomena go up and down with the economy. We are now living in a period of economic despair, People who lost their jobs, others their homes, some both. They are justifiably angry. The tragedy is they don’t know where to place that anger. So, it ends up free floating. That crazy in Tucson may be a metaphor for the frustration felt by so many people by finding a convenient target for his anger. It is far easier to deal with one crazy nut than to take a hard look at what our culture produces.

It has been so frustrating for me to watch this growing anger being targeted at all the wrong places, Oh, how I long for those days back in the 1930s when we could get hundreds of thousands of unemployed marching on Washington to “make FDR” build the economic network that became, “The New Deal” America’s safety net. Instead we are slipping back to the long gone days of playing out once again, “The Cowboy and Indian Myth.” The mythic war between Good and Evil.

Our tragedy is the absence of any serious left to organize and channel the anger at the ones who have perpetrated the exploitation of our citizens and now, as always are rolling in dough. Obama doesn’t understand that. Why should he? He spent his life being nice. Look where it landed him. Maybe he is learning that being nice to Mitch Mconnell is not going to get him the time of day. God I sure hope so.

And yes, whatever happened to the Grady gun law? Obviously in Arizona any whacko can walk into a supergun gun market plunck down $500. and pick up a very efficient little killing machine called a Glock. No computer check no nothing. Easy as buying a package of Wrigley’s. Is there something wrong with this picture?