In the ‘50s and ‘60s, every American boy had a cap pistol. It was a toy gun that actually fired something that smoked and smelled of sulfur. I still remember me and my cousin “shooting” my dad, who would then shout “You got me,” and collapse into a chair.
Our favorite TV shows were westerns. Even the more well-written ones weren’t exactly High Noon or John Ford or Anthony Mann. The formula was simple. Lawman vs. Badman. Cowboys vs. Indians. Have Gun, Will Travel.
In summer camp, there were only two activities I was any good at: swimming and riflery. One reason was that neither had any psyche-out trash-talking during the competitions, in the first case because your mouth was in the water, in the second because riflery was performed in total silence, and with ritualistic respect for the rules and procedures of picking up a potentially deadly weapon and shooting it.
For it was a National Rifle Association program, with a total emphasis on gun safety. The counselor slowly and with unnerving intensity described to us all the terrible things that could happen if we played with the guns, and laid out the rules and the series of commands—when to pick up the rifle, when to click on the safety— which, he swore, if we ever broke, if we ever deviated from by so much as a twitch, we would be banned from riflery for the rest of the summer. Orders to target-shoot were given step by step with great deliberateness and military precision. I loved the program, competed on the camp’s team, and got to Sharpshooter Bar 2 level.
Then one year that counselor was gone, replaced by a hoodlumish new guy who didn’t mind if we clipped toads we found in the forest to the target frames and shot them to pieces. My early introduction to the two sides of American gun culture.
It’s a culture that one must respect, like it or not, for it has its roots in the founding of American society: the shooting of game to survive, the need to protect the farm on the edge of the wilderness, the American Revolution. But that reliance on the gun could also be a profoundly destabilizing force. In the chaotic pre-Constitutional period of the Articles of the Confederation Shays Rebellion had shown the power of local groups arming themselves and rising up to at least stymie the central government, as did the Whiskey Rebellion later during George Washington’s presidency. It had to be on the Founders’ minds that those sorts of citizens had to be placated and their skills rendered utilizable to the new republic, especially given that the militarily superior British “redcoats” had been defeated by just those sorts of guerilla forces.
And so the Second Amendment states: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Right away as a proofreader I notice that unnecessary comma that seems to have the effect of putting those first three words on the sidelines. Perhaps the Founders should’ve spent a little more time on copy editing to connect those three words more strongly to that “security of a free State” phrase, because the devil has been in that detail all our lives. How do you square the initial precondition of a “well-regulated militia” with what the current NRA, very much in the spirit not of my first riflery counselor but the toad-shooter, defends as the individual’s unlimited right to own and wield any weapon of any kind in any way desired, and with no precondition of military service?
In June 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to strike down Washington DC’s tough gun laws. In what was viewed as a victory for the NRA, the Court ruled that Americans have an individual right to possess firearms, irrespective of membership in a militia, “for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” But here’s what Justice Antonin Scalia, beloved icon of conservatives everywhere, wrote in the majority opinion:
Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.1
So even Justice Scalia held out a role for regulation. In so doing, while also writing the opinion on the side of less regulation, he manifested a debate that’s been going on throughout American history. The NRA was originally established in 1871 in order to take that “well-regulated militia” part of the Second Amendment very seriously; its primary goal was improving American civilians’ marksmanship in preparation for war (but not black citizens, forbidden by several “black codes” down south from owning guns).
The ‘60s was the peak of the gun debate up to now. Following the assassinations of a beloved president, the greatest of all African American civil rights leaders, and the most promising presidential contender of 1968 who was also the slain president’s brother—all within five years—the nation was gripped by the sheer horror of it all, the despising of the rampant gun violence (which also included the near-assassinations of Andy Warhol and George Wallace), the desire to do anything to stop the madness of the bullet ballot. The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed for the purpose of “keeping firearms out of the hands of those not legally entitled to possess them because of age, criminal background, or incompetence.” The Act regulated imported guns, expanded gun-dealer licensing and record-keeping requirements, and placed specific limitations on the sale of handguns, the infamous “Mr. Saturday Night Special” of the Lynyrd Skynyrd song.
It was nowhere near as strong as the measures that could’ve been passed; particularly poignant in that regard is a videotape of the soon-to-be-assassinated Senator and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy arguing for stricter gun control and arguing against the wrong kind of person getting his hands on … a rifle.
Over the decades it seemed to take major consciousness-searing events to create any kind of gun control efforts in this country. Because we nearly lost President Reagan and his press secretary James Brady to an assassin’s bullets in 1981, we had, thirteen years later, the 1994 Brady Law and Assault Weapon Ban. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, still loathed by many gun dealers, imposed a five-day waiting period on the purchase of a handgun and required that local law enforcement agencies conduct background checks on purchasers of handguns. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 prohibited the sale, manufacture, importation, or possession of a number of specific types of assault weapons for a ten-year period.
But starting in the 1990s came a hardening of “Second Amendment” positions by the NRA and consolidation of their position as the group with a stranglehold on potential gun control legislation in the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Printz v. United States, declared the interim background check requirement of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act unconstitutional. At this point some compromises were possible; major American gun manufacturers voluntarily agreed to include child safety trigger devices on all new handguns, but in 1998 an amendment requiring that trigger lock mechanism to be included with every handgun sold in the United States was defeated in the Senate; they could only be optional.
The law prohibiting certain classes of assault weapons expired on September 13, 2004, after Congress failed to reauthorize it. In 2004 President Bush also signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act limiting the ability of victims of crimes in which guns were used to sue firearms manufacturers and dealers.
And this is pretty much the status quo despite all the horrific school and terrorist shootings since then. There can be no compromise even on universal background checks, closing gun show and online loopholes regarding the Brady laws, and fitting guns with “smart” controls so that only the legal owner can fire the gun. There can’t even be a nationwide ban on sales of ivory between states, which would help protect endangered elephants and also help curb ISIS’s lucrative trade in poached ivory, because the NRA claims such guidelines would be an attack on gun owners wishing to sell firearms that contain ornamental ivory, and also infringe on the rights of Americans to legally kill elephants for their tusks. That’s right, the NRA is anti-elephants and not particularly anti-ISIS; given how their opposition to banning sales of assault weapons facilitates terrorists’ acquisition of such weapons in America, as ISIS has boasted, that should come as no surprise.
The NRA has become one of the most feared and the most politically and financially powerful advocacy organizations in the United States. It’s unashamedly the lobby not just for gun-owners but gun-sellers. Its ideological position has hardened to the point where no compromise seems possible. But it didn’t get way through some sort of minority cabal support.
For as much as the ‘60s assassinations stimulated gun-control advocacy, other key ‘60s events spurred the backlash to that. In Cold Blood,2 Truman Capote’s great novelistic nonfiction work published in 1966, described the murders of four members of the Cutter family in the town of Holcomb, Kansas; after that there was no way any isolated farmhouse in that region would not arm itself as much as possible. And in countercultural California, the 1969 Manson murders pretty much chilled out any kind of figurative or literal “open door” policy of peace and love and increased private gun ownership among that blue-state population. In fact, things got so weird about guns in California that after the Black Panthers declared their right to openly carry firearms to the Sacramento state legislature, Governor Ronald Reagan briefly became an anti-open-carry gun control advocate.
And in a classic case of racist backlash and overreaction the actions of the Panthers and the riots in Watts, Newark, Detroit and other ghetto neighborhoods in the ‘60s sent white people rushing to gun stores. Firearms were a billion-dollar industry within which, until 1968, handguns, rifles, shotguns, and ammunition were commonly sold over-the-counter and through mail-order catalogs and magazines to just about any adult anywhere in the nation. And after the ‘60s urban riots the pitch was clear: one gun store advertised “Nigger Getters” and “This gun carries a nigger-back guarantee.”3,4 Meanwhile the growth of urban crime and the appeal of vigilantism espoused in any number of popular films through the late ‘60s and ‘70s (Dirty Harry, Death Wish) fostered a new gun culture that pitted itself against any kind of gun control.
At a time of worsening race relations and more polarized divisions between North and South and rural and urban areas (not to mention a Death Wish remake coming out), this is where we are today. A little understanding is needed on both sides. Gun owners in the south and the heartland who support the NRA unconditionally have to learn how intolerable the free movement of guns and assault weapons sales allowed in or near major cities can make life for that other half of the country so responsible for generating much of the revenue, the media, the sports, the entertainment, and the technological products that are a big part of their way of life. If southerners and heartlanders don’t give a damn about mass deaths of both adults and children north of the Mason-Dixon line, especially after Orlando and Parkland, they should consider not only that mass terrorist attacks with killing-machine weapons can also strike them in their cities, but also that opposition to gun regulations that northern cities need could have reverberations that could deeply vex the heartland, especially when it comes to states’ economies vulnerable to culture-issue-related boycotts.
But pro-gun-control advocates make a grave mistake attacking what they view as antediluvian opposition to gun control. First of all they call it by the euphemism “gun safety,” which is bullshit. Gun-owners know all about gun safety. The instructors who don’t make sure of safety can pay for it with their lives, as in the “Bullets and Burgers” shooting range incident a year or two ago, where one instructor was shot and killed accidentally by a girl not yet in her teens. What we’re talking about is gun control, and the people who oppose it don’t become any more placated when you don’t call it what it is.
Secondly, if you’ve been to the Midwest, the south, or Texas, as I have, and seen all that empty space around isolated houses (not to mention if you’ve read In Cold Blood) you know why they have those guns and are almost paranoid about the possibility of losing them. There’s still game to hunt and in the event of a home invasion, the first responders are far away. And once you’ve conceded that people should be able to have guns for hunting and self-defense, it’s logically impossible to deny them extra guns for fun and games, any more than in L.A., where you almost have to drive, you can tell wealthy people they can’t buy high-polluting older Porsches and other performance cars.
Perhaps it was especially in the ‘60s when we realized that the role of guns and the myths behind them were a burden and a paradox we accepted as Americans as surely as our counterculture musical heroes dressed simultaneously with native American “Indian” feathers and headbands along with cowboy hats and buckskin.
Still, given it has been estimated that US civilians own 270 million to 310 million firearms, and that 37% to 42% of the households in the country have at least one gun, what the hell has happened to that “well-regulated” part of the Second Amendment? The current uncompromising stance on gun regulation is influenced by anti-government “hard” and “alt” right forces who have believed, ever since the battles of extremists with the ATF in Ruby Ridge and Waco, that the government is out to confiscate all firearms. It’s a belief that was most ridiculously summed up in the Trump line that Hillary will take away their guns (her and what Emily’s List army, Mr. President?). But by protection of a “free State” the Founders meant our country, not the free “state” of mind of a gun-owner who hates and fears the country—especially given that individuals now possess arms that have the power of what the Founders would have considered the thunderbolt of Zeus or Satan’s hellfire.
Is no “well-regulating” compromise possible? Recall what Justice Scalia said about regulation. Just as you can impose regular smog checks and mandate higher fuel efficiency for most cars, you can mandate sales of “smart” guns that only the owner can fire (which is the only kind of regulation that might have stopped the Newtown shooter from using his mom’s guns to kill her and all those children). If you can’t legislate the licensing of guns, or at least handguns, as was tried in the wake of JFK’s assassination, you can certainly tighten Brady Bill and gun show loophole-related restrictions, and create faster and more thorough procedures in background checks (which might conceivably have stopped the hate-killer who murdered churchgoers in Charleston).
If you can’t forbid the sale of military grade assault weapons and ammo, why can’t you mandate that, in the spirit of the Second Amendment, they be registered with our “militia,” the National Guard, with record-keeping that might limit people accumulating terrorist-group-grade arsenals, and with strict laws and procedures to track those weapons potential resale and theft?
No of course you can’t, because of the NRA, right? But guess what? Back in the ‘60s, you could barely ship goods in and out of our waterfronts or have them moved by truck without dealing with the Cosa Nostra. People could smoke in hospital waiting rooms. Things can change, starting with perhaps that ivory ban to slow the killing of elephants and take some money from ISIS. There may yet be new leadership in the NRA, some reform, perhaps even an alternate group of gun owners formed to reflect what seems to be the will of the American majority on minimal gun regulation.
For some final wisdom on guns let’s turn to the ‘60s and one of the greatest of all American film directors, John Ford, the father of the American western.
Ford, among all his other achievements, basically created John Wayne’s position in the pantheon of American heroes in films like Stagecoach and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, but by the end of the ‘50s and the ‘60s he and (to his credit) Wayne were already enriching and subverting that persona. In what many consider one of Ford’s greatest films, The Searchers, a film that had an incredible influence on every filmmaker coming up in the ‘60s from George Lucas to Martin Scorsese and on films like Star Wars and Taxi Driver, Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a former Confederate soldier and outlaw looking across the West for a girl kidnapped by Indians, and a man who is darkly consumed by racism and a lust for revenge.
As Joseph McBride pointed out in his massive biography of Ford, “The Searchers subversively turns the concept of Western heroism inside out, showing the lone gunman who acts in the name of nascent civilization as a warped, destructive force.”5 It’s the film’s other less vengeful characters who bring the quest to a just and merciful conclusion, not Edwards; the best that can be said for him in the end is that, in one of American film’s great moments, he spares the young woman the death he’d been planning for her for having assimilated with the Comanches.
And in perhaps his last great film, 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford explores the idea that the West was the creation of both the gunman and the legislator, that both the civilizing and protective impulses were emblems of the American spirit; John Wayne’s calling Jimmy Stewart “pilgrim” is both mockery and an awareness that his quest to bring knowledge to the hinterlands links to one of the founding principles of the country. The wrath of the gunman must be contained, whether it pours out from a psychopathic villain like the very ambiguously named “Liberty” Valance, or flares up in a fit of rage from John Wayne’s Tom Doniphon when he burns down his own house after the loss of the woman he loves. But as the ending of the film so touchingly evokes, Doniphon’s heroic contribution can never be forgotten, even though publicly there will be a reaffirmation of the glory of the politician celebrated for killing Valance, not the revelation of the gunman, Doniphon, who, hiding in the shadows, actually pulled it off.
And that killing, however necessary, forever corrupts Stewart’s Ransom Stoddard’s political career and triumph with the burden of a lie. Doniphon secretly shot Valance, and conferred glory on Ranse Stoddard, from a dark alleyway, and that darkness will now capture Doniphon. As for Ranse Stoddard, whose whole narration has been an attempt to tell the truth about who shot Liberty Valance to the press, he receives the reply “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Stoddard’s false virtue, his false gunplay, despite all his efforts, will be lionized as before. The bond between Stoddard and Doniphon, privately affirmed by both of them during the film, will not be taught to the public.
There’s a balance here that needs to be recognized and respected. In this valedictory classic Ford shows us the kind of gunman who tamed the west, so lauded in our mythology and in his films, as worthy of that glory, but also a tragic figure, wedded to the kind of lawless violence he tamed, and needing, even at his best encouraging, the however compromised lawmaker to step ahead of him. But in our current legend and lie, the history and soul of the country is only the gunman, all the time.
One wonders what Ford, and even John Wayne, would’ve made of a culture where guns are fetishized, where lack of even reasonable gun regulation gives Tom Doniphon’s power to Nikolas Cruz, where open-carry laws are triumphing everywhere, where possession of mass-killing machines unimaginable to the old West and strictly controlled during military drills are considered the right of anyone over the age of fourteen who wants to shoot up his old school. The myth that any good guy with a gun can stop any bad guy with a gun lives on. And as we’ve known ever since the ‘60s, the fact of the heroism of the western gunman is in our history and his tragic legend is in the movies. It’s insanity that’s on the streets.
Footnotes
- District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008).
- Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (New York: Random House, 1966).
- “The Run on Guns: A Lethal National Problem,” Life Magazine, August 27, 1965, 59–65.
- Ibid., p. 60.
- Joseph McBride, Searching for John Ford: A Life (New York: St. Martin’s, 2003), p. 560.