Stay Small
My town, Pataskala, has a gun range. It is a popular place where folks can shoot, buy weapons, and socialize. Guns are a reason they get together, discussing, evaluating, and comparing. It’s become a very successful business here in town.
The range has been around for a few years, but this year they opened an outdoor shooting area. It’s two miles from my house, and I don’t really think we hear them on Sunday afternoons, though we occasionally hear shots. There’s enough farm fields and woods nearby, the sound may be coming from there. But there are folks who live much closer to the range, and one of them had the temerity to complain about the noise on Facebook.
The town rose en masse to defend the range. There were over eight hundred comments, with very few defending the complainant. And, unfortunately, many seemed to personally attack the person who spoke out against hearing gunshots half a mile away.
“…you’re not a man if you don’t own a gun”
That was one of the comments on the post. Here in Ohio, some young men in their twenties and thirties, walk around openly carrying pistols on their belts, even at kids birthday parties. During the Renaissance, nobles wore a “codpiece” as part of their apparel. The codpiece was an article of clothing worn over the groin of various shapes and sizes, implying, the size of the male equipment underneath. To some today, the openly carried pistol seems to serve that same purpose.
But to others it is a sign of the fear that permeates many in our time. Fear of the unknown: of crime in the city, usually associated with people “different” than them, and with the threat of “brown people” from the border, or as columnist Mike Barnacle puts it, “…fear of the other.” Many are afraid of “the other” who will come to hurt them or steal from them, and that “codpiece” on their belt is a visual demonstration of that fear.
Fear of the government coming to take something away: that’s why some claim to need military type weapons. That’s for some, but not all. Many want assault weapons not for protection or defense, but because they are fun to fire. And that’s another part of the problem: there is a distinction between fear that demands a loaded weapon always close at hand, and firing weapons for fun and socializing.
Perhaps the mass reaction wasn’t about the range, or the guns, but about the fear. We live in an era where fear is “purveyed;” sold on television, by politicians, and in our social media. The old newsroom saw, “if it bleeds, it leads,” has been around for a century, but today it seems even more prevalent. On the Fox News webpage this morning: murder in the Caribbean, bridge collapse, police kicked and kneed, eagles poisoned, Obama feels like mobster, Everest covered in bodies and trash, child abuser found hanged in cell, hospital drops newborn; that’s the scary and disturbing list of headlines.
We are being told to be afraid. And we are being told to “Stay Small;” to keep a low profile, not stand up, not put yourself “out” in the world. Maybe that started after 9-11, when we all worried about where the next terror attack might be. The caution still is apparent: metal detectors to go the hockey game or Broadway plays, lockdown drills in schools, armed guards in the malls and at the games. These are very real symbols of fear, symbols that keep people trapped in their familiar communities, afraid to “venture” into the city or the world.
The person complaining about noise at the gun range, wasn’t demanding that the Second Amendment be repealed. She wasn’t inviting a political discussion, nor was she asking for more than just a cessation of disturbing noise from a neighbor. But it tapped into a wellspring of fear in the community; and challenged a lot of folks at a very core level. It challenged the way they dealt with fear.
Don’t get in between people and their guns. They need to “Stay Small”: not allow themselves to become a target, nor get in unfamiliar places or positions. And if they have to go there, then bring a gun to balance the scales.
