My Browning and Gun Law is one of the 17 stories included in full in this book; that includes elements from this blog.

The Three Rs (Press Release)

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We all have opinions on gun laws although not all opinions are created equally.

In America gun law means thousands die every year for no reason other than opinions on gun law.

Frequently these are opinions from  those incapable of critical thought, whose opinionated vote is bought and sold by the NRA.  The extent to which these peoples vote is self-determined is negligible. They are as guided in their action as any of Pavlovs dogs. On both sides. Those who fight for ‘2nd amendment rights’ to keep firearm sales de regulated. And those who know little about either guns or laws and believe that Kids are dropping like flies to the spree killer AR-15  teenagers with personality deficit disorder.

Before I offer my opinion on gun law in the US I would like to declare my familiarity with the subject;  some 40 years of experience with guns and law, living in three different societies, all of which adapted their Gun laws during this passage of time.

The first is South Africa. Where everyone had a gun it seemed.

I grew up in South Africa. My father participated in WW2 as a Captain in the South African Army, volunteering in 1939. He was  active in North Africa and Italy, using guns to kill Germans. Stored in the safe in the house I grew up in he had a gun.  The same gun he carried as a side arm through the war. I don’t know if he shot any Germans with that particular side arm, an officers gun, but growing up I was fascinated by it.  Locked in the safe in the Bryanston house where one day I saw him putting it away and asked what it was.  My first experience of seeing a gun.  It was clear my father did not wish to introduce me to the gun at that time. My first gun lesson. Keep away from children.

When I learned where the safe key was hidden, every so often when no one was home, I would open the safe and take the gun out. In its original Green box. It had a cleaning kit in there, A little spiral barrel cleaning device, a small green bottle of oil and some cloths that smelled of gun.  It was a thing of beauty. Artistically. The color. Gun metal grey. The rounded edges. The story the weighty metal told my 8 year old imagination. Did that gun kill a pile of bad Nazi’s? Did it save my dads life at some critical moment?

This is the actual weapon.  A Browning 1910 9mm pistol. And is identical to the model class-warrior Gavrilo Princip used to kill the aristocrat Franz Ferdinand, starting World War one. A very famous gun. To collectors, a valuable addition.

I grew older. I was around 9 when  my uncle Leonidas gave me an air rifle. I spent hours firing away with pellets. At tin cans. And apricots suspended in the trees in the grove of our 3 acre garden. Marksmanship was the point. I enjoyed the discipline in the lessons of marksmanship. Breathing. Aiming. Getting heart rate to slow into oneness with the moment.  Steady pull on trigger. Fire. Exhale. What fun. What valuable development lessons in visualizing, movement and coordination.

We grew up in South Africa in the seventies, a time without TV or TV games. So firing guns provided a valuable entertainment opportunity  for young kids. I enjoyed shooting immensely.   Shooting guns is fun. Its exciting and it offers unique possibilities.

My friend Craig also had an airgun and we would go out shooting all manner of things. We shot at a passing  Putco bus from our concealed lair on the Witkoppen road.  On one occasion we decided to shoot a bird. A challenge, because of the distance and size.

I killed a bird. Hit it whilst perched high in a tree from 100 yards with a pellet gun. It fell to the ground. I experienced for the first time the kill thrill. My adrenaline thrill at the accurate hit lasted until I went over and picked up the still warm body of a bleeding dying sparrow. And in that moment I knew what I had not known when I sighted the bird and pulled the trigger.  I never shot another living thing after that.  A huge lesson that could not have been learned any better. Guns kill. Guns are a tool for killing. They enable the tremendous adrenaline rush of killing. Taking a life for pleasure.

After that seminal moment in my development as a human my interest in shooting disappeared. Even shooting tin cans with my pellet gun was soured.  Early in in high school, at 13, I was invited to shoot a .22 rifle by my school mate Jonathan Andrews whose father was a hunter and I kind of enjoyed that. But then I was invited to go ‘hunting’ and shoot a deer. I thought about what was being offered and that  put me off visiting the Andrews’ home again. That was the end of my  teenage shooting experience. My interest was the guitar. Not the gun.

 

………Continues in the book………..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 My Amazon Author page is here.

 

THE  story is included in full in this book.

The Three Rs (Press Release)

Order from AMAZON; Kindle and paperback.