Thoughts From A Pinko Liberal Gun Owner.

In the days since the tragic school shooting in Newtown, CT, I've been roundly castigated for my opinions on gun control on various social media sites, and I've even pissed some people off enough that they haven't spoken to me since.  You see, I'm not a gun nut, an avid hunter, sportsman, police officer, or soldier.  What I am is a science nerd educated in forensics.  I'm also a gun owner.  I own two bolt action rifles passed to me from family members.  There's a lever action rifle that belonged to my great grandfather.  It's a beautiful machine, and my father and I are both quite proud of it.  While we're at it lets throw in two .22 revolvers and a 38 Special that belonged to my mom's father.  I have fired and have experience handling each of these weapons.  I've hunted my family's land with the rifles and passed many an hour sniping at bottles and cans with the handguns.  In the course of my forensics training I've had the chance to handle and fire many other types of weapons, both civilian and military issue.

I could name drop the guns I've fired, but that's not the point.  The point is that many people will dismiss a pro-regulation argument from a liberal, such as myself, by saying that "he's just another crackpot who doesn't know a damn thing about guns."  Well, as I've said, you'd be wrong in this instance.

I'm from the American West. I trace my ancestors through the early pioneers.  At the risk of sounding like a hipster, we practically invented gun toting rugged individualism.  I was raised around guns.  I was taught about guns, not to fear them, but to respect them.  I was schooled by my father and grandfathers in the proper use, maintenance, and safe handling of guns.  I don't like guns as a general rule, but I am comfortable around them.  I could use one to attempt to defend myself or to hunt if the need were to arise.

So some folks have been unhappy with my stance on banning or regulating both automatic and semi-automatic weapons.  Yes, I actually am aware that there is a difference.  Yes, I am aware that the news media does not always draw this distinction.  Let's not also forget that the term "auto" does not just refer to whether you have to keep pulling the trigger to keep firing rounds or not.  The term auto can also refer to any weapon that automatically chambers a round after one is fired.  This helps distinguish these weapons from revolvers or other kinds of action.

I am also quite satisfied that I don't need a semi-automatic or automatic weapon to either defend myself or to hunt.  Yes, I may only have six shots in my revolver, but if I need more than that to defend myself effectively, I'd be in pretty deep trouble anyway.  I also don't need a civilian version of a "military style" or "assault rifle" to defend myself or to hunt.  If the United States government and Military were to come for me for any reason, I'd need a hell of a lot more than a Bushmaster to stop them from laying their hands on me.  Let's dispense with that, because I'm not here to talk about Black Helicopters or conspiracy theories.

You may feel you need these weapons, as you are not me.  Now, I didn't particularly get any jollies out of firing the weapons the army recruiters brought to our forensics classes.  I didn't have a spontaneous orgasm from firing my professor's .45 or 9 mm.  If you do get jollies from these things, seek professional help, as this is not constructive behavior.

You may feel comfortable and safe with your semi autos in your home.  The Sig in your nightstand might make you feel better when you hit the sack.  Let me tell you this, a criminal who really wants to get you is odds on going to get you anyway.  These people wake up in the morning and think about how they are going to spread misery and violence the same way you and I get up in the morning and head to our jobs.  If someone enters your home and really wants to take care of you, chances are they're going to do it before you get the Sig out out of the drawer.  That's IF you keep it loaded, and IF you keep it unsecured, which would make you an irresponsible gun owner, particularly if you have children or mentally ill people around.

I am neither soldier or police officer, therefore I do not labor under the delusion that I would be able to effectively operate a firearm in a stressful, tactical situation anyway.  If you feel you can, and you are also not a soldier or a police officer, I think you're overestimating your abilities.  Having to shoot a moving target that is also shooting back at you with intent to kill you is a whole different scenario than popping off a few rounds at the range or shootin' some bottles with your buddies up at the cabin like I used to do.  Does it occasionally happen that a civilian takes down an armed individual with a personal weapon?  Sure it does, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.   In February 2007, a gunman killed 5 people and wounded 4 more at Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City.  Early reports indicated that a man with a concealed weapon kept him busy until police arrived.  Folks squealed with glee thinking that this was a modern day civilian do-gooder who was packing heat at the Spaghetti Factory.  It was an off duty Ogden Police officer.

I've seen the damage these weapons can do to a human body.  I've seen it firsthand.  Working with local CSI, I picked up pieces of a guy's brain from the backseat of a car after he was shot in the face with a 9mm.  It wasn't very pretty.  Can you imagine what a powerful, even semiautomatic weapon can do to the body of a 5 year old kid?  I can.  I've seen it, it's the most horrendous thing you could EVER imagine, and I don't know about you, but I can imagine a lot.  Again, it's a whole different ball game than admiring the hole you put in the target at the firing range.  It's not sport, it's very real, and it's very violent, as the parents of 20 children in Newtown can now attest to.  I'd suspect a few of those funerals with be closed casket services.

Besides, there will now be 20 sets of parents that have Christmas presents but no kids to open them them on Christmas morning.  But you still have your gun, and I'm sure that will go a long way in comforting them.

Does that sound crass of me?  Well I'm sorry.  Twenty kids and six adults are now dead, and the only thing you can think to do is fill up social media with paranoid posts about how you "ain't gonna let no one take your gun"?  To me, that's not only crass, but it's unconscionable.

After Aurora, I was like you.  I was of the opinion that "Now isn't the time to talk about the guns, we need to let people grieve.  Guess what?  We had a national election, and nobody talked about it.  Now more innocent blood stains the walls of our schools and shopping centers.  The time to talk is now, let's try to fix this before more people get hurt.

However, I'm a pragmatist.  I know that banning assault weapons or even semi autos isn't a magic cure.  They're out there, and they'll remain out there.  What we can do is stop the flow of more weapons into our streets and homes.  Not just our homes either.  Many of the weapons used by Mexican cartels are purchased in the United States with money made from Americans buying Marijuana, cocaine, meth, or whatever.  These guns are not available in Mexico, and are purchased in the USA and smuggled across the border.  Think I'm kidding?  Watch a couple of episodes of Nat Geo's series "Border Wars."

So I would say lets ban the further sale and manufacture of these weapons.  You have them already?  Keep them.  I'm not for the government going into homes and rounding up people's guns.  Please, secure them.  Be responsible, be aware of those around you and of those who might have access to your weapons, such as your mentally ill son.

Second, ban the sale of high capacity magazines.  You really don't need them.  Again, keep what you have and secure them.  However, an individual should not be able to just hop on the internet and buy thousands of bullets.  You want ammo for target shooting or hunting?  Go down to the store and buy it. Hell, they sell it in supermarkets here.  I would also set price controls on ammunition, making it a bit more expensive to buy enough bullets to kill a lot of folks.  Are you honestly going to tell me it's right to raise the price of soda because it'll make you fat but NOT raise the price of ammo?

One more thing I'd like to address while I'm ranting.  Let's dispense with this asinine moral equivalence that people are drawing between cars and guns.  If you're not smart enough to see the difference between a car and a gun, you're not qualified to use either one.  Period.  This is the worst kind of fallacy.  Yes, you can kill somebody with a car.  You know what?  I can kill someone with a pillow, with water, oxygen, or even a bag full of books.  That does NOT make them the moral equivalent of a gun, a weapon solely designed to inflict destruction on an object, animal, or individual.  Yes it's true that people use cars, pillows, and guns irresponsibly to the same effect, but to equate those items in that regard is insane.  Form follows function.  A gun is designed to inflict injury, a car is a mode of transportation.  Apples and oranges. 

While we're on the subject, I've pulled dead bodies out of wrecked cars too.  It was nasty, but nowhere NEAR as nasty as the guy who got his face blown off.

Besides, we actually regulate cars more than guns in this country.  To operate a car, you have to have a license.  That license must be renewed every few years, and you are required to carry liability insurance on a car.  Most states require cars to be taxed as property and inspected every year.  If I told you that you couldn't have a gun without a license of public record that had to be renewed, that you had to insure it, and that you had to present it to an agent of the state government to have it inspected every year, you'd freak out, but then you might be more justified in your silly comparison.

In regards to comparing an automatic or semi automatic gun to a car, and saying you really don't NEED a car that goes over 55, let me mention, in way of comparison, that you don't see people driving Formula One cars around on the street.  There is a reasonable limit with cars, and there should be reasonable limits on firearms.

I also had the unfortunate experience of nearly being shot once as well.  As a teenager I was sitting outside at the fireplace at my cabin eating lunch one day.  It's no more than ten yards from the house.  As I was sitting there, I heard and felt something whiz past my head.  A fraction of a second later the bark on the tree behind me exploded and a deer came running out of the brush, followed by a hunter with a rifle.  I was scared shitless and so was he, as he took off.  A ranger and a Sheriff's deputy came and pulled what was left of the bullet out of the tree, and said I was very lucky.  I was extremely close to becoming one of these "unfortunate incidents" and it has forever colored the way I feel about guns.

As you say, it's your right.  Remember though, times change.  Once upon a time people thought it was their "right" to own another human being as property.  This was just fine for nearly a hundred years under our constitution, and it changed.  Can't we all get together and come up with some common sense solutions that might make us all safer?  After all, yes, we need to update our mental health services, but it's still easier to get a gun that to get your insurance to pay for a shrink.

In the end, I'm not going to change anyone's mind.  I don't even really ask that you respect my opinion.  What I am saying is that contrary to popular belief, my opinion is NOT based in ignorance, and I will continue to express it, as is my "right."  If I lose friends and family over it, then I'm dreadfully sorry, but I really think it's time we addressed these issues as a country.

Finally, I'd like to express my gratitude for the men and women in law enforcement and our Armed Forces, who face down guns everyday to try and keep us all a little safer.  You will ALWAYS have my respect.

Book Thoughts: "Isaac's Storm," by Erik Larson

I love reading about hurricanes, and I love reading about the lives of fairly ordinary people who endure a lot. This book had both of those things. A great account of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, told not only through the thoughts of weather man Isaac Cline, but through the recorded experiences of others that survived as well.

First off, here's what you won't find here. You won't find a lengthy scientific discussion of the Galveston Hurricane. There's some of it, and Larson does talk a bit about what drives hurricanes and hurricane hazards, but this isn't really a science book or weather book.

Instead it's a very human account of a great catastrophe. It's an account not of famous people and what they thought of the event, but the accounts of everyday residents of Galveston Island. It talks about what they saw, thought, heard, and smelled.

Larson is probably one of the best descriptive writers I've had the privilege to read. His vocabulary and power to evoke an image is utterly astounding. As he writes about the city in the aftermath of the storm, he gives a description of what can only be described as the closest possible thing to hell on earth. Pyres of thousands of bodies that raged all over the island in the weeks after the storm. Think of the sights, the sounds, the smells. Larson portrays it all.

This is a great book for a weather fan, someone who's interested in the power of hurricanes, or someone that just likes a good story. Check it out, you won't be disappointed.

Book Thoughts: "True Grit," by Charles Portis

I'm amazed at how many people that I talk to didn't know True Grit was a novel. They just tend to think it's a classic John Wayne flick that got remade last year. Well, I haven't seen the John Wayne version since I was little kid on my granddad's farm (he had all the John Wayne movies), so I can't judge that.

I loved the novel though. I was curious, after seeing the new film version, to see if the dialogue and voice used in the movie was really written that way in the novel. It really is, and I love it. To me, Mattie's narrative voice is one of the most unique in literature, certainly in books I've read. She comes across as a child beyond her years in some regards, but immature as well, and her strong will gets her into trouble a couple of times in the novel.

The 2010 version of the film follows fairly closely to the line of the novel, though the Coen brothers certainly put their stamp on it. They made it a bit more complex by adding to the conflict between Rooster and LaBoeuf. In the book, it really doesn't go much beyond words bantered back and forth, but they escalate it in the movie quite a bit. It certainly doesn't hurt the story at all. Also, though the description seems a bit sparse at times, but there are some truly beautiful passages describing the American heartland, which adds another unique touch to a great story.

Give it a shot, and see the movie!

Book Thoughts: "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris

This really was a scary book.

Harris takes the case against religion to frightening levels. Where Dawkins and Hitchens may argue that being religious is foolish and imprudent, Harris argues that religion is downright dangerous. He makes a pretty compelling case. After all, religion tends to be our favorite reason to kill each other.

Harris chronicles the crimes of Christianity, and even points out that the Jewish faith isn't all that tolerant, but he perceives the main threat as coming from Islam, and that's a bit of a controversial idea for some liberal minded folks who think that Islam really is a religion of peace that's been hijacked by a few weirdos. He spends several pages just listing passages from the Koran that dictate either violence against, hatred, or at least dismissal of non-muslims. While it's true enough that the Bible is full of these passages as well, Harris draws a line here by saying Christianity has for the most part moved on from even paying attention to those passages, while a sizable proportion of the Muslim world fully believes in that theology. The real bad news is that these medieval minded folk are acquiring weapons that medieval Christians and the folks from the Inquisition couldn't have even dreamed of.

I marked this one down a star because of the last couple of chapters though. Harris begins to talk about Eastern Mysticism and meditation as perhaps a legitimate path to higher experiences, and he asserts that they can be viewed more empirically than organized religion. I might give him that, but the book itself seemed to just kind of diverge on a tangent. Perhaps I just needed to read it closer.

All in all, a very thought provoking read.

Book Thoughts: "The First World War," by John Keegan

I'm not really sure where to start with this book, it's just so immense. However, it's very readable, even for someone who doesn't have a great deal of background in military history, such as myself.

The task of trying to summarize the action of the First World War into one volume is huge, but Keegan manages it quite well. For a reader who is looking for a good basic overview of the action of the war, I'd say this book would be hard to beat. Keegan hits all the highlights and still manages to take time to discuss events in some of the external theaters of the war, such as Africa.

The first part of the book deals with the circumstances in Europe that lead to the outbreak of war, chiefly the competing colonial interests between Britain, France, and Germany. Keegan moves deftly through the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand into the opening moves of the war in 1914, as well as suggesting several instances where the crisis could have been averted had cooler heads prevailed. This part ends with the stalemate on the Western Front in 1914, and the Germans finally propping up the Austrians in the east.

The second third of the book largely deals with most of the major action on the Western Front, including Verdun and the Somme. Here, however, Keegan spends a lot of time on the Eastern Front, as well as the war in Africa and the Middle East. He also spends a good bit of time on the naval war in the North Sea, which I found to be highly interesting.

The final part of the book begins with a treatment of the Russian Revolution, the Russian Civil War, and the end of the war on the Eastern Front, with Russia ceasing to be a military force. From there, Keegan charts the end of events on Western Front, starting with the Third Battle of Ypres, going through the Allied offensive at Amiens and the German offensive "Micheal," which made territorial gains, but weakened the remnants of the German army that the territory was lost again, which fresh American troops coming in to help engage German units with tired, under-supplied, and horribly hungry troops. Finally, the book ends with the abdication of the Kaiser, the disintegration of the Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empires, and a discussion of the ways the Second World War came from the First.

Here's what you won't find in this book. You won't find a lot of discussion on individual soldier's lives in the trenches. Also, you won't find a ton of first hand accounts from the soldiers. There isn't really a discussion of the Treaty of Versailles, since the combat pretty much ended in November, 1918. Also, the book is written from a European perspective, so there isn't a ton of information about how and why America got into the war. This isn't a bad thing. Despite popular opinion here in the states, it all really isn't about us, and the biggest part of The Great War had little or nothing to do with the USA. All I'm saying is, if you're looking for a more in depth discussion of America's involvement, you won't get much of it here.

In the end, I thought the book did a fantastic job of covering such a broad subject in less than 500 pages. When you do that, you're not going to please everybody. The only criticism I would level would be that some of the narrative gets a little windy and long, particularly in the first third of the book. Still, I believe it would be hard to match Keegan's overview of the war as a whole.

Book Thoughts: "The Last Lieutenant," by John C. Shively

What a great book, and refreshing in a way. First off, I have no military experience and very little knowledge of such things outside of the Civil War, which I've read a ton about. World War II and the War in the Pacific are fairly recent interests of mine, and I'd really recommend this book for someone like me who is just starting or who wants to get a look at day to day life for a soldier in one of these island battles.

The book is an account of one man's experience on Iwo Jima. That man, Jim Craig was a platoon commander in the US Marine Corps. Craig and his platoon spent much of the first 27 days of the battle right in thick of things, ferreting out Japanese defensive positions well established in caves and underground. Indeed, of the 60 men under Lt. Craig's command on Iwo Jima, only 10 walked off the island with him. 20 of them had been killed and 30 had been wounded and evacuated. In fact over a third of the Marines killed in WWII died on Iwo Jima.

The story itself is presented as various accounts from Craig to his nephew, John Shively. Some are long, some are shorter, all of them have something to say about the overall battle and the life the Marines experienced during the "36 days of hell." The book is not an overview of the entire battle. It is not a military text or an evaluation of the tactics used in the battle. It very much is exactly what it claims to be, "A foxhole view of the epic battle for Iwo Jima." Anyone who is interested in the subject matter would be better for reading it.

Lt. Craig survived the battle and was awarded the Purple Heart. After rehabilitation in Maui, he participated in the US Occupation of Okinawa as an MP. He was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1946.

Book Thughts: "Fall of Giants," by Ken Follett

This was the first book of Ken Follett's that I've read, and I found it to be very enjoyable. His reputation for great historical research and detail is well deserved, and that is clearly the strong point of "Fall of Giants."

The book kicks off in 1911-1914, with a meeting of political minded folk at a dinner party for the king of England in Wales. From this meeting, strands go out into the story that cover five different families and their experiences during the World War I years. One family is a Welsh mining family, one is an English nobility, one an American high society family from Buffalo, one a German noble family, and the other a family of Russian workers.

Through the eyes of these characters we witness the dangerous lives of Welsh miners, inside looks at both the British and American governments during these critical years, the events that lead up to World War I, the Great War itself, the aftermath and horrific effects of the treaty of Versailles on the German people, and the Russian Revolution. It is an epic truly sweeping in it's scope.

First, the strong points. As I mentioned earlier, Follett's historical research and his ability to immerse the reader in time period is unmatched in anything I've read, and I've read a lot of historical fiction. The scenes are vivid and alive, from the royal halls of London, to the trenches in France, to the slums of Petrograd. The characters are also very vivid and believable. Follett makes you feel the emotion of love turned away, family betrayal, grief over war deaths, and the inflamed passions of revolution. His style in all of this is as smooth as silk.

Unfortunately, this smooth style makes the major weak point seem even weaker. I'd say the weak point is this: At times, Follett seems to fancy himself as an erotic romance writer. Generally speaking, when he tries, he doesn't pull it off, and the contrast between these horribly awkward scenes and the wonderful prose of the rest of the book is stark. These scenes are real clunkers, but thankfully most of them come near the beginning of the story. As it progresses and the characters themselves progress, the love scenes later in the story fit in much better.

In the end, the story is epic and well written. The action moves quickly, and it would be hard to notice that the book is nearly 1000 pages long. "Fall of Giants" is the first in a 3 book series and I can't wait until the next one comes out, according to Follett, it will cover World War II.