Wanting To Use A Gun

MY GRANDFATHER was born in 1888, became a lawyer, and became the city attorney for a mid sized midwestern town, the town in which I was born and raised, In 1920. He then went on to found his own law firm, specializing in tort law, a firm in which was father was eventually accepted as a full partner. Dad & granddad knew where the money was. No, they didn't chase ambulances. Rather, they represented insurance companies which were being beseiged with litigation from the ambulance chasers and their injured clients. Dad told me that one time, as the injured plaintiff sat in the witness stand wearing a neck brace, he walked back and forth across the courtroom, and noticed that the witnesss turned his neck, back and forth, to follow my father visually. Neat trick, dad. Note: if an adversarial lawyer ever asks you if you have discussed the case with anyone outside the courtroom, fear not. Its not illegal to talk. That question is the oldest lawering trick in the book, an attempt to frighten and intimidate the witness, and entrap for possible perjury. Another note: my dad lost track of the number of times an insurance executive approached him after a verdict, beaming: "They wanted half a million. You got us off with fifty grand. Nice work." Grandfather had an enormous collection of law books, a real law library, and a not inconsiderable collection of firearms, mostly hunting rifles. I remember them hanging on a gun rack in my dad's man cave when I was knee high to a grasshopper, as we say. My immediate ancestors were not "anti-gun", nor flaming liberal activists. Far from it. They were both second amendment Republicans... But, one day, over a beer (I became my dad's favorite drinking buddy when I turned eighteen) father told me that he misssed his father, who died in 1956, dearly, and that I, born in 1955, was bad unlucky to have never met him. But I did meet him: when I was an infant, he held me in his loving arms, and well, that'll have to do. My older sister claims to have a picture of us snuggling thus, which I cannot remember ever having seen, but, well, sis is Abraham Lincoln honest, so, I'll have to ask. He also told me that his fatehr said: "Put a gun in a man's hand, and the first thing he wants to do is use it". I am reminded of that bromide every time we the American people treat ourselves to yet another of our patented, serial mass murders, AK 47 style, which is about, oh, what, every day or so? Quick fact: when guns were banned in England and Australia, gun violence declined precipitously, never to return. Turns out that when potential killers, (which we all are), lack access to a firearm, they indeed do not merely substiute another weapon, like a ball bat, a fork, an ink pen, or cat litter box. What do they do? They kill not. Astonishing and undigestable though this doubtless seems to our conservative Christian gun loving comrades in arms, statistics do not lie. As baseball great Casey Stengal used to say: "You could look it up". We have still not decided whether we the American people prefer guns or children. As of now, the trend seems to be favoring guns.