The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Recalling a childhood shaped by guns
Since the Jamestown settlement in 1607, firearms have been weapons for killing both game and people. During my youth in the ’50s, they were very popular, with hunting wildlife appearing to be the dominant interest. Let me recall that time.
A gun-happy childhood
On fall Saturdays our suburban neighborhood sounded like a shooting range. It was hunting season, especially for pheasants, which Connecticut has been stocking since 1899. Hunters were all around us. One morning I was sitting on the lawn, and the town’s first selectman passed by toting a shotgun. “Stay close to the house, son,” he said gently. “You don’t want to get hurt.”
Guns’ pervasiveness made life exciting, and I longed to participate. I read about Boone, Carson and Crockett and their gun proficiency. Stoking my interest, a family friend told us that as a child he sat on Buffalo Bill’s lap and chatted with him during one of his Wild West tours. I was pumped, but until age 10, my mother wouldn’t let me have a gun. Then I had an operation and spent a week in the hospital.
Afterwards she relented and bought me a BB gun, and for a decade I used that pellet shooter and later a rifle for ranging across the neighborhood indiscriminately hunting wildlife.
An adult who lived across the street showed a similar ardor for killing. Below his house was a swamp filled with living things. When at home in warm weather, this man seemed to be constantly searching for something to shoot. If he saw anything large enough to arouse his interest — a muskrat, swan, blacksnake or Canada goose perhaps — he’d yell to his son, “Jimmy, get the gun.” Neighborhood children were often swimming in the nearby family pool, and so anticipation accelerated. To his wife’s relief, however, seldom if ever was he successful.
During one high school summer, at the age of several recent mass shooters, I’d walk along the road to and from my summer gardening job, casually carrying my trusty rifle. The only adult who ever mentioned guns was an elderly neighbor who telephoned, asking me to kill the squirrels raiding her bird feeder.
Soon afterward, I graduated and left the neighborhood. It was 1958, and what follows suggests contrasting outlooks on guns over two decades.
Aftermath
My life changed decisively. There were new realities — college, graduate school and a succession of jobs. These were absorbing experiences, and during those times I had little incentive to revive my childhood memories.
As the ’60s arrived, guns became more prominent and ominous. In 1963 John Kennedy was assassinated, and then five years later and two months apart, there were the shooting deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. In the middle ’60s, the Vietnam War heated up, with American casualties eventually totaling over 58,000 killed and about 75,000 seriously wounded. I found that these harsh realities significantly altered my feelings about guns — that they were no longer playthings.
Nowadays many Americans are also concerned. A recent survey found that almost threequarters of the national sample considered gun violence a very big or moderately big problem. Multiple millions are anxiously waiting to see if Congress finally enacts legislation that over time can significantly reduce the mass shootings plaguing the country.