"Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thought on the unthinking." John Meynard Keynes
What happened in 1957 couldn't happen today. Starkweather probably would've taken the fastest route, I-80, across the state, which would've been blocked off. He would've been tracked by media and police helicopters and vastly improved law enforcement methods from computers to GPS to nail-studded boards, to name only a few of the changes. But what happened 5 December 2007 out at Westroads happens all the time now, it seems.
The killer, Hawkins--and I am among those who would prefer not giving him a name nor any other kind of celebrity--wrote, "Now I'll be famous." Infamous is a light year from famous but celebrity of sorts, and heaven knows we've all kinds of negative examples of that. He also called his potential victims "peices [sic] of [expletive]," as the Internet quoted. They weren't, of course, as the newspaper's repeated photos and biographies emphasized. The store employees certainly weren't among the rich and privileged against whom he apparently was as resentful as Starkweather had been. He also had a much-improved weapon Starkweather would no doubt have made good use of. It was an assault rifle, capable of 650-800 rounds a minute, improved models already on the market. Our killer stole it from his step-father. If his step-father is like my nephew, he has several other guns and no possible excuse for an assault rifle other than macho moronic pleasure in the gun most likely to be seen in movies and TV series and used daily whether in video games or geopolitical or gang warfare.
My first experience with this monstrosity, the AK-47 assault rifle, was the slaughter of a young father out barbecuing on a fine, sunny day with a few friends, his two little daughters running around the front yard where he was. A relatively no-account drug deal produced a vengeful drive-by, the victim mistaken for a very similar-looking friend, who, coincidentally, happened to be there, which may have been the reason for the mistaken identity. The autopsy photos were so ghastly that I cringed when I read that's what Hawkins had used in Von Maur. As the young father, in his early 20s, tried to get his little daughters into the house upon the first firings, one shot hit him in the head and another in the leg lengthwise after he fell on the walk. Entrance wounds are always ugly, but these bullets create terrible, terrible damage on the way out. The whole back of his skull was gone, as was most of the leg below the knee. I will never forget that case.
Of course, we had too many other cases involving guns, so many that Judge Murphy and I were ardent opponents to the NRA nuts with their most powerful lobby in D.C. At one time I considered getting a bumper sticker, "NRA nuts should be shot," but that undoubtedly would've gotten me shot. But that's what happens when you suffer the excess of our favorite tool: the bar owner who did everything a robber demanded, still shot while lying on the floor, paralyzed for life in a wheelchair; the convenience store clerk who tearfully told the robber with the sawed-off shotgun she didn't know the combination to the safe and still had most of her face blown off, still deformed after several plastic surgeries, still terrified of the defendant as she testified. Naturally I am a wimp to my hunting family and relatives. My dad was an ardent hunter, but he never had anything but rifles and shotguns for shooting game, which went on our table, whether I disliked the gamy taste or not. My mother, on the other hand, hated guns, and I was a mama's boy, as I've freely admitted. Dad did not have the handguns, let alone the numbers of them, and assault rifles my brother-in-law and nephew own. You can guess the familial arguments. I have all the evidence on my side just from the hundreds of cases where we had to deal with the appalling results in the courtroom.
So I snarl when I hear that stupid "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." "It's in the Constitution." First of all, our founding forefathers could not possibly have envisioned the weaponry we have when they wrote, "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." I will not argue the National Guard implications nor states' rights. In the late 18th century they couldn't have, in their wildest dreams, envisioned automatic weapons, let alone airplanes, bombs, tanks, lasers, computers, all the other paraphernalia of modern warfare.
Secondly, I think everyone will agree that the U.S.--us--has always been the leader in technology since it got going and kept war outside its borders, once the Civil War had ended. I attribute our vast inventive creativity to the mixture of peoples making up our population since our revolution. We lead in the number of Nobel Prizes, and our industrial R & D made us the obvious superpower ready to take over after Europe and Asia suffered the destruction of World War II. Hang on. My argument depends on the gun as simply a tool. Just because its intent is killing does not make it less a tool. And we have always been marvelous at constantly improving our tools, tinkering with our favorite toys, like Tim in Home Improvement revving up his mowers and washing machines, like 1950s teenagers working on their cars, bigger and better crucial to our commercial consumerism. (With all the car ads besieging us, all those big ol' pickups kicking more than dust, understandably I laugh when we talk about ecoautos, green cars that run a whole 40 miles on one charge. As the world understands, we don't really care about being the world's leading polluter as long as we have our quality of life. And that doesn't include wimpy cars--or guns.)
So let's consider a list of All-American names, most surprisingly coming from New England. Smith & Wesson out of Springfield, Massachusetts, with .38s and Magnums among their many gun credits. Colt, who invented the revolver and the .45, in Hartford, Connecticut. The Henry becoming the Winchester, with repeating and Browning automatic rifles, out of New Haven, Connecticut. Not in New England but in Ilion, New York, Remington, who makes the most shotguns and rifles today. Other key American gun names: Sharps carbine (rifle), hence the sharpshooters. Gatling invented a primitive machine gun for the Civil War that he hoped would make war so horrible, his weapon would be a peacemaker. Maxim was the first automatic machine gun; add the Thompson submachine gun, hence Tommy gun. Granted, the AK-47 came from Russia and the Uzi from Israel, but we naturally have our versions now. Our presidential assassinations and others like Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King have been by guns. Most of our suicides are by guns. Allegedly, 30,000+ are killed annually by guns here. I was going to log all the gun crimes, killings, in the daily newspaper but decided it was futile. Guess who has the world's largest defense budget, the most arms manufacturers, and is the world's leading arms exporter. U.S.--us. With that technological knowhow and those names, who could possibly be surprised that, besides a Car Culture, we are pronouncedly a Gun Culture, our popular culture saturated with both. And both have been our gifts to the world, as the news announces daily.
The next time some idiot belligerently whines, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people," remind him that he would hardly be satisfied with a Daisy BB gun, the kind I wanted and finally got as a boy. He wouldn't even spit on an air gun that fired marshmallows or water or M&Ms. It's the firepower that counts, after all, just like it's the size of the engine that counts, just like it's the size of the dick that counts. (And apparently these guys don't realize guns are commonly considered phallic weapons, which is why I vulgarly included that last part. Vulgarity for the vulgar.)
Various sources have posed the question of whether we adopt airport security for our daily life or continue as we have been, when one of these mass shootings like ours occurs. Well, sorry, I take as much risk driving on Omaha streets as I do getting shot by some psycho for whom I have nothing but contempt. I do try to avoid areas where notably high disrespect for life exists, where gangs and other thugs prey on each other and strangers who don't know their areas. Other than that caution, given that we kill more by cars every year and nobody does anything about that, I don't expect us to do anything about this. This U.S.--us--is, after all, the Gun Capital of the World.
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