I started hunting when I was 9 or 10 when my twin brother Roger and I sold illustrated greeting cards to get a new Daisy air rifle. Almost, Mom had to buy half of them because they were too expensive at a dollar a box and not many neighbors wanted to pay that much. We knew that a BB gun could, "Put your eye out!" So we were careful not to shoot it at one another.

We lived in the city but often got to our grandparents' and cousins' places in the country. Chipmunks and squirrels were common both in the city and the country, but a BB gun would not kill them. The only thing I shot was a few sparrows and blackbirds. In junior high school amongst some old-growth stumps in the fall, we used the BB gun to shoot many mice. Doing the local farmer a favor, we thought. Doing the local owls and foxes a disfavor, killing their winter food.

At 15, we went hunting deer with our father. I was carrying my grandfather's ancient octagon barrel Winchester that probably had killed many deer. He never mentioned it. But my other grandfather told me that he shot many deer, over 50, and they helped sustain his family during the Great Depression. The only deer that I saw that season was a single doe. Even though my father encouraged me, does were not legal, so I didn't shoot it. I didn't shoot that rifle at all. Not even for target practice. Ammunition was too expensive to waste.

About that time, while we were in Boy Scouts, we took NRA courses at the local armory for the National Guard. Courses in marksmanship, gun safety, and gun maintenance. For those courses we got merit badges. Our father had a Winchester lever action rifle (not the usual carbine) that he bought new about 1947. He was always meticulous about keeping it clean, waxed and oiled after using it and we followed suit. Just in our nature to keep everything we owned, usually only one for the two of us, clean, well oiled and in good working order to share.

While he never mentioned it, dad kept a sawed-off shotgun in our parents' closet that we found and showed to our cousins when they visited. I guess it was for protection. But our doors were always unlocked with everyone coming and going. I don't think the gun was ever loaded and I never saw my dad fire it. Firing that gun would have been dangerous because the barrel was so short, shot would spread very wide. But we were never threatened by anyone as far as I know. Although there were criminals and other bad people everywhere we lived.

Most criminals were well known in small communities. Not so in the middle sized industrial town we lived in during grade school in a changing community with people moving in and moving out. Some transient, just renting their houses. Some criminals. Our grandparents managed an old hotel on Main Street named quaintly, Hotel Delmonico. The FBI came often searching for wanted suspects that might be staying there.

On our 16th birthday, Roger and I received a Mossberg 16gauge bolt-action shotgun; a 12gauge slide action shotgun and a Stevens semi automatic 22. I took the Mossberg for my use. My brother took the 12gauge. We both used the Stevens for hunting squirrels, crows, pigeons, ducks and grouse. We ate everything we shot, even the pigeons.

During the period we hunted, we had three gun accidents, fortunately, without any injury. The first occurred when I shot at a ruffed grouse with my shotgun at about 100 yards and hit my cousin on his cap-covered right temple that left a red mark.

The second happened when we were walking on railroad tracks with cartridges in the chamber hunting and the first 12gauge shotgun my brother was carrying suddenly broke its wooden stock in half and fell downward, discharging just in front of his feet. The hardware store where dad bought the gun exchanged it for a better/safer one.

One evening while I was cleaning my shotgun, I accidentally almost discharged it in my bed. The shell I thought wasn't in the chamber when I let the bolt down slowly with a "click" had a slight indentation from the firing pin, but did not discharge and scare my mother downstairs half to death! Unreported gun accidents like we had probably happen all the time. I would guess they are much more common than anyone would expect, especially among young people like we were and inexperienced.

I was a dedicated hunter and hunted all the seasons, including bow and arrow deer hunting. Roger followed and joined me, but stopped hunting after I became paralyzed and graduating from college. I hunted, often alone in winter, right up until I was paralyzed in December 1963.

With my hands and arms atrophied, I could no longer hold and shoot a gun. I took up a 1939 Kodak bellows camera that my mother gave me. Very awkward to operate and move the film forward or change the film, but I was able to shoot pictures of wildlife with it. Missing so many because I was so slow or didn't have the camera handy. My film produced faded color and I had to get very close with that single lens.

It bothers me when people talk about "the good old days." During the time that I hunted many of my high school classmates not only were poachers, they often shot up objects for their target practice and enjoyment. Perhaps the rural mailbox or sign of someone they didn't like or know. Road signs, no trespassing signs, anything that suited their fancy.

Predators were considered bad for farmers and were killed without seasons. Roger and I were guilty of killing two fox kits with our cousin that we dug up from their den in the spring. I once shot at a great horned owl at a distance where my shotgun pellets probably didn't reach it before it flew away.

Farmers generally could hunt anything on their property whether it was in season or not. It was only hiring many game wardens and new hunting laws that change almost every year for the Department of Natural Resources in Wisconsin to change the free-for-all hunting prior to 1962 to the way it is now. Providing abundant game and strict seasons that most hunters respect.

While almost all farmers had guns and those of us in the small cities and towns who hunted had guns, gun collecting was not something that was practiced except by the very rich. That came later as people gained wealth for hobbies and collections.

In Chicago in those bad old days, I recall two people telling me what they had for household protection. One said they had a baseball bat by the bedside and the other told me, that while in college, he carried a large blade in his boot. But guns have always been purchased for protection. Most were never used and still are never used for that purpose.

Private gun purchase is the problem. Why would someone fear that burglars or robbers would enter their home and need to be repelled? I can name a few. You keep collections of cash, artwork, jewelry, gold, antiques or other valuables in your home and sometimes, brag about it. 

By having objects of value in your home and outwardly appearing to be wealthy, bad people are going to go "where the money is." If you do not give the appearance of being rich or bragging about it, your chances of being broken into and robbed are greatly diminished.

But having a gun, or guns in the home presents another problem. Because existing law does not require statistics on these matters. Not necessarily kept uniformly by communities and states, these statistics and their conclusions vary. Only three statistical conclusions have come to mind recently that I heard from reliable sources.

Gunshot wound is the number one cause of death for children. Between one and four, it is drowning in pools. The second statistic is the rise in guns being used in road rage incidents in the city of Houston area since the pandemic. Almost never heard of in the past. Also, there has been a substantial increase in domestic killing/suicides since the pandemic.

No one seems to be equating these statistical increases with the recently passed "open carry" law passed in the state of Texas just before these increases occurred. Basically, if I were still teaching college classes, a student could come into my class carrying a weapon. Based on how students often have personal crises and sometimes lash out at their professors for things as small as a grade or discovery of a plagiarized paper, I'm glad I don't stand up before large audiences anymore. A good reason for leaving expensive bricks and mortar for more distance learning.

But the elephant in the room is the proliferation of AR-15 type semi automatic and automatic rifles. These rifles were originally designed and made for the military, for the purpose of rapidly killing many enemy before the enemy kills the holder of the rifle.

There is no morally acceptable reason for using these rifles for hunting when a skilled hunter can kill cleanly most big game with one or two well-placed shots. Filling an animal with multiple shots is akin to spoiling the meat. And complete overkill.

But nearly every movie of an action nature these days contains a lone hero or heroes who manage to defeat evil by the flagrant use of assault type rifles that the enemy clearly can't shoot straight and the hero always does better with single shots than bursts of multiple projectiles that miss. And video games of all sorts with these assault rifles in the hands of the very young to VR play at vanquishing the virtual enemies in the game. Is it just harmless good fun?

Or is it? Are people who play these violent games conditioned to think of killing as something remote and clean like a military drone strike? I believe that scientists and psychologists are working hard on the problem to see if there's any correlation between using these games and the propensity to use similar weapons to carry out vendettas or even manifestoes.

I often hear the phrase, "Guns don't kill. People do." Once again, I haven't done a study, but I believe there is a direct correlation between the percentage of people in a population who have guns and the use of those guns for violent acts. Add the stress of a pandemic, and you end up with an epidemic of senseless killing of innocent people using weapons that were designed to kill lots of people in war. There is no reason that anyone would use these rifles for self-defense except the idea that more killing/maiming firepower is a better deterrent than a shotgun with rock salt instead of steel or lead pellets.

The few stories that I hear in the news of people who use guns to stop a break-in in the home generally involve the homeowner with a pistol. Quite often, the culprit was not armed, just a burglar. It is really disheartening to hear increasing news stories of children shot as result of road rage, drive-by shootings, and in the home, either by accident or by a family member because someone had a gun and decided to use it without concern where the bullets would strike.

Two recent examples on everyone's mind here in Texas come to mind. First, the Uvalde massacre that took the lives of 19 grade schoolers and 2 teachers. There were armed school guards on the scene that could have acted and prevented the whole thing from happening within three minutes in the parking lot had they acted. But they were either afraid or ordered not to act. I hope studies will prove that expensive armed guards or arming teachers is not the answer to dealing with body armor attackers with AR-15 rifles with multiple 30 round quick-change magazines. The ambusher always has the advantage of surprise over those ambushed.

In the second example, a hardened Mexican gang member, Gonzalo Artemio Lopez, serving two life sentences for murder and attempted murder, was being transferred in a cage, handcuffed, by a bus with a driver to another prison. Somehow, as yet to be determined, he got out of his handcuffs, the cage and killed the bus driver with a knife. After 20 days on the run, he came upon a ranch house near rural Centerville, Texas and somehow killed…

"Brothers Waylon Collins, 18, Carson Collins, 16, and Hudson Collins, 11, of Tomball, were killed, along with their cousin, 11-year-old Bryson Collins, and grandfather, 66-year-old Mark Collins. All five victims were shot and had stab wounds or sharp force injuries, cause of death records released this week show. ABC News, Jun 10, 2022."

Mark Collins was shot in the abdomen with a shotgun. Probably a gun he owned. Lopez probably targeted the ranch house at night because he knew that most ranch houses would have guns. The news has been quiet about where he got them, but when Lopez was stopped a day later in Mark Collins's truck, he opened fire on the police with an AR-15 type rifle and had a cache of guns and ammunition that I can assume came from the Collins's ranch house. Police killed him as some solace to the Collins family and to avoid a costly trial that these killings often lead to with lawyers getting rich and family members continuing their agony while the perpetrators are often out on bail and trials are delayed for years.

The new law of the land created by outrage of the people says nothing of guns. The military-industrial complex of munitions makers who support the NRA in its activities in politics through lobbying keep munitions flowing whether there is war or not. Money is what is stopping guns from not being controlled like deadly motor vehicles are, not the Second Amendment, misinterpreted by those who tout it.

The new law provides for an increase in age for background checks for guns to 21. Mental health measures that have never been funded well and probably won't be this time. And funds to "beef up" school defenses. As though teachers and students prefer an environment locked down and guarded heavily by armed, bored guards that will not be ready when surprised by an assailant. For those that want the good old days, go back to taking expensive guards out of schools and focus on high tech surveillance, silent and loud alarms and simple locks on doors. Not making schools into fortresses when teaching is moving towards distance learning anyway.

I'm asking anyone reading this article who knows of anyone who is angry enough to consult with others and conjure up plans to go out and kill others, to immediately notify the FBI online through their convenient forms. Where you will be allowed to be anonymous and you may save a mass killing from happening. Be the eyes and ears of authorities, not a vigilante.

I don't know why the Republican agenda is being controlled by the extreme right side of Republicans and more moderate Republicans are not coming forward. But we are at a stage in this century where we have problems coming from global warming and overcrowding populations that are far greater than having our country, the United States of America, focused on a long outdated document created in the latter part of the 18th century and not amended enough. These severe problems require action, not controversy.

Anyone with any worldview and a reasonable education can see what the real problems are and how we should immediately go about solving them quickly so that the greater problems can be addressed before we sink into world war and anarchy created by a minority of selfish individuals. Selfish people who don't represent the majority of the world's citizens. Ordinary people who just want friendship, peace and quiet and not being controlled by ideologies long proven inadequate and deadly.

Copyright 2022 © Ronald W. Hull

6/25/22