May 4, 2013
56 of 65
Happiness (They Say) Is a Warm Gun
On my first or second day at the University of Colorado, before classes began, I met a girl named Teddy. I met quite a few people during that orientation week, but Teddy was memorable because she had long hair flowing down almost to her waist and because she told me she had spent the summer working as an acrobat in a European circus. Ohhh-kay, whatever. Then someone else began talking to me and she was gone.
A few weeks later, as I was sitting in a large lecture hall waiting for class to begin, a pleasant looking girl with short hair sat next to me and began talking as if we were friends. My face must have given me away as she paused and said, “You don’t remember me, do you? I’m Teddy.”
I asked, “What happened to your hair? The last time I saw you it was long.”
She told me she was wearing a wig when we met. “Wow,” I said, “it looked real.” She told me she had made it herself, using her own hair. Ohhh-kay.
I walked out with her when the class was over and asked how things had been going. She said, “I just finished a hearing before the University Disciplinary Committee.” I had not been aware there was such a thing.
“Why?” I asked.
She said it was because she was carrying a gun in her purse.
“Why?” I asked again.
She looked at me very seriously and said, “People are ratfinks, Louie.”
I had never given much thought to the issue of guns on campus before. At Arvada West High School, there had been rifles in half the trucks in the parking lot during hunting season. Now that the issue was squarely facing me, I felt a need to respond in some way, so I said, “Ohhh-kay.”
As I thought about it later, I concluded that guns had no place in educational institutions – too many possible problems.
Another place where guns can cause problems is in governmental facilities. I recall leaving a courtroom and walking down the hall on the third floor of the Denver City and County Building when a man wearing jail clothing ran from the door of another courtroom’s clerk’s office. As he reached the hall, he fell, then got back up and ran down a stairwell. I didn’t know what was happening, but felt I should have my hands free. I sat my files on a bench as I looked around to assess the situation.
At the end of the hall I saw several police officers with their guns drawn. I looked the other way down the hall and saw a man wearing a stocking cap and holding a gun. Between the police and the stocking cap was nothing but an empty hallway – and me.
I did not want to be there. I held my hands out to show they were empty as I walked very quickly toward the police. An officer pushed me around the corner just as I heard a shot echo loudly through the cavernous hallway.
A bit later I learned that the first man I saw, wearing the jail jump suit, had come to court for a hearing. The second man, the one with the gun, was his brother who had come to arrange an escape. The escapee had made it only to the first floor before he was apprehended. His brother ran down the same stairwell, but was able to get outside where he carjacked an SUV and drove off. He was arrested within an hour.
Looking back upon these incidents and applying deductive reasoning, I think that society was probably not endangered by the gun in Teddy’s purse. She was an acrobat cum wig maker cum college student and could be trusted. On the other hand, I felt endangered (for myself and my society) by the gun in the hand of the criminal.
Recently, the Colorado Legislature considered several gun control measures, some of which are now law. Among the reasons given by those opposing the legislation was our state’s long and commendable history of responsible gun ownership by both the government and private citizens. One has to wonder about Colorado’s history, though.
Even before statehood, on November 29, 1864, firearms were used by the Third Colorado Cavalry and First New Mexico Volunteers to kill more than 150 peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, mostly women and children, in the Sand Creek Massacre. The bodies were mutilated. The leader of the Colorado forces, a Methodist preacher and member of the executive board of the Colorado Seminary (the predecessor to the University of Denver and Iliff School of theology) named John Chivington, later became the first Grand Master of Masons in Colorado. All these things happened before my time, but I have read about them and studied them and they disgust me.
Nearly 50 years later, April 20, 1914, saw the Ludlow Massacre, in which the Colorado National Guard attacked a lawful encampment of striking mine workers and their families killing more than 20 people, mainly women and children. Most of those died in a large tent that was set afire, others were cut down by a machine gun as they tried to flee. The miners then took up arms and began guerilla raids against National Guard units, some of which lay down their arms and refused to fight. A total of nearly 200 people died in the violence. Again, I have no personal recollection of these events. I have read about them and listened to Woodie Guthrie’s song. I was appalled.
Fifty-five years later, to the day – April 20, 1999 – was the Columbine High School Massacre. Two students armed with guns and explosive devices murdered 12 other students and one teacher before taking their own lives. I was at my office that day in Georgetown, about 25 miles from Columbine. One of my co-workers was listening to the radio when the first reports were broadcast. Everyone stopped work and sat by the radio, horrified at what we were hearing. Classes were cancelled at our local schools. Those of us with children drove to school to pick them up as soon as we were allowed to do so.
A little more than seven years passed. On September 27, 2006, a man with a gun entered Platte Canyon High School and took six female students from an Honors English class as hostages. The hostages were sexually molested and one was murdered before the man killed himself. I was some 25 miles away in my office in Idaho Springs that day, and again followed the incident through reports on the radio and the internet. My children were in their 20s by then, but my co-worker had two daughters at the local high school. She took them away from school and brought them back to the office where we felt safe from the outside world.
On July 20, 2012, a man wearing a gas mask and a bullet proof vest, along with other protection, entered a crowded theater in Aurora, Colorado. He threw tear gas and fired multiple weapons into a crowd gathered for a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises. Twelve people were killed and 58 more wounded. Our daughter Suzanne and her husband had told us they might attend one of the many midnight showings of the movie. Though we knew they would not have gone to Aurora, my wife and I called them as soon as we heard the news the next morning. They were safe.
In addition to this history of “responsible” ownership, the gun control debate in the Legislature has had to consider among other things:
From our founding fathers, The Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution: Á 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.
From God, The Sixth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill.
From Teddy: People are ratfinks, Louie.
I know this will blow my chance for a contribution from the National Rifle Association if I would ever (God forbid) want to run for public office, but I am going to have to side with God on this issue.