I am feeling déjà vu.   The scene keeps repeating itself.  Except in Highland Park, it appears that white people are grieving innocents struck down by gunfire.  The story has headlined the evening news for days now.  Not the “one and done” of such stories that keep happening on the west and south side of Chicago.  When wild, untamed, lethal violence destroys white folks, the uprising goes all the way to Washington, to the White House.

You’d think that we are living the Great American Story, palpably, viscerally, the trauma to bodies, to families, to towns when children, and citizens going about their lives die in the streets.  WTF.  It was Ok when this remained “just a story” — a feature of the imagination.  However, as a lived experience socially and psychologically it smashes to debris all that we had counted on.  Is it reasonable to stand curbside to enjoy a holiday parade in a town, unless the environs are under martial law, thoroughly under surveillance, police drones in the sky, security snipers on the roof tops, etc…  What civil environment ought one to consider safe?

This song came to mind yesterday.  It comes from my youth, the year 1962, when I was thirteen years old.  I’ve enjoyed the song innumerable times listening to the radio.  I shudder that I find the melody and the lyric so appealing.  It’s as if the story line is a feature of my DNA.  How can I forget all of those Westerns on television that were so popular when I was a kid.  I am referring to the many programs loved by the ad agencies who sold commercials for the cigarette companies.  Who can forget “the Marlboro man.”

There was Gun Smoke, Paladin, Bonanza, Wagon Train, The Rifleman, The Virginian, etc.  The story line was simple.  A manly-hero outdraws the evil “gunslinger.”  Peace and Order is restored, by a good guy with a gun.  You can already see the logic inscribed in this story line:  the remedy for a “bad guy” with a gun is a “good guy” with a gun.

There’s a flaw in this “argument,” a yawning defect large enough to drive a semi through.  The story is simply not true.  Never mind the details of the historical record of the development of this country, of how soon after settlement civilization was constructed.  By and large the job was not done with a colt 45.  My objection has to do with the inconceivability of the scenario, no matter how seductively presented.

• When using a handgun at a range, one quickly understands just how close one must  be to a target to improve the odds of scoring a direct hit, say ten to fifteen feet away.  Any further, it’s mostly luck.  Would improved skill, due to lots of practice help?  Some perhaps.  I just doubt the image of the dead eye gunslinger.
• Firing a medium to large caliber handgun is an adrenaline rush.  The body “knows” how lethal this machine is designed to be.  It boggles my mind to consider two sane individuals facing each other in the street, betting life on the speed and accident of a “quick draw.”  Sanity is adverse to peering at the barrel of a gun.  (History records most gun fatalities in the old West were a result of being shot in the back.)
• “Law and Order” a society regulated by rules, whether by local popular agreement or whether imposed by a central authority, the remedy to the wild, irrational outburst of rage and grievance of an individual with a gun — is affected by a greater authority with the will to extinguish the violence that threatens the social order.

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The question I come to is this.  Do we, a government for, by and of the people, have the will to put an end to this madness?  There’s only one way, outlaw the civilian possession of assault weapons.

And now for the song, that lie which we all like to believe about ourselves.

The Gene Pitney and the Jimmie Rodgers version of the song is noted for a solo violin that plays in the upper register. Both versions are noteworthy for the chorus, where a quick half-second strike on the tympani is heard, depicting the gun shots, which go: “The man who shot Liberty Valance, (bong) He shot Liberty Valance, (bong), He was the bravest of them all”.

The first verse describes the outlaw’s intimidating presence and ability with a gun, the second focuses on the man who comes to town prepared to defeat Valance with the law alone. Further along we learn how the law-book toting hero falls in love with a girl who, when he is forced to confront Valance, waits alone and prays, knowing that: “When two men go and face (or “fight”) each other, only one returns”.
The song was ranked No. 36 in the Western Writers of America’s list of the top 100 Western songs of all time, as compiled from a survey of its members. – wikipedia