I have watched nearly episode of "The Rifleman" in its run on MeTV. In one episode, the old and tough town sheriff of Northfork has to be away for a short while. Our hero--Lucas McCain--usually the one Micah, the sheriff, calls upon to substitute is not available. So, he appoints a townperson with a great idea. No one will be allowed into Northfork unless he (it was always he in those days) gives up his gun. The bad guys, naturally, are delighted as they don't plan on giving up their guns, and well, the law, well, howdy, they don't follow that in the first place, and they mosey into town and manage to take over the sheriff's office. There 'taint anybody around, well until Lucas and his trusty rifle come back, to stop 'em. And then our temporary sheriff realizes---the good guys really can't be without their guns when bad guys are around. Which is, as it happens, always.
I will in some other entry discuss at length "The Rifleman" a show which is in my mind among the best of old TV, back in the days with television brought you morality tales. But for now, I offer the above story from the late 1950s as an entree into what I discovered this week.
I had the perhaps odd need (for a girl who's never been in one and has no idea how to shoot except at video games and that only maybe three or four times her whole life), to visit a gun store. I had an inquiry to make; I made it, and probably will never see the inside of one again. I like the idea of target shooting, but, for me personally, only with something that wouldn't actually hurt another human being, even accidentally.
The store was, shall we say, packed. And not just with big bruisers with tattoos, though there were a few I was sure had tats under their shirts. No, there were couples; there were white people, there were black people and hispanic people and even a few women, a couple of an upper range (in my area) of age that I'd think wouldn't be in the demographic.
If this is how it was in California, I can't imagine what it must have been like in the middle of the country. It is pretty clear that while the media and political America are insisting on the townspeople being without what they view as protection in a world of bad guys, the discussion is far from being concluded as far as the townspeople are concerned.
How do I feel on the subject? Well, as an extension of my previous entry, we wouldn't need guns if human beings were still walking in Paradise. There wouldn't be evil at all because we wouldn't have eaten from that tree which provided the knowledge of it. That ship has sure sailed.
In the world post the fall, there are still good people who protect other good people and each other, and some of those have guns, and in this imperfect world, well, it makes arguable sense. You've heard, as I have, it said that if someone who tried to help when the evil marauders wreaked their havoc had a gun, lesser havoc would have resulted. Oh, I know there are those who disagree. Disagreement used to be allowed.
I know I don't want to go back to the "Old West" when everybody carried a gun. On the other hand, I just wonder in my bones whether too much fumbling with the Second Amendment will only leave the bad guys in charge.
Like everything in discussion the marketplace of ideas, the whole subject is more complicated than the glossy pundits posit.
I wish that we hadn't fallen in the first place. I wish religion weren't a taboo subject. I wish a lot of things that just aren't. Well, until the real end times. The Mayans missed. I'm kind of glad. I really need the extra hours to prepare. In my faith, as in many others, we aer told that we will not know the day or the hour, but we are to be watchful, of ourselves, of our souls. It'll happen, but until then we'll debate as if we can change anything without God's help.
Meanwhile, back on "The Rifleman", Mark drinks tainted water after his father tells him not to and ends up with typhoid fever. A fancy doctor comes and saves him; Lucas is happy and Mark is (I assume) sorry he didn't listen to his father.
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