Cold Dead Hands

I am old enough to remember the traditional design of lawn darts, those large avian projectiles you tossed in your yard, sort of like horseshoes, croquet, bocce, or the like.  They had three plastic fins and a weighted metal nose that was fairly blunt, but sharp enough to stick in the ground once you tossed them.  You would lob them underhanded towards a small plastic hoop, maybe a foot and a half in diameter, at some pre-determined distance.  Today we play washer toss in a similar fashion.

We were playing with the lawn darts one summer day in the front yard.  A friend was visiting, but I can’t remember who it actually was that tossed that fateful dart.  He swung his arm like a windmill and the dart flew high in the air, nearly directly up in a vertical line.  It arced away from us fortunately, but unfortunately not far enough away from Dad’s half-ton with the old style cap over the bed.  We used to travel in the back of it, but that’s a safety story for another time.

The dart stuck into the fibreglass cap, puncturing it and drawing the ire of my rightfully angry father who came out waving his arms.  It was the last time I remember ever playing with lawn darts.  Incidentally, they had been banned years earlier; ours were just left over from before the ban.

You see, my grandparents owned the lawn darts in question.  They also owned croquet sets and real iron horseshoes.  Were they either alive or had the physical capacity to do so, they would be playing washer toss today, no doubt.  Lawn games are lots of fun, low in cost, and easy for people of all ages to play without the risk of significant injury.

Except for lawn darts.

It turns out that several people had died from injuries sustained from these seemingly harmless toys.  My grandparents, as far as I know, never injured themselves or anyone else playing lawn darts.  It’s probably because they didn’t swing them around and launched them into the sky for them to come raining down on anyone within range.  Simple physics would tell you that any item of a certain weight would gain terminal velocity, making the impact so much harder.  With a semi-pointed tip, it isn’t hard to imagine someone dying from one.  The lawn darts industry horrified no doubt that kids died from their products, redesigned them to have a ball-shaped tip that would not penetrate someone’s skull if launched into the air.  You could, of course, still hurt someone, but the reasonable responsible use of them would be much safer.  Was it a perfect solution?  Of course not.  They could have been banned outright, and in a way, they were, since lawn darts aren’t particularly popular anymore.  Washer toss and bocce are just as fun and exponentially safer.

The truth is, I would be just fine if lawn darts were removed from the market altogether.  I like yard games, but there are lots of options I could choose if this product simply vanished.  Yes, someone could take a washer and beam me in the head with it.  Realistically though, I’m happier knowing that irresponsible or unsupervised kids won’t accidentally injure or kill someone with a product we don’t really need.

That same man who came out ranting and raving about a hole in his truck cap also happens to be a lifelong hunter and gun owner.  As a young man, Dad acquired his gunsmith license and ran a small gun repair business, the Lock, Stock and Barrel gun shop, out of a spare room in our home.  I grew up with a healthy respect for firearms.  My sisters and I grew up watching our Dad clean, repair, and refurbish guns of all shapes and sizes—of the long-barrel variety, but not handguns, that I can remember, at any rate.

I remember once some friends and I got into a water pistol fight in the recreation room downstairs, where Dad had his guns on display in a visible but secured gun rack.  He came downstairs infinitely angrier than the day we were playing lawn darts.  We were being too reckless in a room where he maintained firearms, even though they were locked, the ammunition stored in a separate place.  Any seemingly harmless horseplay was strictly forbidden, so seriously he took gun safety. 

When I was in my later teens, I took a hunter’s safety firearms course, and successfully passed, earning me the right to legally hold and use a firearm for hunting.  Never an enthusiastic hunter, I nevertheless was happy to have educated myself and taken proper training, since hunting was such an important part of my early life.  It’s better to educate yourself because all education is of course valuable.

During the course, I remember the instructor told us at the very beginning that if at any time, while handling a gun, the muzzle of the barrel found itself pointing at anyone, even by accident, we would fail the course instantly.  He made no apologies for being so strict; his reasoning was that if you accidentally point a gun at someone and it goes off, you get no second chance.  The target would likely die.  This made complete sense to me.  I remember nervously manipulating the gun, once even coming close to accidentally pointing it towards someone.  Luckily, I didn’t, and I have no fatalities on my record.

I have never kept a gun in my place of residence since I moved out from my parents’ house.  I don’t hunt anymore, and probably never will again.  I can’t see any reason why I would have to ever own a gun again.  If all hunting rifles were suddenly banned from this very moment, my life would be no worse for it, since I have no reason to miss them.  It’s as simple as that.  If you don’t need it, you shouldn’t miss it if it’s gone.  Calm down, hunting friends.  I am simply relating this to my own experience.

Now I know it isn’t that simple.  Hunting, at its core, is a respectful sport; I respect responsible hunters and always will.  If a hunter waves his barrel around haphazardly and jeopardies the lives of people around him or herself, that respect vanishes and the question needs to be raised as to whether or not that person should be allowed to have one.  After all, if you drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and you get caught, you can—and should—lose your privilege to drive a car.  I am a teacher; if a student shows me they can’t responsibly keep their cell phone in their pocket, they lose the right to keep one in my classroom.  This isn’t rocket science.  It’s common sense.

Still, as a society, we have to make hard decisions that sometimes contravene our fundamental rights.  Can you utter death threats even though you have the right to free speech?  Of course not.  Can you drive without wearing your seatbelt?  Unless you have a specific and approved reason not to do so, no.  Can you use illegal and dangerous street drugs?  Again, you can’t legally buy them, and if found in your possession, you could be charged. 

All of these because society simply can’t trust common sense.  Anyone with clarity of thought and the right education on the subject should know that if you inject heroin, you can only cause harm to yourself.  If you have half a brain, you know that seatbelts in fact save lives, even if it’s more comfortable and convenient not to clip the belt into its latch. 

If you have even a fraction of common sense, you can see that guns are designed to kill.  Whether or not it is a hunting rifle that shoots game or a handgun issued to police officers, the outcome is the same.  The target of the gun will face injury or mortality.  That is their purpose.  Guns were an improvement on the snare, spear or bow and arrow.  Guns were a technological upgrade to other projectile weapons, to work at maximum efficacy.  No soldier wants to wander onto a battlefield knowing their opponent has a better gun.  Everyone knows you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.

So I see what people mean when they say more guns in schools would help in the event a shooter arrives.  Theoretically, if I had proper training, I could use a sidearm for which I would hopefully be licensed and fully trained, safely locked in a box in my classroom, to defend my frightened students from some gunslinger skulking in the halls just waiting to see the whites of their eyes.  I would follow all protocol—lock my doors, cover the windows, line up my students along the wall out of sight of the doorway, and cock the hammer in the event some ravenous lunatic bursts through the door.  They would be dead in my sight, because my training would kick in and I wouldn’t hesitate under the pressure of the moment.  Without flinching, I would take down that son of a bitch, and my kids would cheer at my heroism.  And if there was more than one shooter, I would hopefully be armed by my employer with an AR-style rifle that could carry more rounds.  Hell, I might even be able to leave the room to hunt the bad guys down.  As I’m typing it, I imagine what saloon doors would look like in my classroom…

All of that is a bunch of hogwash.  I know myself.  In my own experience, I nearly lost my chance at a hunter’s license because I almost pointed the gun at someone.  I remember shooting my first duck—straight through the wooden duck decoy that drifted in front of it while I hesitated to pull the trigger.  The decoy burst with a cloud of smoke as it bobbed head-down, my quarry floating lifeless behind it.  Dad grimaced that day too.  Would I have been so lucky had I known the duck was also aiming back at me?

More guns equal less violence?  I can’t think of a statement as asinine as that.  Yes, people have to shoot them for them to work.  Yes, people have to throw lawn darts for them to hurt anyone.  But guess how many people have died since lawn darts were effectively banned?  You can figure it out.

Just like we can still play bocce, horseshoes, croquet, or washer toss responsibly, we can have guns for specific purposes.  Hunting is inherently safe when done properly.  Target shooting, paintball, biathlon—all of these are gun-based sports that use firearms that pose risks if not used properly, but are generally safe and fun.  However, I don’t see any logical reason why anyone has to own a handgun.  Protection?  That is a very romantic notion.  If you think you can defend yourself in your own home with a handgun from a home invader, please see my above description of me defending my classroom in a highly satirical, yet eerily plausible scenario.  If you try to tell me that you would have any better fortune, I call bullshit.  Unless you are a highly skilled and trained marksman, police officer, or assassin, you can’t guarantee an ideal outcome.  On top of that, you risk injury to innocents by simply keeping a gun in your home.  There are statistics that speak of the tragic consequences of misfiring and accidental shooting—but guess what?  These wouldn’t happen if the gun wasn’t there in the first place.

No one likes change.  We often cling to the romantic notion that things were better the way they used to be.  When our grandfathers kept loaded rifles under the bed for protection.  When we used to ride our bikes without helmets.  When seatbelts weren’t a thing.  When you used to drink out of the garden hose.  You’ve seen these memes online.

What if, just what if all of these weren’t safe in the first place, and we lucked out?  What if there were bacteria in that garden hose?  What if you fell off your bike and landed on your head? What if your little brother or sister found grandpa’s rifle?

What if the lawn dart killed someone you love?

Plain and simple, if you love your right to own guns more than human lives, you are delusional at best.  I can think of worse things to say, but I’ll leave it at that.

Charleton Heston, the famous actor and spokesperson for the National Rifle Association, a group I think should be seen as detrimental to society as any terrorist organization, once proclaimed that they would have to pry his gun from his ‘cold dead hands’.  I would ask Mr. Heston, is he implying that his hands would be cold and dead as a result of untimely death?  Like, from a gun, let’s say?  Is that not a little ironic?

I’m perfectly okay surrendering my lawn darts from my warm, living hands, personally.