THE PHALLOTOCRACY OF GUNS
The romance of guns in a phallotocracy seems to require willing “girls” to show how attractive a steel pipe/penis can be. Hence Boebert and her wall of assault firearms. Since firearms are only clever gizmos based on the explosiveness of gunpowder, it would be more honest to show a lot of the cartridges that supply the propulsion, the “balls” of the guns.
In fact, when I googled to find out more about “zip guns” that can be improvised from a bit of pipe attached to a chunk of wood, I read about a “marble gun” that shoots marbles by exploding alcohol. Directions on YouTube. Someone has already been killed. Authorities are clever to clamp down on ammunition, esp. the kinds designed for fast multiple bullets, and tax the “bulwarks” out of bullets.
When Bob Scriver began to make a little money, he bought historical guns like the Winchester .66, the fabled “Golden Boy” that is often displayed prominently in ’50’s cowboy movies. When he made a LOT of money, he bought a whole collection of guns which were part of the controversial sale of artifacts to Alberta Provincial Museum. They were not properly stored in dust proof cabinets but stood propped in a corner gathering dust. If I tried to dust them, they collapsed in all directions so I left them alone. In fact, everyone left them alone. Guns do not have much charisma for me.
The rifle that took pride of place, hanging on the fireplace, was made by S. Hawken. The monster that was nevertheless well-balanced and stable, meant for distance with a tripod and maybe a Venier sight. “The Hawken rifle is a muzzle-loading rifle built by the Hawken brothers that was used on the prairies and in the Rocky Mountains of the United States during the early frontier days. It has become synonymous with the “plains rifle”, the buffalo gun, and the fur trapper’s gun.”
This antique was handled but we had no cartridges that would fit nor any for the other old guns. It was muzzle-loaded, but we didn’t know how much powder to use without exploding the whole gun and maybe one’s hand.
Finally, the Hawken was displaced by a gun that a local border patrolman, a biology teacher and a rancher made from scratch. It was a handsome instrument with striped wood from some source as well as maybe the rifled barrel, and — I suppose — the flint part. The brass butt plate and trigger guard were cast on an improvised forge made from a barbecue and a hair dryer. When there wasn’t enough brass on hand, the border patrolman stole the top of a border marking picket.
This was the level of personal one-on-one involvement with Western guns, connected to the frontier, to early meat-hunting, and stored at hand for emergencies — like over the front door or in a scabbard attached to the saddle. Lewis and Clark were dependent on their rifles and killed to keep them.
Both my brothers were Marines, sharp-shooters with symbols for their uniforms. I’m sure they could disassemble their rifles and put them back together in minutes. I doubt Representive Boebert could do that even with a pistol. I’d like to see her shooting range scores.
I don’t own a gun. In the Sixties I had a singleshot .22 for meat-hunting gophers to feed the eagle and fox pets. I got good enough at that to qualify on the Multnomah County deputy range, which was part of being an animal control officer, but a colleague, a woman about the size of Rep. Boebert, could not even hold the rifle without resting the butt on top of her shoulder instead of against it. She was a pre-vet student who was highly skillful at calming and transporting animals. They gave her a special exemption.
Military symbolism has now captured gun thought, something like just after WWII when many households included a German luger as spoils of war. At our house was a generic pistol that my mother kept in the nightstand alongside her bed since my father was gone a lot. Later when we kids were still small and she was taking us down the valleys to San Francisco to pick up my father — in the wool business and commandeered to load ships — she stopped in Roseburg to visit family. Someone worried about her safety so she showed them that the pistol was in the glove box. We kids were very interested but never tried to open the glove box again. I never saw her shoot it.
Now gun symbolism has passed legitimate war and is a plot device on TV series for international crime and terrorism. Arms have become a mass commodity. We never hear about ammunition, training or maintenance. Young men crowded into the back of old mini-pickups flying gang flags never seem to worry about all that stuff. Vids never show anyone fixing flat tires, just vehicles in flames. It’s all about subversion on a nearly mythic level.
Likewise, war time sex has somehow escaped the reality of rape and become some kind of Big O for privileged warlords. Boebert doesn’t care about books, though she’s evidently near-sighted — she likes the idea that she’s sexy, though she doesn’t come up to the usual Repub standard of tall bosomy blonde.
In the Sixties in Browning on the Blackfeet Rez the notion that the government was registering all guns and would come to take them was pushed by the John Birch Society. Leftover thinking from WWII — fought in Europe, not here — was usually pushed by non-veterans who thought guns were the main source of power even in a democracy — not participation in governance or safety nets for the vulnerable. Guns were industrial merchandize — there were profits to be made. The more people thought they should hoard them, the more would be bought. The more guns were portrayed as sexy, the more would be bought. It’s a scam — a false equivalence like “penis cars”.
Actually sales for guns were sliding until the many Sand Wars and the private armies, derived via marketable training paid for by the US military. The meth drugs used in war by Germany (and probably us as well) are on the street now and maybe kill more people than guns do.
In foreign enemy places the predator drones — guided via satellite from some modest building in Indiana — kill whole families by surprise. I notice that school mass shooters kill dozens without anyone shooting back at them. Even in the streets with armed officers, it is the vulnerable unarmed who get killed. What fools we are to make democratic decisions as if we were in a TV series.
