I was a thirteen-year-old fish out of water when my family moved to East Texas in the late ’70s. Boys kept round cans of Skoal in the back pocket of their Wranglers, spitting the brown gunk in Coke cans. Girls wore monstrous wrist corsages to Homecoming, first having to be seen at the football game in a correspondingly monstrous high school stadium, then alternating between slow dancing to Kenny Rogers and line dancing to the “Cotton-Eyed Joe” in the cleared-out school cafeteria. People talked plenty about Bible studies, ice cream socials and choir practices at any of the many Baptist churches that dotted the town. It’s true that the United States was a foreign country since I’d come from Canada, but the Lone Star State was proudly its own distinct entity. It would never be a fit for me.
To be clear, I gained plenty from my immersive experience that spanned eleven years, first in Longview, then in communities in and around Fort Worth and Dallas. I’d arrived as an introverted, sexually confused boy, having been raised in a reserved environment filled with rules about proper behavior. By the time I left for California, I had eighty names on my annual Christmas card list (a pre-Facebook social index) and I could be the life of the party after getting a caffeine buzz from free refills of iced tea.
Still, I was glad to leave many things behind: (1) weekly ranting or rhapsodizing over the Dallas Cowboys; (2) “love the sinner, hate the sin” views on being gay; and (3) the extended fall hunting season when I’d pretend I couldn’t see deer carcasses fastened to car hoods and tossed in the beds of jacked-up pickup trucks.
Yeah, Texans love hunting. I’ve never gone. I don’t get it. I’m not ever going to get it. For so many reasons, the whole thing is repulsive to me. I can enjoy a weekend in the woods, talking with friends, photographing nature and appreciating animal sightings. It’s called hiking. One of the maxims of hiking is Leave No Trace. To me, that includes bullets and blood. I can take the toe blisters back with me.
The whole gun debate in the U.S. is so bonkers I’m going to set aside any further thoughts about hunting, deer heads on walls, bear-hide rugs and gamey venison stew. At some point in time—oh, maybe back in 1791 when the Second Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution—people needed to hunt for dinner. Oscar Mayer didn’t come around, after all, until nearly a century later. Arguably, they needed a well-regulated militia in 1791, too, for which the Second Amendment was written.
However, I continue to be perplexed by how Joe American living in Dallas or Miami or eighty miles outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming is connected to a well-regulated militia and, thus, in need of a gun or twenty.
I don’t understand why Joe American needs an AR-15 to shoot a wolf that’s salivating over a flock of sheep or to kill a black bear whose fur would look awful nice under a coffee table in the den.
I don’t know why an assault rifle is necessary to fend off a burglar or the Avon lady going door-to-door in the neighborhood. (Please, hon, don’t suggest a tired-looking Joe American could use a dab of eye cream or, heaven forbid, a touch of mascara. The dude keeps his guns loaded.)
I don’t get the mentality of fetching a gun along with the keys and wallet before heading to the hospital, church, the grocery store, movie theater, school, a museum or the mall. I realize some people will say packing heat is necessary in case someone starts firing an AR-15, but why can’t we talk about those AR-15s in the first place—their manufacture, their dissemination to individuals who see themselves as independent contractors in some well-regulated militia, their irretractable holiness in the Land of the Free?
Oh, Texas. Oh, America. WTF?
Here we are again, days after another mass shooting in Texas, this time in Allen, fifteen miles from where I last lived in the state. I have a friend who lives five miles away from the latest yellow-taped zone of human carnage.
I haven’t visited Texas since my niece’s wedding six years ago, but my parents and brother still live there, as do several friends from my days attending Texas Christian University. I remain connected through Facebook. I’m thankful that most of these people refrain from sharing political posts, but it stuns me how they are completely silent after each mass shooting, no matter how close to home one may be. Are they thinking and praying in private? Are they checking their jackets to make sure they’re armed before doing errands? Do they think a chance of getting blown to bits is just a cost of a freedom that includes unquestioning reverence to a 232-year-old amendment?
I’m certain members of my family and several of my Texas friends went to church on Sunday, as they always do. I’m certain they clasped their hands together tightly as the preacher led them through another round of thoughts and prayers. I even empathize with the preachers. How do they make their heartfelt comments sound fresh in light of how often they have to say them? How do they make their statements come off as less rote than “Our Father, who art in heaven…”?
I have nothing against thoughts and prayers. For anything. But, when it comes to lives lost and more lives in jeopardy, thoughts and prayers are, at best, a starting point, not an endpoint. While I lived in Texas, I taught alongside Catholic nuns, who prayed for so many things and then seemed to shrug, leaving everything else up to God. I found the practice maddeningly passive, a corollary to helplessness. If there is a God, I’d say He/She/They are awfully busy these days. They have a whole planet to tend to…people, animals, and all the changes happening to the land and the water that may not have been contemplated during creation. God’s doing what God does best: blessing people’s meals and listening to little Suzy’s nighttime wishes about passing her spelling test and dodging Melvin, the meanie.
God’s probably thinking, Dear God—oh, wait, that’s Me—I didn’t make this mess. And I’m not in the business of blessing guns.
God hasn’t stepped in to answer the thoughts and prayers that came after Columbine High School or Sandy Hook Elementary or Pulse nightclub in Orlando or the country music festival in Vegas or the gay bar in Colorado Springs or the church in Sutherland Springs, Texas or the Walmart in El Paso or the school in Uvalde, Texas or the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado or Parkland or Virginia Beach or Monterey Park or Buffalo or Boulder. Or, or, or.
Thoughts and prayers haven’t changed a thing.
I’m waiting for these people to wake up and realize it’s time for something more.
Thoughts and prayers AND ________.
Say something.
Do something.
Demand something.
Stop fretting over drag shows. You know that’s not where the danger lies.
It’s time. It’s PAST time.
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