"do you take a gun out there?"

[mnaz]

People ask if I take a gun out here, you know, to shoot at glint. Probably a good idea. But if I took a gun it might alter the reaction equations beyond recognition. It's in the interest of science . . . Yet I might need a gun in the middle nowhere. Or somewhere. This is The West after all.

Not to imply that a shooting iron is, or was, a bad idea. How do you think those 1870s silver barons insured their haul with claim jumpers lurking at every turn? Not with paper or words, but hired toughs packing heat. Yes, gunfighters really did shoot it out on Main Street, even if it wasn't like in cheesy dime store novels. Usually guns were drawn before the fight, and the fighters aimed carefully. Sometimes it took several shots.

It is the history of this land, and I recognize that. In Pioche, Nevada forty people were gunned down in 1870-73 before even five died of natural causes, which begs the question, which is more "natural?" Personally I can't see it; a risk of shattered silence outweighs any other. I might need a gun some day, but I have to go with what brung me into this desert. The zone must be maintained. For now at least.

[stilltrucking]

you could always get a little gun and hang it around your neck.

got fun on the brain, not guns
altho i always wondered
if jesus hadda been shot insteada hung onna stick
would today's folks wear little pistols round their necks?
and fathers hand them down to sons
on birthdays and graduations, sayin...
"here boy, this'll keep you saved.
talk to this when you need to."

...and then i realize that yeah,
they already do.

Glorious Amok
The January 21 Knock Yer Socks Off Jam

[stilltrucking]

"Personally I can't see it; a risk of shattered silence outweighs any other. I might need a gun some day, but I have to go with what brung me into this desert. The zone must be maintained. For now at least"

Even Lew Welch took a rifle into the zone.
Not sure what is glint, but I will check it out

We watch so many westerns as kids, it seems like the naturalist thing to walk a round with guns on our hip. Just walking around everyday in town doing things going to the store, writing a letter, but always with a gun handy.
In Europe a couple hundred years ago it was normal everyday thing for men to walk around with a sword on their hip. But I never see pictures of European civilians d walking around town wearing guns on their hips in the nineteenth century. I guess they outgrew it.

I love guns, they fascinate me, so much power in them maybe that is why I never have more than a passing thought about getting one. I think a rifle is of a different order, but I am just a city slicker.
to me a weapon is anything handy, a brick, a two by four, a jagged piece of scrap metal

[stilltrucking]

Poppy, believing herself to be a bumblebee
returning to the hive, was knocked into a coma
while attempting to fly through a keyhole after
using glint.

Urban Dictionary

wow, you really are da bomb

[mnaz]

yeah, I picked a good word. I looked it up--- there are actually five definitions for "glint." I meant the second one-- "gleaming brightness."

yeah, guns aren't my thing. and even if they were, I don't think they'd fit the "trip" I was on ... hunter s thompson cursed the desert and wanted to shoot at lizards with his .38--- "drill the little fuckers." his reaction equations were different than mine ...

interesting, the history of pioche, nv. some notorious gunfighters passed through ....

[stilltrucking]

I grabbed onto a paranoid vision of the desert at night and stumbling on a party of glint crazed evil doers

Guns, power and fear
yes the new frontier in America, everybody is packing

[stilltrucking]

I used to read a lot of trash novels when I was working the graveyard shift in truck stop, there was one that stands out from the rest, God is a Gun, about the deserts out west and the borderlands. Desert was beautiful by day, but we preferred to run in the night cause those big diesels do run hot.

[creativesoul]

the local hunting and camping store sells quite a few guns- and there has been a few times when i have bought and sold guns- mostly old boyfriends claim you owe them something- and keep your gun- so the clint with a glint - works for me ahhhmaybe- a certain amount of paranoia is normal- but = fear and guns is over the top
if this were the wild west i could take the bitches braid in community like in the dream- or i could slap someone silly while sitting on his chest- i could behave like all the gunslingers i know- but i have been fortunate- i am a lonely girl with no gun- works everytime- BAM-SERIOUSLY- LOVE THE TRIGGERS- MAKE ME WRITE- VISITS WITH WRITERS THAT I LOVED THT LOVE ME-the fire fights me today
the fog has me feeling married
one of the joys
of facebook
is to look up the freaks you once thought were powerful and awesome- and see them on facebook- ugly as ever-yeah good think i am not packing-really-

[mnaz]

one time me and three other guys bought a pile of ammo and went out to shoot beer cans in the sagebrush. it had been a long, partying weekend, with the rodeo and all .... sue said, "there's four of ya goin', so four come back" .... we had a .38, a glock and another handgun, forget what, and a .22 rifle with a sight. i was going to take some pops too, POP POP POP POP BANG BANG, happiness ..... but i just kept thinking, this sagebrush vista would be so much better IF THEY WOULD JUST STOP SHOOTING THEM GODDAMN SHOOTIN" IRONS !

that was a great weekend ...

[mtmynd]

I had no problem lining up the gun's sight with the 'nipple' at the end of the barrel... made the gun shoot pretty darned straight.

I was around 8-9 yrs old and was shooting my brother's pellet rifle, an old Japanese single shot pellet rifle. To this day, I have this memory of taking aim at a bird (house finch or sparrow..?) sitting on the phone line in our back yard. I lined up the sights and squeezed the trigger... pop! I see the bird flip off the line and it comes crashing down into the yard, it's feathers rapidly moving. I slowly approached the bird and saw it take it's last breath. It lay silently there on the worn, half-dead grass lifeless. I could have easily picked it up and tossed the lifeless carcass into the alley but I felt a pang of guilt... i had murdered this poor little bird who was just sitting on a phone line not disturbing anything or anybody.

I was a Sunday Catholic, but it was strong enough at that young age for me to choose to bury this bird, the one whose life I had taken only minutes before. And this is one of the powerful images in that memory - I looked for something to make a cross to put on my victim's grave and within moments I spotted a perfect stick, a small enough twig from a peach tree that I could easily fashion a crude cross, which I did.

It wasn't a deep grave at all, maybe a few inches or so, the ground being pretty hard and my fingers unable to dig a deep enough grave for "my sin to be laid to rest"... my Catholic guilt-laded remorse covered up the nearly stiff body and I put the pre-made cross into the nearly dug up earth at the head of the now-dead little bird. I even apologized to it's memory, the guilt so heavy for a young boy.

That was the first time I had intentionally killed anything other than a boatload of cockroaches, (which can be ubiquitous in our environment during the summer), and other annoying little pests, of course. But that bird, my first aimed, gun-shot killed animal was my last. So great was that singular event that even to this day I recall it as I wrote it.

[mnaz]

wow, quite a story, cec. yet that sense of loss, of overall diminishment, in killing for its own sake, is a circuit that seems to be missing too often in our "wiring" ...

[goldenmyst]

I can understand your aversion to guns. I haven't touched a gun since I was a kid and we were required to get a hunting license at our school. Good thing I never shot anything other than floating cans in the pond. Your must stay true to your zone. I am glad you didn't pack heat on your desolation roams. I like your writing free of that influence.

John