Guns will do that

The bullets flashed by, within inches I’m guessing.

You couldn't see them, of course.  But I remember the sound. “Zinnng!”

Then another.

“Zinnng!”

I recall dropping low … knew in a quarter second that I was being shot at.  Inadvertently, sure, but bullets were whizzing by all the same.

Billy, a friend, had been chasing a rabbit with his gun.  The rabbit ran toward me; Billy shot multiple times and missed the creature.

A miracle that he missed me as well. 

This was my first hunting trip.  It would be my last. 

It started with an invitation by Billy (my age) and his brother Johnny (younger), neighbors up the street, to come with them to their family’s old farmhouse. It sat northeast of Jonesburg, Mo., a small town more than an hour’s drive along Interstate 70 west of St. Louis. 

I was 12 at the time.

Their dad and mom were in charge.  Dad ran a small store in Old Orchard, a retail area of my hometown Webster Groves, Mo., which is a St. Louis suburb.  Mom tended the kids at home, although with some paranoia.  On other weekends, we’d be in their basement playing. And every half hour she’d yell down the stairs: “Are you kids fooling with the electric?  Now don’t play with the electric!”

We never did.  Didn’t know how, really. 

Anyway, at their Jonesburg farmhouse – a kind of rough weekend retreat – we journeyed out the back door to be hunters.  Remarkably, mom didn’t seem overly concerned that us three youngsters were heading to the fields with fully loaded rifles.  No electric outside, I guess. 

I was hardly a novice with a gun.  Dad … my dad … taught me young how to shoot a .22 caliber rifle using the same rifle he was given when he was 7 years old. He and I shot targets by the old spring on my grandparents’ farm in Columbia, Mo.  The gun sits in my closet today.

Later, as a Boy Scout, I mastered the riflery program of the National Rifle Association, earning an NRA “Sharpshooter” designation. I still have the medal. Discipline and safety were everything on the firing range. We practiced on the lower level of St. Louis’s old Union Station, where the Union Station Police operated a range.

I’d also progressed to owning my own .22 caliber rifle. Basically a target gun. It, too, resides in my closet.

I was a pretty good shot at the range.  But here near Jonesburg, for the first time, I was going to test my abilities in the wild.

Johnny and I stepped out of the house and headed in a northerly direction, Billy went south.  It was near-winter, the air cold, the ground hard.

Billy’s gun also was a .22, but it included a five-round clip.  So he could click off the shots – “Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!” – with split-second tugs of the trigger. 

My gun was a single-round.  I could shoot once, but I’d have to reload each time.

It became clear quickly that Billy didn’t know the first thing about gun safety. I should have seen it coming.

Billy held his gun waist-high, like Chuck Connors in The Rifleman. As the rabbit ran between Johnny and me, Billy’s five bullets followed. They sang as they passed our ears  – high-pitched whines that lasted fractions of a second.

We fell to the ground, though we also realized quickly that Billy’s rifle was spent.

We stood up, a bit angry. Checking ourselves for holes … finding none … we turned on Billy with words best left unsaid here.

Billy was chagrined, although I think more for not plugging the rabbit than for almost plugging us.

By now it was my turn to be hunter.  The goal, still, was to bag a rabbit with my single-load rifle.  My first kill.

Johnny and I moved into the south field, where Billy had proved the rabbits were rich. And it wasn’t long before a hare jumped and ran across my view, from left to right.  I raised my rifle, quickly sighted, and pulled the trigger.

“Bang!”

Either the rabbit was nicked or I scared him into standing still.  Either way, he sat straight up, frozen.

I had to reload.  I grabbed a shell, pulled the lever to open the gun’s chamber, slipped in the bullet, pushed it home as quietly as possible. 

I took aim through my peep sight at the rabbit’s midsection – just like lining up a target at the range.  His ears remained perked, although I tried to ignore that part.

I wanted to hurry the shot; I vowed not to lose him … he might run at any second. But everything I’d been taught was that you slowly … pull … the … trigger ....

“Bang!!”

The rabbit tumbled in the air.  Not by its effort but by mine.  It was a Sam Peckinpah moment for the “Watership Down” crowd – slowly, it seemed, the rabbit flew head over heels.  I thought I could hear it cry. I’m sure it did.

And it landed atop the frozen ground, warm but dead.

I felt no satisfaction.  No glee.  No primal man-vs.-beast kind of celebration.

I shot Thumper with a .22 caliber rifle. I’m so brave.

It’s after that, I think, that my gun moved to the closet. I stored it there, but I had no use for it. Still don't. 

Yes, my gun and Dad's have a history – some lessons of their own.

Dad, I think, liked and respected the little .22 caliber rifle he received at 7 years old.  But that was a different time and place.  Dad shot by the spring and knocked cans off fence posts and heard the bangs echo off the nearby hills.  It was a kind of sport. It was part of growing up.

But that time seems past. It’s all become tainted. Even hunters and target shooters have turned political.  They argue that guns are the most important asset in America. Most suggest – they won’t say explicitly – that the only way to absolutely defend personal freedom is to threaten a gun’s deadly force.  And anybody who questions that is, well, un-American.

Sad.  Ludicrous.

It’s interesting to me that Egyptians today are laying a foundation for democracy with simple chants, joined hands and, at worst, rocks thrown.  This while an army with tanks, fighter jets and thousands of guns surrounds them … hesitant.

Who has the power?

On my day, the rabbit had little; I had the most. And I abused it.

Guns will do that.