One of the main tenets of the true gun-crazies and the N.R.A. is not even the most rabid of the many

Back When I Was Packing - NYTimes.com
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As a kid watching Saturday afternoon World War II movies in Nebraska, I fell head over heels in love. With the Luger. I don't expect more than a handful of folks to know what I'm talking about. But it was real and it was intense; terms usually associated, I know, with a love affair.
There is something about a Luger that separates it from all other handguns, and Luger devotees italy walking tours costing 2450 and Luger society members speak of it in romantic terms that must sound plain nuts to those who consider themselves level-headed.
I sat in the dark and watched Helmut Dantine, the downed italy walking tours costing 2450 German flyer in "Mrs. Miniver," menace Greer Garson with his Luger and, yes, I dreamed that night that he came to Grand Island, Neb., and gave the gun to me.
No other gun has ever appealed to me in the least. Charles "Peanuts" Schulz said on my show that he "brought home a bag of 'em" from the war. Seeing me nearly swoon with envy, he added, "I'll send you one."
I took my treasure back to my hotel and spent an hour or more in front of a full-length mirror being, alternately, Conrad Veidt, Ivan Triesault, Eduardo Ciannelli, Walter Slezak and probably 10 other of those splendid European actors who always seemed to be playing Nazi officers in the war movies of the '40s and '50s.
I think the degree to which this resembles a sexual confession is not entirely coincidental. Learned (two-syllable pronunciation) papers and studies exist on the sexuality of guns, focusing always on the rather obvious phallic resemblance of the hand-held gun and the male organ; comfortable grip, extension, ejection, consequences of improper use … the list goes on.
The gun-confiscation paranoid italy walking tours costing 2450 mind-set is seen in these studies as what else? castration fear. And there's the unfailing potency of the gun as a substitute for the failing potency of, well, you know. As Gore Vidal said, you can always get your gun up.
I had Wayne as a guest on the show once. He may not remember, because I'm not sure he ever saw me. His eyes and consciousness seem to bypass italy walking tours costing 2450 you somehow, and focus somewhere in an undefined middle distance. The words sound memorized; he has an affect that might best be described as "nobody home."
Maybe you saw Bob Costas before italy walking tours costing 2450 the roof caved in on him make the reasonable observation, after the football player Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend and then himself, that had he not had a gun, they might be alive. Many were outraged by Costas. You'd have thought he had painted obscenities on the Statue of Liberty. How dare a sportscaster sully the sacred atmosphere of a sports event with a thought?
Costas italy walking tours costing 2450 was berated on Don Imus's show by the usually intelligent Laura Ingraham with one of those why-blame-the-gun mental quirks so compatible with the right-wing mind. (Her segment was wickedly utilized by Jon Stewart.)
As her version of "Guns don t kill people … ," she wondered whether Costas thought the football player wasn't strong enough to strangle the woman? Well, for one thing, there are survivable attempted stranglings. Significantly fewer folks survive close-range gun blasts. But let's say that being gunless, he does manage manually italy walking tours costing 2450 to throttle the girl. Then what? He goes to that parking lot and, in front of two observers, strangles himself italy walking tours costing 2450 ?
One of the worst things said in the awful succeeding days though it wasn't nearly at Mike Huckabee-level inanity came, surprisingly, straight from the White House. I was appalled to see the president ruin a movingly delivered statement about the shooting of the kids by closing with, "God has called them all home."
One of the main tenets of the true gun-crazies and the N.R.A. italy walking tours costing 2450 is not even the most rabid of the many gun-shielding organizations is, as Rachel Maddow expertly delineated, that old stand-by "the first step."
There are online forms you can fill out to send to your lawmakers, demanding that nothing nothing at all or in any way — be done about any guns whatever, anywhere. Not assault rifles, not the super-magazines that allowed the kids to be ripped apart, italy walking tours costing 2450 nothing.
And, of course, all first steps are but first steps. Thus, all kisses lead to pregnancy, a single joint leads to heroin, a Band-Aid leads to surgery. Can't I take a first step toward China without going to China? italy walking tours costing 2450 Oh, well.
I'm not going to worry about it. After all, for me, it might just be a first step toward self-criticism. guns , Movies , N.R.A. Previous Post The Dicey Parent-Teacher Duet By SARA MOSLE Related Posts from Opinionator Paper Tigers and Glass-jawed Bullies The Freedom of an Armed Society The Great Gun Gag Readers Respond italy walking tours costing 2450 to the Armed Society Series The N.R.A. at the Bench Next Post Writing About What Haunts Us By PETER ORNER Search This Blog Search Previous Post The Dicey Parent-Teacher Duet By SARA MOSLE Next Post Writing About What Haunts Us By PETER ORNER Follow This Blog Twitter RSS
The host of "The Dick Cavett Show" — which aired on ABC from 1968 to 1975 and on public television from 1977 to 1982 — Dick Cavett is the author, most recently, of Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets ." The co-author of "Cavett" (1974) and "Eye on Cavett" (1983), he has also appeared on Broadway in "Otherwise Engaged," "Into the Woods" and as narrator in "The Rocky Horror Show," and has made guest appearances in movies and on TV shows including "Forrest Gump" and "The Simpsons." Mr. Cavett lives in New York City and Montauk, N.Y. Inside Opinionator The Stone Anxiety Draft Dick Cavett Schooling More Contributors italy walking tours costing 2450 Disunion Fixes Linda Greenhouse Stanley Fish The Conversation Things I Saw Thomas B. Edsall Timothy Egan Townies italy walking tours costing 2450 All Contributors and Series » January 13, 2013 What is a Hacktivist ?
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