A friend from Kentucky — I will call her Linda Sue — came to visit. She left Kentucky a long time ago, but she has not lost the Southern oral-telling gift. Her whole body goes into the telling, especially if there’s a lot of dialogue.
One particular story began with a question to her audience at the table: “Do you know anyone who owns a gun?”
The answers were: a sheriff, a chief of police, a New York City transit cop, a former soldier, a hunter, though hunters don’t count, apparently, and professionals who require guns for their work don’t count, either. She meant a gun for self-defense, as per her reading of the Second Amendment. So she reiterated her question, changing the words slightly: “Do you know an ordinary person who owns a gun?”
Everyone at the table said, no, not really. Then someone remembered that he has a cousin from Ohio who grew up on a farm and has a safely-locked-away gun collection. He’s what in America we call a “responsible” gun owner. Would it matter if we had more of those? Probably not.
There are more than 400-million guns in America. And though that number includes police and military, there are more guns free-floating in the United States than in any other country in the world — even trigger-happy countries, or countries at war. Remember the testimony of the Capitol Hill police officer who looked out at the rioters and saw a war zone. She hadn’t been trained for a war zone, she said.
So, here’s the thing. In Kentucky everyone owns a gun, Linda Sue continued, and I mean everyone, just ordinary everyday people. Even when they are in church, they take their guns. Anything could happen, right?
In church?
Even in church if the Good Lord strikes.
Not to mention if a shooter strikes, someone said.
She didn’t want to go there. Who does?
Doesn’t the preacher get everyone to check their guns at the door? I asked.
You must be kidding me, she said.
Did you go to church when you were a child? I asked.
Yes, but I lied about being born again. I wanted the preacher to leave me alone.
Now you live up North, gun-free and church-free? someone asked.
Yes, she said. But my mother told me on my last visit that I am surely going to hell. I told her, hell will be a better place than this gun-toting frontier Kentucky town where the fear of slave insurrections won’t quit and the white supremacists have been reborn.
Were I to give my friend from Kentucky the last word, she would surely say something about the House Select Committee’s hearings, and the clear and present evidence of the calculated hate-mongering all of us now have to endure.
It’s getting closer to the mid-term elections. The very least we can do is get out to vote, thus honoring all the brave and devoted election workers who have resigned, and those still working under threat.
Some victims of mass shootings in churches and synagogues:
June 22, 1980: Gene Gandy (age 50) • Mary Regina “Gina” Linam (7) • James Y. “Red” McDaniel (53) • Thelma Richardson (78) • Kenneth Truitt (49)
March 10, 1999: Vaniaro Jackson (19) • Carla Miller (25) • Shon Miller Jr. (2) • Mildred Vessel (53)
September 15, 1999: Kristi Kathleen Beckel (14) • Shawn Brown (23) • Sydney Rochelle Browning (36) • Joseph Daniel “Joey” Ennis (14) • Cassandra Fawn Griffin (14) • Susan Kimberly “Kim” Jones (23) • Justin Michael Stegner Ray (17)
March 12, 2005: Gloria Sue Critari (55) • Harold Diekmeier (74) • James Isaac Gregory (16) • Randy Lynn Gregory (51) • Gerald Anthony Miller (44) • Bart J. Oliver (15) • Richard Reeves (58)
August 28, 2005: James Wayne Armstrong (42) • Ernest Wesley Brown (61) • Holly Ann Love Brown (50) • Ceri Litterio (46)
May 21, 2006: Erica Bell (24) • Gloria Howard (72) • Leonard Howard (78) • Doloris McGrew (67) • Darlene Mills Selvage (47)
December 9, 2007: Philip Crouse (22) • Tiffany Johnson (25) • Rachel Elizabeth Works (16) • Stephanie Pauline Works (18)
August 5, 2012: Satwant Singh Kaleka (65) • Paramjit Kaur (41) • Prakash Singh (39) • Ranjit Singh (49) • Sita Singh (41) • Suveg Singh (84)
June 17, 2015: Sharonda Coleman-Singleton (45) • Depayne Middleton-Doctor (49) • Cynthia Hurd (54) • Susie Jackson (87) • Ethel Lance (70) • Clementa Carlos Pinckney (41) • Tywanza Sanders (26) • Daniel Lee Simmons Sr. (74) • Myra Thompson (59)
November 5, 2017: Keith Allen Braden (62) • Robert Corrigan (51) • Shani Corrigan (51) • Bryan Holcombe (60) • Crystal Marie Holcombe (36) • Emily Rose Hill (11) • Gregory Lynn Hill (13) • Karla Plain Holcombe (58) • Marc Daniel “Danny” Holcombe (36) • Megan Gail Hill (9) • Noah Grace Holcombe (1) • Dennis Johnson (77) • Sara Johnson (68) • Annabelle Renae Pomeroy (14) • Haley Krueger (16) • Karen Sue Marshall (56) • Robert Scott Marshall (56) • Tara E. McNulty (33) • Ricardo Cardona Rodriguez (64) • Therese Sagan Rodriguez (66) • Joann Lookingbill Ward (30) • Brooke Ward (5) • Emily Garcia (7) • Peggy Lynn Warden (56) • Lula Woicinski White (71)
October 27, 2018: Joyce Fienberg (75) • Richard Gottfired (65) • Rose Mallinger (97) • Jerry Rabinowitz (66) • Cecil Rosenthal (59) • David Rosenthal (54) • Bernice Simon (84) • Sylvan Simon (86) • Daniel Stein (71) • Melvin Wax (88) • Irving Younger (69)
This article is dedicated to House of Worship shooting victims, black and white, Christian and Jew (1980-2018), and their grieving families and communities. The children and teachers in recent massacres, including Uvalde, have not been included.
Carol Bergman is a journalist in New Paltz.
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