Where's Ralph?

When I was eight years old my brother and sisters and I were going to Lake Charles to spend time with our cousins.  My cousin had a buddy named Ralph who lived next door with his brother whose name I can NEVER remember. Going to visit our cousin was always fun because Ralph's brother was around my age and all of us enjoyed playing together. We'd even chase fire flies to see which of us would be lucky enough to get one in a jar to use as a night light.
           A trip to Lake Charles is maybe a two hour drive unless my dad was behind the wheel. Dad loved to stop EVERYWHERE along the way so the two hour trip usually took AT LEAST FOUR. All the way I ignored my older sisters fighting and just thought of playing with my cousin, Ralph and his brother. When we arrived at 10 pm however, something just wasn't right.  My cousin wasn't home and his mother (my aunt) pulled my mom aside and made sure we kids stayed in the car. Ralph's house next door was dark and mom got us all into the house quickly. My cousin showed up but wasn't his cheerful self. He looked distressed and as if he'd been crying. I asked "where's Ralph?" He was trying to speak to us, but couldn't, he simply couldn't talk. We turned on the television and the first thing we saw was our cousin's house and 10 seconds into a reporter going into a script she'd written my cousin started crying and said: "That's not what happened! That's not how it happened!" before running into his room and sobbing.
             What we didn't know was that prior to our arrival that our cousin and Ralph had been snooping around the house and found my uncle's shot gun and my cousin accidentally shot Ralph, killing him. I didn't know how to react I was saddened and shocked. I would never see my friend again. My cousin eventually regained the spring in his step years later, but I think on some level he never forgave himself.  He hung with a rough crowd when he grew up, but never carried a gun that I knew of.  He was with one of our cousins when he was gunned down and someone murdered him with a knife a few  years later.

           Guns were omnipresent in my childhood. My mother carried a derringer in her purse, my father carried a snub-nosed 38 in his truck and had a shotgun in the house and I would see guns everywhere. The neighborhood where I grew up wasn't the worst in Houston, but it wasn't the best. By the time I was in High school there were more guns and some crime. I would see people on Fridays and not see them on Monday and when I asked about them I was told "Oh man. You didn't hear?  Oh, he got SHOT Saturday!"  I was once sitting on a city bus when some disturbed man took out a 44 magnum which he fired into the air as we drove off.  I attended more than one house party where someone pulled a gun and started shooting and I WISH I could say I never had a gun pointed AT me or had to hit the deck because some imbecile insisted on shooting in the general direction of a crowd in which I'd been standing at someones home or some club.
 
          As a stupid young Marine I had to carry a rifle while in combat training. We LITERALLY had to take it EVERYWHERE with us. If you went to the head (rest room) your weapon was with you. if you had to take a shower, your weapon was with you. If you went from point A to point B you had your weapon WITH you. You ate with it,  it was in your sleeping bag and if you misplaced it, corporals and sergeants humiliate you by dressing you down in front of anyone within ear shot, then would make you scale a huge, steep hill the following morning while everyone else was eating chow. Their logic? It was important and knowing where it was would mean life or death. They made me realize that a weapon wasn't a toy, it was a responsibility and not one to be taken lightly.

         A couple of years ago I was at work when I learned that one of our honor students, an eleventh grader had been shot and his body had been left in a ditch. He had attended a party and the rumor was that some imbecile was angered by the fact that his girlfriend was looking at our friend so he shot him to get back at his girlfriend for daring to cast her eyes on another guy. He was never apprehended.

      I'm often asked my views on the 2nd amendment and my views are complicated. I own a weapon but don't hunt, however I do go to the range a couple of times a year, but wouldn't feel lost if I didn't.  I think if someone WANTS a gun he/she should have the right to own one; however, I'm of the opinion that there are certain members of society as a whole who shouldn't be trusted with with forks and spoons much less a firearm.
       Owning a gun IS a right for Americans but it's also one hell of a responsibility. Should people have to pass some kind of psychiatric screening before getting a gun? No, but if a guy has been in and out of prison or mental institutions, we should PROBABLY try to come between him/her and a gun. Someone points out America's founding fathers and their "wisdom." I respect the founders but take them with a grain of salt.  After ratifying their constitution James Madison had to add a Bill of Rights to it comprised of ten amendments including the much debated Second Amendment giving all Americans access to a weapon. The founders for all their good points DID NOT see free men of color OR Indians as "people" as evident that they were NOT to be counted as part of the country's population. Black men weren't recognized as citizens until 1865 and native Americans weren't until 1924. There are many who scarcely acknowledge the citizenship OF men/women of color much less think they should have guns. In fact many of the earliest restrictive gun laws were put into place SPECIFICALLY to prevent men of color from getting a gun.
       Do I have a concealed handgun permit? I do NOT. Why? In California until 1967 frontier gun laws were on the books which allowed ANY citizen to openly carry a weapon, The Black Panther Party For Self Defense did precisely that and conservative lawmakers drafted the Mulford act and Governor Ronald Reagan happily signed it saying: "There is no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons." At the time of the law's passage the National Rifle Association SUPPORTED the law.


 http://time.com/4431356/nra-gun-control-history/


Mass media has long painted heroes as being white knights on white horses with guns.  I'm not trying to sound like a racist and apologize if someone sees the following as such, but all to often, it looks like in these United States a white guy openly carrying a weapon is simply exercising his 2nd amendment right; whereas a man of color is suspect. IN 2016 a deranged former soldier from the upper levels of a parking garage opened fire on police at what had been a peaceful protest.  There had been a man of color on the ground with an AR-15 on his shoulder at the protest and lots of film and video of him had been shot. He was shown on news channels, but a conservative news outlet called him a "person of interest" and one commentator even called him a suspect until he saw himself on television and contacted police to assure them that he was in NO WAY involved. A Minnesota cafeteria manager named Fernando Castile who had a concealed handgun permit was shot by a traffic cop and died at the scene. Castile had no criminal record, but conservative media outlets began to say that he was a suspect in a robbery.



 https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/07/08/confirmed-philando-castile-was-an-armed-robbery-suspect-false-media-narrative-now-driving-cop-killings/



 It was later revealed that he WASN'T and that the officer involved simply pulled him over because the ACTUAL robber (like Castile) was a black man with dreadlocks.  By that logic I'm a suspect in that robbery as that's a very generic description of me. I've never been to Minnesota, but it's nice to know that if I go there and get shot my face will be flashed across tv screens and I'll be called a "robbery suspect" so that my killing will be justified. Actual media outlets later revealed this deadly mistake.



 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officer-thought-philando-castile-was-robbery-suspect-tapes-show-n607856



I don't carry a concealed handgun because it's yet ANOTHER thing I'd have to explain and honestly I just don't want a REASON to get shot because someone thinks I MAY be someone else and happen to be armed, which I know could happen regardless of my race.
              I KNOW the counter argument to everything I've said. The shootings that were part of my life as a young man were committed by criminals who more than likely had illegal weapons. Okay I'll give my critics that.  MOST gun owners are law abiding citizens, YES MOST gun owners ARE law abiding citizens and SHOULD NOT be punished every time some crazy a-hole goes on a shooting spree.   I like guns but wouldn't wither and die if I never fired another one. Does that mean I want to take others guns away? No.
          The Swiss made military service compulsory. Two years in the military and soldiers are sent home with their rifles and made part of the militia in the event of an attack.  Most adults in Switzerland own a weapon but when was the last time there was a shooting in a theatre there or a school?  They are an educated people and educated people are less likely to commit crimes. I don't advocate banning guns and think we as a nation simply need to be more EDUCATED, not just about GUNS but in general. As an industrialized nation we don't have a great literacy rate.     
                The number of Americans who are functionally literate is NOWHERE near as high as it SHOULD be for the world's LEADING economy. American drop out rates are high and unlike our counterparts in Europe and Asia we're taking money FROM education.  Does that mean there are no crimes in these countries? No, every country has prisons, but the rest of the industrialized world doesn't balk about educating its citizens.
       More over, American school systems spend more on football stadiums, and coaching staffs for baseball, basketball, football and hockey than they do on LIBRARIES and books.  Here in Texas when there was a budget shortage education suffered and the first people fired were school librarians.  One would swear that schools were supposed to be places of LEARNING or something rather than training grounds for men who want to play a sport for a living.
              Our mass media tells us the man with the gun is strong, the man with the book is weak and little is done to dissuade that belief.  Shoot first, and ask questions later seems to be a popular American belief, but when everyone has access to a gun, but education has little if any value you've a recipe for disaster.  For what it's worth, we may examine a warrior culture which believed a man's weapon to be so inseparable from who he was, that it was LITERALLY considered part of his SOUL. The culture which held that belief was the samurai.  The warriors in question also took pride in their knowledge of  Chinese culture, their ability to appreciate and write poetry, their ability to paint/draw, the ability to play an instrument, knowledge of dance, their appreciation of the theatre and the number of written materials they owned.  Their abilities exceeded the ability to use bladed weapons and archer's bows. The samurai took pride in being warriors who appreciated scholarship and the arts, why can't we?