Cary Tennis: Thoughts On Guns And Boys

Thoughts on guns and boys

Posted by CT on Jul 20, 2012 in Blog

Raised on cowboys and Indians, detectives, harsh men in suits blazing pistols in the dark, G.I.’s holding off the enemy from trenches or behind rocks, robbers on the lam shooting through the broken windows of splintering shacks … these were the exciting images of gunplay I grew up with. As a boy I did lust after the bang and shoot of a gun, the feel of it, the spinning cylinder, the amazing bullets. I loved the idea of omnipotence, blasting a target or a person, blasting them away, blasting blasting blasting. I did dream of the power of an actual gun, stored in oil cloth, kept in the dark in houses of men, clean and hidden, precious and forbidden, like jewelry to be worn on special occasions, capable of dire effects.

A gun was a bridge to adulthood because it was one of the things not allowed a boy until he was deemed ready; if a boy could not have a gun until he had proved himself, then having a gun meant proving himself. This proposition could be turned around: If the reward could be had without the performance, if a boy could acquire a gun outside of any rite of passage, then he could feel he was proved; he could provide his own passage to psychic adulthood. Thus the totem was detached from its ritual and meaning, set loose in anarchy. The genie was out of the bottle, seducing and bewitching and cursing the souls of men.

Sober farmers used their guns for the occasional killing of a rattlesnake or an animal in need of a mercy shot to the head.

Then there was the broken vessel out of which violence poured, the explosive adolescent in feverish adoration of the gun, for whom the gun slaked a thirst and fed a hunger outside all proportion.

We bred these young men behind the silent walls of suburban houses. They kept their fever secret until erupting.