Life imitates art, they say.
Take the Jan. 22 story in the Anchorage Daily News headlined, “Handgun Fired Accidentally in Coffee Shop Injures Woman.”
The story said a group of friends met at a Kaladi Brothers coffee shop in Soldotna Jan. 20 and one of them, a 76-year-old man, pulled out a 9-millimeter pistol he’d brought inside, for reasons the news story does not explain.
The friends got to passing the gun around and, lo and behold, someone pulled the trigger, sending a bullet into the leg of a woman in the group, hospitalizing her.
Why no charges were filed is not explained in the story, but hey, what’s a little shooting among friends?
Now rewind to “Guntown,” a July, 2017 video by Rogue Kite Productions posted on YouTube about what happens in a fictional coffee shop in the era of open carry. The joint is busy with law-abiding citizens, nearly all of them carrying and caffeinated. But things get squirrelly, shots are fired, and an innocent coffee drinker takes a slug in the arm.
The skit ends with the wounded man going into shock and the armed patrons only somewhat sorry because, as they say in unison walking out the door, “That’s the price of freedom.”
Besides foreshadowing the Soldotna shooting, the video hilariously distills the deal we’ve made on guns on this country, one that makes no sense at all.
If all of us must be armed for any of us to be safe, we’re going to be living in a shooting gallery of fools all cocked and locked.
Many more people will be killed by alienated students, or by road-ragers, or by gang-bangers or even by old men showing off their pistols in coffee shops. Maybe our next series of shootings will be by cockeyed teachers firing on deranged, gun-toting students.
You can already picture the Monty Python skit about an armed, suburban society, where petty transgressions and carelessness lead to streets full of mortally wounded neighbors, hemorrhaging blood in stoic, patriotic pride.
“Sure I’m dying, but by God, we still have a right to a well-armed militia.” Or, “Tell my wife I love her and that I was in the wrong. I should have never cut in front of that guy for a parking spot.”
And what happens when the same logic is applied to international weapons control? It appears we’re already going in that direction. The news media reported this week that Donald Trump is trying to syphon nuclear weapons technology to Saudi Arabia. Israel already has the bomb. Hey, what could go wrong?
Nine countries possess nuclear weapons, including some of the bad guys. Maybe we need to arm the rest of the good guys? That’ll keep us safe?
As life imitates art, we’ll come full circle when an astronaut resembling Charlton Heston one day gazes up from a desolate beach to discover the remains of the Statue of Liberty.
And god-damns us all to hell.