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Show Guns Are Dangerous, Or So They Say For Utah gun owners, little has changed since the days when Brig-ham Brig-ham Young cautioned Mormon pioneers pio-neers to stock food and rifles. More than 30,000 Utahns have applied for and been granted concealed-carry permits, and virtually virtu-ally every able-bodied, law abiding citizen able to vote can strap on a holster with a loaded pistol in Utah as long as the weapon remains in plain view. Is this really a good idea? It seems gun violence is rampant all across the United States. Especially terrifying are the guns that are killing children in schools. All I can say is I'm glad I don't own a gun that kills children. In fact I'm not sure this gun I have will kill anything. A friend of mine gave me a 357 Police special a while back and told me at the time, "It's a really dangerous gun". I told him I would keep an eye on it, and put it in a case by my easy chair. A few weeks later one evening while watching an especially violent vio-lent show on TV, I thought I saw it move. Boy, I stared at that thing the rest of the night. I wasn't taking any chances. The next day I went out to my tool shed, got a hammer and placed it along side my easy chair. I wanted to have it handy to beat the h.... out of that gun if it tried something funny again. Guess I should have known it wouldn't shoot the TV. This was a Police special that was trained to shoot mostly people or once in a while a mad dog or some violent critter. Maybe it just got excited. I didn't have too wait long before it showed it's true colors. It was on Super bowl Sunday. My son Randy walked down from his house to watch the game with my wife Kay and me. It was a wonderful Sunday. Good football and we are having a nice visit and then it happened. True story. When I look out my front door, across the porch I see a good share of landscape. I can look across the Burr Trail into the Grand Staircase (See LETTERS on page 5-A) LETTERS From Page 2-A of The Escalante, Clinton's first declared national monument by executive order. Suddenly, we all hear the yapping of Cappy, our vacationing daughter's very small white 10-month-old puppy. The puppy's shrill yapping was like nothing I've heard before or since. My eyes caught the movement of animal action outside. Looked like a big dog or possibly a coyote about to munch our little Cappy. So I yelled "coyote" and Kay hollers "big dog". Randy can't see the action from his seat but "hears" the action outside and our "hollering" inside. He's up in a flash and out that door like a gun shot and on to the rescue. Well, me, I'm stuck there in my seat with my prosthesis off, leaving me pretty helpless. So I am putting on my artificial leg with one eye on the door and the other on my gun. By now that dangerous, violent gun ought to be springing into action. What does it think it was made for anyway? Doesn't it remember? By the time I get to the door and open it to go out to give Randy a helping hand, Cappy is a white -streak, shooting between my legs, headed for the back bedroom and under the bed. Whoa!!! There is Randy at the end of porch. He has a snowball in his hand. I'm sure it's one of those hard, dangerous snowballs. You know, the ones that hit you in the face and black your eye, the one kids use all the time to subdue the enemy! Ouch. I asked Randy what happened? My jaw fell open as he explained to us what took place. As he rounded the porch, he could see the action had come to a standstill. Looking for a dog holding Cappy down, it took a moment to register what was really holding him down, (still yipping). It's not a dog at all, or a coyote. Its a snarling, staring-him-right-in-the-eye cougar! He stood there for only a moment, hoping that dangerous, violent gun would come to his aid and get rid of this menace once and for all. But that coward gun was still laying there; trying to hide behind anything it could see. Well, with no choice left, Randy Ran-dy does the unthinkable. He reaches down and picks up one of those dangerous, bloody your nose, un-icensed, un-icensed, unregulated, hard-as-ice snowballs and smacks that bad-fellow bad-fellow cougar right in the chops. That was it. Coug dropped that yipping puppy dog like a hot potato or should I say "hot dog"? I think it figured if it got hit by another ice ball, it would be his demise. At any rate he lit out of there like there was no tomorrow. Randy ain't afraid of no stinking cougar, not as long as he had a snowball. That's a pretty scary weapon you know, and I just may have changed my mind about guns. Maybe they aren't the violent killing kill-ing machine we have been led to believe. The fact is, arrows have killed more heads of state in this world than bullets. Of course cars kill the most people now. We license them, put in seat belts, give drivers training, train-ing, make it against the law to drink and drive and cars are killers. Right? It isn't the bows and arrows or the guns and cars, it's the snowballs. snow-balls. They're unregulated, unlicensed unli-censed and free. Yep! They're uncontrolled un-controlled and there are just too many of 'em. Larry Ripplinger Boulder |
