T A B L E++T A L K

Going back to work after six years at home with the kids? Discuss the challenges facing moms returning from extended maternity leave in Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Straight-laced sisters
By Lori Leibovich
Liberal journalist Elinor Burkett met the enemy -- conservative women -- and found that they were, well, a lot like her
(04/01/98)

Drama Queen Candidates
Gum-chewing kissers, egomaniacal cheaters, line-dropping Olympic losers ... and the women who endured them
(03/31/98)

Making sense of Jonesboro
By Lori Leibovich
Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint talks about what makes children kill
(03/30/98)

Hey hey, ho ho, the matriarchy's got to go
By Lori Leibovich
Gloria Steinem unleashes exciting news about young feminism. Not!
(03/27/98)

In a league of their own
By Joan Walsh
Even Dusty Baker told her to get a life, but one baseball fanatic and her daughter wouldn't think of missing spring training
(03/26/98)

ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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SECOND THOUGHTS: NICE GUYS | PAGE 2 OF 2

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There were always guns when I was little. We didn't go into the hills at certain times of the year, knowing by the distant popping sounds that deer or duck or elk season had opened. My dad took the rifle down to the cabin with us sometimes, and my brother and sister and I took turns shooting at cans on the rocks. There were gun racks on every pickup, and I took for granted the mounted heads and antlers and glassy-eyed trophies on the walls of stores and offices. I took for granted that one bought tuna, motor oil and ammunition at the same time, from the same store.

Nothing much has changed; hunting is the main preoccupation of my uncle and cousins even now. Susan and I had gone that morning to see the family accountant, a guy named Ross I'd known since high school. Ross is a small and rather tweedy man. He has two businesses, accounting and memorials. Ross pays my father's bills in one office; he made my mother's gravestone in the other.

Ross is a nice guy; he has a big certificate of appreciation on his wall from the Rocky Mountain Elk Association. He volunteers with them, helping to protect wilderness. The certificate hangs between a half-dozen pictures of Ross, bespectacled and smiling, kneeling in camouflage beside dead elk.

The boys in Arkansas, Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson, stole the guns from Andrew's grandfather -- three rifles, four handguns, ammunition. Apparently, Grandpa kept loaded guns all over the house. And Andrew knew exactly how to use them. His father, who sounds like a nice guy, volunteers for a local gun club and taught the boy marksmanship and took him hunting. They'd recently been practicing what gun folks call "practical shooting" -- hitting moving and pop-up targets with handguns. One of the gun club members was surprised the boy killed his school friends, because he'd been taught gun safety. Besides, the member added, "He was not very accurate, and he wasn't very fast."

Just lucky, perhaps.

Mr. Bettis' pizza was ready, but he had one more story. He told us how he'd caught someone "sneaking around the backyard at 4 in the morning" a few weeks back. He'd gone to the door, gun in hand, and challenged the person. "I didn't point the gun at him, I just had it by my side," he added.

The intruder was the meter reader.

"I told him to tell his boss to change the schedules; he's going to get himself killed."

All of us could, of course -- get ourselves killed. We'll get ourselves killed because we haven't stopped to think that walking through a person's backyard at night has become a capital offense. Or we'll get ourselves killed because we don't understand what is likely to happen when someone holds a loaded gun at their side. We'll get ourselves killed because no one seems to understand that 11-year-old boys who have handled loaded guns since they were tiny, been taught how to kill large animals with them and learned to shoot at moving targets shaped like human bodies might decide to use the gun to settle the emotions of puberty.

We'll get ourselves killed, and our children will get themselves killed, because you can "get guns anywhere," because all kinds of people can and do get guns and shoot them.

I have no explanation for Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson or any clear idea why they killed their schoolmates and why Ross the accountant just kills elk and why I put the rifle down for good when I was still a kid.

But this I do know: If you look at accidental shooting statistics, the kind that have nothing to do with inner-city gangs or kids like Andrew Golden, you see how easily people get themselves killed by nice guys. And when you look at children with troubled lives and unkempt fantasies, you're going to find out that they were often raised by nice guys, too. No one knows what goes wrong sometimes. But if I am shot, if one of my children is shot -- in a parking lot, a convenience store, a schoolyard -- no one's going to have to look very far to find a nice guy who had something to do with it.
SALON | April 2, 1998