Highest Ownership : Guns--’A Way of Life’ in the South

Five years ago, when the Chicago suburb of Morton Grove banned the possession of weapons within its city limits, this small Georgia town showed those benighted Yankees how folks here felt about that.

By a unanimous vote, the Kennesaw Town Council passed an ordinance requiring every household here to keep a working firearm on the premises, complete with ammunition. In Kennesaw, Morton Grove is known contemptuously as “ Moron’s Grove.”

Kennesaw’s example illustrates an enduring truth of life below the Mason-Dixon line: Southerners love guns. It is a trait deeply ingrained, shared by whites and blacks alike, and stubbornly resistant to change.

Second to None

Gun enthusiasts, of course, are gun enthusiasts no matter where they live; Westerners are notable gun lovers too. But by almost any measure, Southerners outdo all other Americans in their devotion to firearms and the constitutional right of private citizens to keep and bear them.

Southerners own more guns proportionately than people in any other region.

They have fewer laws restricting weapons ownership.

Southern congressmen are among the most solid supporters of pro-gun legislation.

Gun shows are major spectacles in the South.

And whatever the latest trend in firearms may be--like the current enthusiasm for rent-a-machine-gun shooting galleries--Southerners can be counted on to be there first.

What’s more, as Kennesaw’s gun ordinance so graphically demonstrates, Southerners do not cotton much to people who think guns should be outlawed.

“A law like we passed could only have been passed in the South,” said Kennesaw Mayor J. O. Stephenson. “It may be hard for somebody from the big-city North to understand, but guns are a way of life in this part of the country.”

Start With BB Guns

For many Southerners, the initiation into the way of weapons begins with the gift of a boy’s first gun--almost invariably a BB gun--to develop safety skills and learn basic principles of ballistics.

“When I was growing up, every kid’s dream was to own a BB gun,” said Bill Buckley, 37, an Atlanta attorney from the rural southwest Georgia town of Cuthbert. “From a BB gun, you then went up to a .22 rifle, your first ‘real’ gun and one you’d usually do a lot of squirrel hunting with. And then you’d graduate to a .410 or some other small-gauge shotgun.”

What is more, he said, “You were always taught respect for the weapons: ‘Don’t point it at anybody. Treat every gun like it’s loaded.’ The idea was not just to keep you from killing somebody but also to instill certain values in you, like responsibility and trustworthiness.”

Partly as a result of this rite of passage, young Southerners are far more likely to have fired a weapon than their counterparts in the North. According to one study, for example, 81% of college students in the South have fired guns compared to 56% of college students in the North.

This higher tendency among Southerners also is linked to the presence of guns in the home, the study said. Among Southern male students reared in a home where guns are kept, more than 99% had fired a weapon.

Gun ownership is, of course, the rule in the South. Particularly in rural areas, a house is not a home without at least one shotgun over the fireplace and a handgun in a bedside drawer. And some Southerners do not leave home without a weapon: the farmer with a shotgun in a rack in the back window of his pickup truck still is a common--and to Northerners unfamiliar with Southern customs, often perturbing--sight on country roads.

Protecting the Nest

“My father was a Baptist minister in north Georgia and even he used to keep a .38 Smith & Wesson in the home,” said Olivia Smathers of Kennesaw. “He didn’t approve of drinking or dancing, but he said that a gun was something a family should have and should know how to use, because every animal in God’s kingdom knows how to protect its nest.”

According to studies cited in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, now being edited by scholars at the University of Mississippi, the states of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee have the highest rate of gun ownership in the nation.

Nearly 75% of the residents of those four states own weapons. By comparison, the rate in the Mountain region, which includes Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, is about 65%--the highest proportion outside the South. New England, with 23.4%, has the lowest rate in the nation.

Whether its love of guns has led to more violence in the South has stirred much debate. During the bloody civil rights struggle of the 1960s, scholars and journalists argued that violence fostered by weapons was an inherent part of the Southern psyche.

Film ‘Easy Rider’ Cited

Popular culture reinforced that viewpoint. In the 1969 Hollywood film “Easy Rider,” for example, actors Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper were blown away in cold blood by two Florida rednecks in a pickup truck because Hopper tossed an obscene gesture their way when they told him to get a haircut.

However, contemporary authorities tend to dispute such arguments. “Owning firearms does not necessarily predispose Southerners to violent solutions to personal problems,” said Fred Hawley, chairman of the social sciences department at Louisiana State University-Shreveport. “The image of the Southerner as a trigger-happy redneck is wildly exaggerated.

“For one thing, violent crime is primarily an urban phenomenon, while weapon ownership in the South is highest in rural and small-town areas. For another, most firearm-related violence is committed with handguns, and handgun ownership is not very much greater in the South than in other regions.”

Still, says Hawley, there is no denying the special attachment that Southerners have for guns.

“Although regionwide patterns of gun ownership do not provide solid evidence of the South’s being a particularly violent milieu, gun ownership in the South has always had a symbolic, ritual meaning,” he said.

Dove Hunts Big Events

Here, as elsewhere in the nation, hunting is the most common use for firearms. And among Southern hunters, there is nothing to compare with the fall dove hunts. They are big social affairs at which, Hawley said, “the number of doves actually shot is almost incidental to the deals consummated.”

Dana Leavitt, 29, an information systems manager in Greenville, S.C., typifies the passion with which Southerners indulge in this sport. He and four of his close friends lease 2,220 acres of farmland in South Carolina that they use as their exclusive preserve for hunting both dove and duck.

“We maintain the land, have a tractor and plant wheat to attract the doves,” he said. “There’s a big difference between dove hunting and duck hunting. With duck hunting, we don’t invite any guests. With dove hunting, you are covering a large field and the more hunters you have, the better.”

Leavitt said he and his colleagues usually invite five other friends to form a dove hunting party. Twelve-gauge shotguns are the preferred weapons for these forays. A pack of springer spaniels and a four-wheel-drive vehicle with coolers of Coca-Cola and Budweiser complete the party.

“We don’t drink alcohol while we’re shooting--that’s too dangerous--but the first one to bag his limit is the first one to pop a top on a Bud,” he said. “After the hunt, we usually have a big barbecue. Last year, I shot 308 doves.”

Mainly Male Dominated

In the South, dove shoots are almost an exclusively male activity. Women occasionally take part, but as Josephine Moon of Marietta, Ga., laments, their roles are often limited. “We sit and watch our husbands and sometimes we go and pick up the birds,” she said.

Another big social occasion for Southern gun enthusiasts is offered by firearms shows in ever-increasing numbers. Long rows of tables are set out with a dazzling array of weapons, uniforms, knives, coins and survival gear. Men and boys dressed for the hunt examine the wares, buy, sell, make trades and renew old friendships.

“I try to get to as many of them in a year as I can,” said Paul Perkins, 30, a warehouse manager from Asheville, N.C., who owns 11 guns--four shotguns, two rifles and five handguns--and keeps ammunition boxes stacked in his living room. “I don’t drink and I don’t smoke, so this gives me something to do.”

The latest manifestation of the Southerner’s love affair with guns is the emergence of rent-a-machine-gun shooting galleries. The BulletStop in Marietta, seven miles southeast of Kennesaw, claims to be the first of such parlors in the nation.

Owner Paul LaVista opened the indoor firing range three years ago and it has been playing to packed crowds since then. For a fee, patrons can rent Israeli-made Uzis, German-made Heckler & Koch MP5s or American-made Thompson submachine guns and blast away at manufactured targets or targets of their own choosing. For targets, customers have hauled in everything from malfunctioning computers and vacuum cleaners to photographs of ex-wives and mothers-in-law.

Dead Targets Only

“The only rule we have for bringing in your own target is they have to be dead and they have to fit through the doors,” LaVista said.

LaVista says that the majority of his customers are the “white-collar crowd,” who can more easily afford the $10 charge for renting an automatic weapon and the $10 to $12 fee for each clip of high-powered ammunition. Typically, a bill for such a session runs around $100. Major credit cards are accepted.

“We had a blitz today,” he said. “Some of the guys from IBM had gotten together with some of the guys from Hewlett-Packard for some sort of technical meeting, and they suggested they all come out here to shoot instead of going to lunch. They wrote it up on their American Express, same as they would have lunch.”

On weekends, however, the “blue-collar crowd” takes over, he says.

What is the thrill in firing an automatic weapon? No doubt it appeals to the Walter Mitty in some and to the Rambo in others. One recent patron even commented as he was leaving with his girlfriend: “This is the most fun I’ve had all week with my clothes on.”

“The success of LaVista’s enterprise sparked Gun City USA, a gun store in Nashville, to set up twice-yearly automatic weapons shoots in its basement firing range.

‘Gleam Comes to the Eye’

Southern gun stores also are big on promoting ownership of automatic weapons. An ad by the Gun Rack, also in Nashville, reads: “There is a definite gleam that comes to the eye of anyone who inspects a fully automatic weapon. They gently lift it, then firmly grip it, swing it to their shoulder and sight along the barrel, all the time betraying their fascination. Then they respectfully place it down, almost sadly, as if they have experienced a rare moment in life that can never be for real.”

The Civil War provided one of the most important influences on the Southerner’s feelings about guns, and the Confederate legacy shapes gun lovers’ attitudes in the South, as frontier tradition and cowboy folklore does in the West.

During the Civil War, “The South held on for as long as it did because of some determined men who could shoot,” author Geoffrey Norman wrote in the December, 1986, issue of Southern Magazine. “And it became the epic, stoic resistance of the Confederacy against superiority of numbers and arms that captured the imagination and fed the religion of the Lost Cause. The defender of the sacred soil was a man who could put a Minie ball in a fence post at 500 steps.”

Ironically, the National Rifle Assn., the nation’s prime pro-gun lobby, was founded, not long after the war, by Union army officers, partly in an effort to improve marksmanship among Northerners in case they were forced to take up arms against the South again.

Exploits of Sgt. York

Generations of Southerners also have been influenced by the exploits of Southerners in later wars. The most famous military hero of World War I was a Tennessean, Sgt. Alvin Cullum York, who single-handledly destroyed a German machine gun battalion, killing at least 25 enemy troops and bringing in 132 prisoners.

In World War II, the most decorated U.S. soldier was Audie Murphy of Texas, who later parlayed his celebrity as a war hero into a career as a movie star. In a strange twist of fate, his most notable starring role was as a young Yankee soldier in “The Red Badge of Courage.”

Today, with 40% of the South still rural, the Southerner’s love for guns is likely to remain strong. But the increasing urbanization of Dixie has brought pressure for change in gun laws.

For example, both Kennesaw and Marietta are in Cobb County, just northwest of Atlanta. Cobb’s population has mushroomed from 200,000 in 1970 to nearly 400,000, with the heaviest development in the eastern section closest to Atlanta. Last year, a vociferous debate arose over whether county gun regulations should be tightened.

‘No Longer Rural County’

“This is no longer a rural county,” Judy Hardy, a resident for 22 years, said at a commission hearing on a proposal to ban the discharge of weapons in unincorporated areas. “We need to be able to provide adequate protection for all.”

She complained that her next-door neighbor stood near his property line and shot whatever he wanted at whatever time he chose--”pistols, shotguns, 30-06 rifles, midnight, noon, 4 a.m., 4 p.m”--and, she added, “in various states of drunkenness.”

The police, she said, told her that the neighbor was within his legal rights.

Despite her testimony, the proposal to ban the firing of weapons was knocked down. Hunters and other gun lovers let it be known that they would not take such restrictions lightly.

“It may eventually come to the point where the county will need some kind of restrictions like that,” says Kennesaw Mayor Stephenson. “But right now, there’s just not a lot of sympathy for it.”