Rat-a-tat, the sound of America

Ready for a little night music? I’m talking about the unsettling rhythms of automatic weapons that chatter out a kind of alto staccato, rising in intensity with each scary note. Like ghosts from some distant haunting, they’re back.

That’s due, once more, to a willingness by our leaders to place financial and political support over the public’s welfare, which in this case will revive the proliferation of assault weapons on the street.

I hear you say, “Why not?” and maybe you’re right. With blood being spilled all over the world, what difference does another body or two matter in our lives? War in the civilian sectors has become almost, well, fashionable.

A sergeant in the Marines considered the sound of automatic weapons as sweet as a lullaby. His musical assertion came when I argued about having to carry a Browning Automatic Rifle during the Korean War. The BAR was heavy and awkward, but the sergeant insisted, in a tone not conducive to debate, that it was a fine musical instrument, and I should take it and shut up.

I run into the same kind of people anytime there’s a public debate over guns, and I’m sure I’ll hear from them in the current situation. It has to do with the 10-year ban on assault weapons that expires today because Congress has not seen fit to renew it. Our war president, hunkered down in a bunker provided by the National Rifle Assn., says he’s in favor of the ban but has done nothing to goose his boys into renewing it. That might require courage and conscience.

His voice in this case is Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who, connected to some kind of psychic evaluator, proclaimed that “the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire.” That no doubt was the word from the NRA, whose campaign contributors carry our war president around like a mouse in their pocket, training him to do what he’s supposed to do for the cheese he receives.

The ban covers the manufacture and importation of 19 different kinds of assault weapons, none of them intended to bring down rabbits or ducks or even deer. The only purpose for, say, an Uzi is to kill a human being. Blasting away at any kind of game at 700 rounds a minute would result in a lot of shredded meat, which, by the way, is what it does to people too.

I realize that many of those who romance the gun consider themselves collectors and look upon their assault weapons the way headhunters used to look upon the skulls they amassed in various rites of manhood. To own such toys, or such heads, constitutes proof of virility.

In the case of a gun collector, he can sit in a dim light, play soft music and caress his AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifle while whispering sweet nothings in its muzzle. Actually kissing or dancing with it may be a little bizarre, but to each his own. The soothing power of gun-love is not to be denied.

Because I have many times expressed my dislike for guns, I hear all the time from “hobbyists” who tell me that collecting weapons isn’t much different than collecting vintage stamps, except that it’s a lot harder to vintage-stamp someone to death in a fit of mindless rage than it is to smoke him with a with a brand new, God-given, Bush-approved, rapid-firing assault rifle.

“Survival” is a term I hear a lot from those spooked by the notion that unless they possess a light, easy-to-fire weapon that even the missus can master, they’ll be defenseless in their homes. Or they’ll be defenseless on the street. Or they’ll be defenseless when armed terrorists storm the beaches of Malibu or Miami or Fire Island.

What this society needs is not more guns, but the kind of leadership that creates a climate of order, stability and peace. We don’t have that. So letting the law die is probably a good idea. The American people whose will is so highly regarded by Congressman Bill Frist, and the war president hiding behind him, may find themselves in a little more peril on the streets of their hometowns when assault weapons proliferate, but there’s no arguing free will.

And, hey, if we’re going this far, why not allow hand grenades too, and mortars and shoulder-fired missiles and privately owned tanks, and how about an A-bomb or two? Little ones. And we might as well disavow treaties on weapons of war that were once banned, and find them new homes in a new America. And then the hobbyists and collectors and those who romance the gun may once more celebrate the perfume of napalm in the morning, mustard gas in the afternoon and the rhythmic music of death by the cold moonlight of a violent age.