When Americans face a rough situation, the best homegrown advice from our compatriots is simple: “Cowboy up.”
Get real. Get tough. Get on that quarter horse and ride.
A week ago Saturday, when the news of the El Paso shootings buzzed into the phone in my pocket, I was standing in the front yard of my late great-grandmother’s cabin in the Texas countryside, visiting with cousins.
I’ve happily been down to that cabin, now owned by a cousin, each of my 63 summers. Grandmother Exie’s husband Will was a famous cattleman, as are many of his descendants. My cousins — there were about 70 of us Saturday night for dinner — ride the range; fight wildfires on it with their own gear; own ranches; are involved in the complex politics of the beef industry. Every day, they cowboy up. Both as hunters and as protectors of their herds, almost all of them own guns.
The Palo Duro Canyon in the Panhandle is a long way from El Paso. But when I passed my phone around with the news, everyone understood that this was a Texas problem, reflecting poorly on a laissez-faire gun culture. They knew the calls would come: “Do something!”
And like the rest of us, they have wildly differing views on what something should be.
Cousin J. opened up an email dialog Sunday to the family list:
“I am a long-time hunter. We hunt migratory birds with a law establishing a three-shell limit on the number of shells the gun can hold. There is no limit on the number of shells we can use to kill humans. Our politicians refuse to get serious about protecting the public. I urge every member of our family to write their senators and congressmen and demand that a law be enacted limiting the size of a magazine to five shells. It is more important to write Republicans than Democrats. If there is an entrenched senator like Cornyn who will break with the NRA and support limits on assault weapons, NRA’s power can be broken. The NRA would not support his opponent and would have to live with his temerity. The Republicans breaking with the NRA would have nothing to lose as NRA will not support their opponents. It’s time for us to urge sanity. Our kids should be able to go to school, church, concerts, shopping malls without the danger of being shot by a madman. This is not a conservative or liberal issue.”
Cousin T.: “Great idea! I’m all in!”
Cousin D.: “I totally support this!”
Cousin’s husband T.: “Totally agree!”
Cousin F.: “I’ve written many times before & will continue to do so! They do need to hear us — this is insane! Thanks for keeping us mindful of the need.”
Cousin N.: “It’s impossible to believe that reducing mag capacity to only five will definitely reduce the amount of psycho terrorists and murderers that are in our country. Actually, the plug from that shotgun mentioned can be removed so that gun can carry eight shells (at least). So you’re talking about regulation of a lot more weapons than just AR15s. As far as I’m concerned. any gun that is shot in my general direction would be an ‘assault weapon.’ This is a slippery slope and when you want to regulate one thing, it opens up doors to regulate everything else.”
Cousin’s husband R.: “Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Mao all agree. Gun control works!”
Cousin B.: “In Germany being killed with a gun is as unlikely as being killed by a falling object from the sky. Australia introduced a national registration program and 28-day waiting period and all but eliminated gun violence.”
I’m on the side of doing something.
But I live in California, where we do.
National change will come when even cowboys demand it.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.
Posted by https://goo.gl/TXzGV5
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