I miss the Wild West

“I want people to bear witness. I don't want people to be numb to events.” —Craig Goldstein, husband of Katie Goldstein, one of seven victims of the Highland Park, Illinois, shooting on July 4

Westerns were a mainstay in my household on Hill Avenue.

“Have Gun--Will Travel” (I had a little-girl crush on Paladin and the little Remington Derringer he carried in his boot)

“Rawhide” (most effectual theme song ever, because I can still sing “keep them dogies rollin”)

“The Rifleman,” and of course, “Bonanza” and “Gunsmoke,” the pillars of television westerns.

There was reason for shooting people in those shows. Cheaters at poker got lead in the gut. So did cattle rustlers and horse thieves. In general, the use of a gun to secure justice in the Wild West was accepted, understood, and at times necessary. The western setting demanded guns for protection from animals as well as to hunt for food supply. All of this made perfect sense to me without my parents having to explain how guns were used then and how they were used in the 1960s when I was an impressionable kid.

I miss the Wild West when a person wore his or her holster and gun into the saloon, general store, or on the streets because these were a part of a working wardrobe. Today, however, anyone (other than law enforcement) walking down the street with an AR-15 strapped across his or her back is probably doing so for defiant show, and I am not impressed.

Exception: seeing Buster Taylor back home in Borden County carry whatever guns he wanted always made me feel safe. Buster knew guns. Buster knew how to use guns. Buster was our Festus, and I loved him. I am not referring to Busters in the world.

In 2022, we simply cannot view mass shootings with assault weapons in our country solely through the lens of mental illness. We have had mentally ill people in our country for over two hundred years. We also have had guns for over 200 years. So why now, in the past two decades ,do we wake up so often to hear of another Columbine, Parkland, Southerland Springs, Uvalde, Highland Park, Brooklyn, or El Paso?

What we all want is to go to a parade, a church, a grocery store, a dance club, a place of business and a school—a school—without fear of having bodies shredded by assault weapons.

Craig Goldstein’s wife Katie, 64, was one of those bodies on July 4. His words following her murder are the key to change. If we grow numb and do not bear witness to the events that have unfolded in the United States in the past two decades, we all lose.

Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn is trying to bear witness, sponsoring legislation that recently passed both houses of Congress. It is the first major gun legislation in over 30 years.

“While the discussion surrounding this topic causes emotions to run high, and I understand why,” Cornyn, “doing nothing is an abdication of our responsibility as representatives of the American people here in the United States Senate,” he added, while stressing he “would not support any provisions that infringed on the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”

The legislation will enhance background checks for potential gun buyers under the age of twenty-one, requiring for the first time that authorities have time to examine juvenile records, including mental health records beginning at age 16. It provides millions of dollars for states to implement so-called red flag laws that allow officials to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed in court to be too dangerous to own them, and other intervention programs. And it strengthens laws against straw purchasing and trafficking of guns. In addition, the measure pours more federal money into shoring up mental health programs across the country, and toughening security in schools. And the bill tightens a federal ban on domestic abusers buying firearms, including recent or current serious dating partners, to close what has come to be called the boyfriend loophole. – New York Times, 6/24/2022

Snyder, Texas, native Sue Jane Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher whose thought-provoking commentary appears occasionally in several West texas newspapers, including The Texas Spur and The Caprock Courier.