Ian Martin's Blog - Posts Tagged "guns"
Sell Me A Gun
The next time he walked down Hout Street he stopped on the pavement opposite City Guns, hesitated, and then crossed over. He had a strong aversion to firearms, deeming them abhorrent on three counts. For starters, he considered force, or the threat of force, as a means of settling a dispute, to be a very unintelligent option. The non-violent possibilities were numerous and he believed strongly in his own ability to extricate himself from confrontation and conflict by employing such methods as argument, persuasion, flattery, reassurance, deception, deceit, pleading, weeping, promises, distraction, diversion and sleight of hand.
Secondly, the mere sight of a gun made him feel faintly queasy. This was on account of the involuntary response that the visual stimulus elicited in him. Into his mind there instantly leapt a scene of horrible carnage: bullets ripping into flesh, blood spurting, bones being irreparably smashed, spinal cords snapping, arteries and nerves being severed. The fact that a gun was loaded meant that it was waiting to go off at any fraction of an instant. It had to go off, like a time bomb, and he braced himself for the imminent explosion.
Finally, he associated a certain type of person with the bearing of firearms, and it was a person not to his liking at all. It was clear that some men derived a Freudian pleasure from carrying a gun. It made them aggressive and obnoxiously proud of their masculinity. They tended to scowl and swear more than was their usual habit, and to swagger and be argumentative. They became boorishly boastful and spoke coarsely of women, subconsciously certain in the delusion that the carrying of a pistol was accompanied by miraculous generation of erectile tissue. These were the selfsame poseurs whose virility was charged up when they slid behind the wheels of their souped-up Ford Cortinas. Henry didn't like them.
He didn't like anything to do with firearms but nevertheless he crossed the street to look in the window, fully intending to enter the shop and experience the dubious pleasure of being sold a gun.
The door was solid and massive and the colour of Pears Soap. The window displays which flanked it were curiously innocuous and, as it turned out, deceptive. The window to the left was devoted largely to an array of knives. There were Swiss Army combinations consisting of a whole toolbox of miniature equipment: scissors, file, can opener, corkscrew, bottle opener, awl, tweezers, saw, pliers, magnifying glass, tooth pick, screw driver - almost entirely useless for practical purposes. Then there were the spring-loaded clasp knives arranged like the spokes of a wheel. These were ideal for cutting bite-sized lengths of biltong (dried meat), or for stabbing rival gangsters. Behind the knives in one corner stood a family of stainless steel vacuum flasks, made in the USA and very expensive. In the other corner were two Coleman cooler boxes arranged one on top of the other.
The right hand window was given over to a scene from the bush, with grass and twigs on the floor and a black pot astride the coals of a campfire. On the seat of a canvas folding-chair was a felt bush hat complete with leopard-skin headband. Casually leaning against the chair was a .303 hunting rifle. In the background he saw a weathered tree trunk upon which hung a pair of handcuffs and a four-foot sjambok (whip) of genuine hippo hide. The sporting life was sketched with skilful economy and the window dresser's dark message was not lost on Henry once he spotted the accoutrements on the periphery - strict discipline was an essential ingredient for a successful safari.
In the Metropole Bar on the corner of Long Street he drank two beers to prepare himself for the little adventure that awaited him. He had no intention of becoming a gun owner but he was more than moderately curious about the process surrounding the legal acquisition of a firearm.
Get the full story from Amazon's kindle store http://www.amazon.com/Sell-Me-A-Gun-e...
Secondly, the mere sight of a gun made him feel faintly queasy. This was on account of the involuntary response that the visual stimulus elicited in him. Into his mind there instantly leapt a scene of horrible carnage: bullets ripping into flesh, blood spurting, bones being irreparably smashed, spinal cords snapping, arteries and nerves being severed. The fact that a gun was loaded meant that it was waiting to go off at any fraction of an instant. It had to go off, like a time bomb, and he braced himself for the imminent explosion.
Finally, he associated a certain type of person with the bearing of firearms, and it was a person not to his liking at all. It was clear that some men derived a Freudian pleasure from carrying a gun. It made them aggressive and obnoxiously proud of their masculinity. They tended to scowl and swear more than was their usual habit, and to swagger and be argumentative. They became boorishly boastful and spoke coarsely of women, subconsciously certain in the delusion that the carrying of a pistol was accompanied by miraculous generation of erectile tissue. These were the selfsame poseurs whose virility was charged up when they slid behind the wheels of their souped-up Ford Cortinas. Henry didn't like them.
He didn't like anything to do with firearms but nevertheless he crossed the street to look in the window, fully intending to enter the shop and experience the dubious pleasure of being sold a gun.
The door was solid and massive and the colour of Pears Soap. The window displays which flanked it were curiously innocuous and, as it turned out, deceptive. The window to the left was devoted largely to an array of knives. There were Swiss Army combinations consisting of a whole toolbox of miniature equipment: scissors, file, can opener, corkscrew, bottle opener, awl, tweezers, saw, pliers, magnifying glass, tooth pick, screw driver - almost entirely useless for practical purposes. Then there were the spring-loaded clasp knives arranged like the spokes of a wheel. These were ideal for cutting bite-sized lengths of biltong (dried meat), or for stabbing rival gangsters. Behind the knives in one corner stood a family of stainless steel vacuum flasks, made in the USA and very expensive. In the other corner were two Coleman cooler boxes arranged one on top of the other.
The right hand window was given over to a scene from the bush, with grass and twigs on the floor and a black pot astride the coals of a campfire. On the seat of a canvas folding-chair was a felt bush hat complete with leopard-skin headband. Casually leaning against the chair was a .303 hunting rifle. In the background he saw a weathered tree trunk upon which hung a pair of handcuffs and a four-foot sjambok (whip) of genuine hippo hide. The sporting life was sketched with skilful economy and the window dresser's dark message was not lost on Henry once he spotted the accoutrements on the periphery - strict discipline was an essential ingredient for a successful safari.
In the Metropole Bar on the corner of Long Street he drank two beers to prepare himself for the little adventure that awaited him. He had no intention of becoming a gun owner but he was more than moderately curious about the process surrounding the legal acquisition of a firearm.
Get the full story from Amazon's kindle store http://www.amazon.com/Sell-Me-A-Gun-e...
