Bang bang, you're dead
TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN
Princeton—About twenty years ago I found myself at one of those conferences in which Americans delight, devoted to discussing what is wrong and, less confidently, what is right with the United States. The discussion droned on for two days (it seemed longer) until late one afternoon one of the most distinguished `discussants,' Dr George N. Shuster, lost his temper. 'Why is it that nobody has even men- tioned the great American weakness—and great American sin—murder? There is a murder every thirty hours in this city [New York]. I have just come back from a year in Germany,
in an area in Bavaria where there are scores of thousands of refugees, Germans and others, with a largely wrecked economy. In that year in that district there was one murder. Why the difference?'
There was a shocked silence and then some feeble explanations and the meeting moved on to simpler things like restoring the family or helping to make Johnny read. In the past week I have recalled that meeting. For beneath all the shock caused by the murder of Martin Luther King, there has been an odd reluctance to discuss why and how that great and potentially disastrous crime was committed.
First of all, there was less indignation than was generally reported, just as there was less indignation in Dallas than it was convenient to pretend in 1963. I pointed out to a young academic, lunching at the same table, that I hadn't noticed any expression of distress from Mr Loeb, the Mayor, whose stern and unbend- ing attitude to the Negro strikers was the cause of a dangerous situation in Memphis which twice brought Dr King to the bitterly divided city. 'I don't suppose he thought King should have come to Memphis anyway,' was the calm comment, and I am sure that this attitude must have been that of many white citizens of Memphis (once a great slave trading capital), who don't like 'uppity Niggers.'
I didn't contest the view that a lot of people were only formally distressed but I went on to comment on the complete failure, even after the murder of President Kennedy, to get any effec- tive legislation to control-the mail order sale of deadly weapons. Oswald's gun was bought from a highly prosperous Chicago mail order house which is still in business. 'But you can't con- trol guns too much; that would interfere with hunting.' I retorted that the gun that killed Kennedy was an Italian army rifle, not a sport- ing gun; and in any case, what of the sale by post of revolvers,or, as it is delicately put, 'hand guns'? Whom is the purchaser preparing to hunt? In a very large number of cases, the purchaser is a woman, wronged, 'cast aside like a soiled glove,' not getting her alimony, a wife who has discovered that her husband has a mistress or, in one case I know of, discovering that a husband was in danger of leaving his mistress for his wife.
It is some time since the New Yorker published a cartoon showing a bosomy blonde buying a 'hand gun' and one of the salesmen whispering to another, 'We'd bet- ter look in the News tomorrow.' (The New York Daily News is a tabloid that makes one appreciate the merits of the Daily Mirror or even of the Daily Sketch.) But if the lady had been shy about buying the gun over the counter she too could have ordered one by post from Chicago. Indeed, a few years ago, and possibly even now, she could have ordered three for $49.50 in a neat little box. And each gun would have had a different coloured handle.
I have, however, another theory. The ladies who bump off their husbands or gentlemen friends usually plead total amnesia or everything going black or red. What could be a more plausible defence than the assertion that 'I was wearing a little black frock and the gun had a Pink handle. I must have been totally out of my mind at the moment.' She would have been acquitted even if her defence had been less plausible. For as the Washington Post pointed' out some year ago; 'the little woman never misses' and she is never conVicted either. There is only one case known to me of a husband losing his temper and getting away with it. A
prominent citizen of a middle-western city did shoot his wife and was acquitted. They were partners at bridge and the wife doubled the hus- band in no trumps and turned out to have nothing higher than a queen. A jury of bridge players acquitted the injured husband without leaving the box.
But there is a serious side to this free use of firearms. An astonishingly large number of Americans don't realise that the United States leads the world in murder as in so many other things. In 1966, the last year for which figures are available, males murdered 6,533 and women murdered 1,293. The male is deadlier, for many of his murders are business murders (there was one in the peaceful village of Princeton a few weeks ago). The women go in for crimes of passion, the objects of passion being money or other assets, as well as sIgually desired or loathed partners or rivals. Yet a great many Americans don't realise that these figures are abnormally high—even people, as often hap- pens in the South but not only in the South, who believe that the officially reported murders are only the tip of the iceberg, especially when it is a trivial matter like one nigger killing another.
But in addition to the officially reported murders, there are the murders committed with impunity by the police. 'Shoot first and inquire after' is a maxim commonly acted on and given legislative sanction. (I have heard it defended by the District Attorney of a very large city in terms that would scare the life out of me if I were black.) On the day before Dr King was murdered, a Senate committee, by a large majority, killed all serious proposals to make getting guns harder. After the King murder, the trade in hand guns may, from the last bulletins, be made more difficult. But will it? A veteran Congressman, Mr Dingell of Michigan, wants the freedom of licensed murder to be preserved.
The furthest he and another mid-western states- man, Senator Hruska, want to go is to insist that the purchaser sign an affidavit that 'the purchaser of a firearm through the mail is not a felon, is not a criminal, is not a fugitive from justice, is not a dope fiend, and is not under age.' This will prove as effective as making adulterous or fornicating couples sign hotel or, more often, motel registers.
This summer will be hot and bloody. Most of the victims of easy shooting will be, as usual, blacks. They will have the satis- faction of knowing as they go down that they are protecting the alleged constitutional rights of Representative Dingell and the many members of the National Rifle Association. At the same time, police are busy arresting young people for smoking 'pot' and older people for backing horses. There are times when one thinks that the American people are out of their minds. This is one of them. Would anything change the toleration of this infamous traffic? Perhaps shooting a Congressman or two?
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