The movie in which Ralphie has a desperate desire to own a Red Ryder BB gun has become a Christmas classic. My name isn't Ralphie and I never shot myself in the eye, but I was the proud owner of a Red Ryder BB rifle. I recall using it in an attempt to massacre a flock of noisy sparrows. On the next Sunday, the Saddlebag Preacher's extemporaneous sermon was about killing birds. Over and over again, he thundered, "Don't kill little birds." Every sentence was like a hammer pounding on my guilty soul. I haven't exterminated any kind of a bird since 1939. This memory, however, is only incidental to the story of weaponry.
In addition to the BB gun I had a slingshot and a powerful arrow gun that used bands cut from old truck tire tubes to propel arrows made from cedar shingles. The manufacturers of these weapons were my schoolmates, Donald and Elvie Smith. In later life, Elvie was the head honcho of Pratt and Whitney Canada. This also is another story.
There were no firearms in our house, but my cousin's father owned a heavy rifle and a single-shot .22 that I was sometimes permitted to fire. The true purpose of all the weapons to which I had access was to protect the world from gophers. In my boyhood world there was no open season on human beings. I attended a small school in a small village, walking or cycling fearlessly wherever I went. The term "abuse" wasn't even in my vocabulary. Despite the hardships which came with living in rural Saskatchewan 70 years ago, children in my village were safe.
Most Canadians tend to be self-righteously snooty when thinking about the lethal arsenals our American cousins keep as household utensils. We shouldn't be. There are different systems of government, of laws and of attitudes on each side of the border. All result from different beginnings and different national journeys through time. Born in a revolution and enlarged by conquest, our southern neighbour has a bloodstained history. One incident in the American War for Independence (from Britain) was the Boston Tea Party. There, American patriots dumped heavily taxed (by Britain) shipments of tea into the Boston harbour. The cry was "No taxation without representation." A jolly good slogan it was, too. I have been a tea-drinker since boyhood. If any tyrant ever threatened to interfere with my enjoyment of my favourite beverage, I too would revolt. I would take up my Red Ryder BB gun and pepper him mercilessly.
My somewhat spotty research leads me to believe that many generations of my antecedents were content to survive in a weaponless state. I think my earliest known ancestor, Jon Wardil of the Roving Eye, was responsible for their pacifism. A soldier in the Jacobite army of Bonnie Prince Charlie, he was so entranced by an alluring maiden in Yorkshire that he decided making love would be more fun than making war. Accordingly, he went AWOL, changed his religion, and settled down to the peaceful pleasure of siring a tribe of Protestants. I owe him for my life. This also is another story.
After throwing off the British yoke, the American states were involved in another war with Britain in 1812. The direct cause of the war was the naval blockade which prevented American goods from reaching ports controlled by Napoleon Bonaparte, and by the impressments of American citizens into the undermanned ships of the British Navy. Although battles of the 1812 war were fought in what is now Canadian territory, there was no self-governing nation called Canada in 1812.
Subsequently, armed forces of the United State of America were involved in seizing territory from Mexico and Spain, in the terrible carnage of the War Between the States and in what was called the Indian Wars. During all of this time, it was relatively peaceful on our side of the border. We had no Indian wars. White settlement was made possible in most of Canada by nation-to nation treaties during the reign of Queen Victoria. All of these treaties were inherited by the Dominion of Canada in 1867.
There were two significant armed rebellions in Canada. Louis Riel was involved in both of them. In the first, he created the new province of Manitoba. In the second he was captured and hanged. (The face of justice is always shaped by the side that wins.) The rebels didn't lose because their cause was unjust or their will to fight was lacking. They were outgunned. The NWMP and Canadian Militia had field guns and two multi-barrelled Gatling guns operated by American soldiers who were, in fact, acting as travelling salesmen for the company that made the guns.
The commander of the Canadian Militia was Frederick Middleton, a British general, who is often characterized as stuffy.
Stuffy establishments rarely generate popular heroes. Down in the States, there have always been hero factories, turning out gun-toting supermen by the score. A journalist named Ned Buntline actually invented the Wild West and its duelling gunslingers.
A grateful gun-maker rewarded him with a one-of-kind long-barrelled Colt Peacemaker called the Buntline Special.
The political battle in Washington over gun control may not reach a sensible conclusion for a very long time. Making and selling armaments of all kinds is extremely profitable and the gun lobby is very well-financed. Besides this, the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, that was intended to permit the part-time soldiers of the U.S. Militia to keep guns in their own homes, is being construed as the sacred instrument which gives Americans the unrestricted right to own any quantity of lethal weapons of any type, including assault rifles. There are people who believe in a Doomsday scenario. They believe people in the world will die by the millions as a result of environmental degradation before there is ever effective gun control in the United States. Be that as it may, and recognizing that determined crazies can always find illegal weapons to use for illegal purposes, efforts to stop the massacres must be made. Is it unreasonable to attempt to make every child in every school in the continent as safe and fearless and trusting as I was in a small school in a small prairie village over 70 years ago?
