Presents
Pamphlet #215
Utahns Guns Are Dangerous!
by
Larry Ripplinger
For Utah gun owners,
little has changed since the days
when Brigham Young cautioned
Mormon pioneers to stock food and rifles.
More than 30,000 Utahns
have applied for and been granted
concealed - carry permits,
and virtually every able-bodied,
law abiding citizen able to
vote can strap on a holster
with a loaded pistol in Utah
as long as the weapon remains
in plain view.
Is this really a good idea?
It seems gun violence is rampant
all across the United States.
Especially terrifying are the
guns that are killing children in schools.
All I can say is
I’m glad I don't own a gun that kills children.
In fact I'm not sure this gun I have will kill anything.
A friend of mine gave me a 357
Police special a while back
and told me at the time,
"it's a really dangerous gun".
I told him I would keep an eye on it,
and put it in a case by my easy chair.
A few weeks later
one evening
while watching an especially violent show on TV,
I thought I saw it move,
out of the periphery of my eye.
Boy,
I stared at that thing the rest of the night.
I wasn’t taking any chances.
The next day I went out to my tool shed,
got a hammer
and placed it along side my easy chair.
I wanted to have it handy to beat the h....out of that gun
if it tried something funny again.
Guess I should have known it wouldn't shoot the TV.
This was a Police special that was trained to shoot mostly people
or once in a while a mad dog or some violent critter.
Maybe it just got excited.
I didn’t have to wait long
before it showed it’s true colors.
It was on Super bowl Sunday.
My son Randy walked down from his house
to watch the game with my wife Kay and me.
It was a wonderful Sunday.
Good football and we are having a nice visit and then it happened.
True story.
When I look out my front door,
across the porch I see a good share of landscape.
I can look across the Burr Trail into the Grand Staircase of The Escalante,
Clinton’s first declared National Monument by executive order.
Suddenly,
we all hear the yapping of Cappy,
a very small white 10 month old puppy we have at our home
because we are puppy sitting while a daughter,
husband and family are away in Germany for a year,
Mitch doing his Elton John impersonation.
The shrill yapping of the puppy was like nothing
I've heard before or since.
My eyes caught the movement of animal action outside.
Looked like a big dog or possibly a coyote
about to munch our little Cappy.
So I yelled "Coyote" and Kay hollers, "big dog".
Randy can’t see the action from his seat but
"hears" the action outside and our hollering inside.
Boy,
he’s up in a flash
and out that door like a gun
shot
and on to the rescue.
Well,
me,
I'm stuck there in my seat
with my prosthesis off,
leaving me pretty helpless.
So I am putting on my artificial
leg
with one eye on the door
and the other on my gun.
By now that dangerous,
violent gun ought to be springing
into action.
What does it think it was made for anyway?
Doesn’t it remember?
By the time I get to the door and open it to go out to give Randy a helping hand,
Cappy is a white streak,
shooting between my legs,
headed for the back bedroom and under the bed.
Whoa!!!
There is Randy at the end of porch.
He has a snowball in his hand.
I’m sure it’s one of those hard,
dangerous snowballs.
You know, the ones that hit you in the face and black your eye,
the one kids use all the time to subdue the enemy!
Ouch.
I asked Randy what happened?
My jaw fell open as he explained to us what took place.
As he rounded the porch,
he could see the action had come to a standstill.
Looking for a dog holding Cappy
down,
it took a moment to register
what was really holding him
down, (still yipping).
It’s not a dog at all,
or a coyote.
It’s a snarling,
staring him right in the eye,
cougar!
He only stood there for a moment,
hoping that dangerous,
violent gun would come to his
aid
and get rid of this menace once
and for all.
But that coward gun
was still laying there,
trying to hide behind anything
it could see.
Well,
with no choice left,
Randy does the unthinkable.
He reaches down and picks up one of those dangerous,
bloody your nose,
unlicensed,
unregulated,
hard as ice snowballs
and smacks that bad fellow cougar
right in the chops.
That was it.
Coug dropped that yipping puppy dog
like a hot potato or should I say "hot dog"?.
I think it figured if it got
hit by another ice ball,
it would be his demise.
At any rate he lit out of there
like there was no tomorrow.
Randy ain’t afraid of no stinking cougar,
not as long as he had a snowball.
That’s a pretty scary weapon
you know,
and I just may have changed
my mind about guns.
Maybe they aren’t
the violent killing machine
we have been led to believe.
The fact is,
arrows have killed more heads of state
in this world than bullets.
Of course cars kill the most now.
We license them,
put in seat belts,
give drivers training,
make it against the law to drink and drive
and cars are killers.
Right?
Lets put the blame
for these senseless school shootings
in proper perspective.
It isn’t the bows and arrows or the guns and cars,
it’s the snowballs.
They’re unregulated, unlicensed and free.
Yep!
They're uncontrolled
and just too many of ‘em.
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