Street Roots • July 8-14, 2016
News
ownership, and he gave me a nuanced report on
how it feels to be a liberal, environmentalist
community activist in a part of Oregon known for
its many right-wing, anti-government residents.
“I’m an anomaly,” he said. “I am sure there are
other closeted people around with my views, but
they don’t talk about it. I have no problem with
universal background checks, and requirements to
show competency in handling guns. I think there
should be strict rules in how firearms are stored
and used.”
Dave went on to explain gun culture, as he sees
it today, “There is a shift in the culture. It’s a
different culture. We grew up with firearms. When I
was about five years old, I had a pop gun. I aimed
my pop gun at my dad - normal kid - and he took it
away. You do not point a firearm at a human being
for any reason whatsoever.”
Dave believes that there are fewer hunters, more
broken families, and therefore fewer granddads and
dads taking kids out, and fewer hunter safety
courses too. The main exposure to firearms is
video games and TV shows, which don’t give kids
any understanding of what weapons are capable of
doing. They are not learning - inside the safety of a
healthy hunting culture, inside a family - how to
use guns safely.
I asked Dave what he hears from gun owners
when mass shootings occur. First, he was careful to
distinguish hunters and target shooters from the
general mass of gun owners, because there are
differences. The guys hanging out in gun stores,
who collect guns and have them at home for self-
defense or a general animosity toward
“government” are likely to say some variation on “If
there had been someone carrying a gun in the that
classroom, it never would have happened!” There is
no shortage of antj-gun-control, anti-Obama, anti-
government, pro-gun sentiment, according to Dave.
But I was also interested to learn that there
aren’t as many conversations about guns and gun
ownership in the sporting goods world, anymore,
because many guns are sold via telemarketers, a
fact that I found startling.
Dave quit selling guns a few years ago and, he
told me, “It doesn’t break my h e a rt” I take this to
be for both financial and ethical reasons. Like me,
he is concerned about the number of guns, and
implied that there is a great naivete about the
magnitude of the problem: “I think there are more
guns buried or hidden in Josephine County alone
than you can even imagine.”
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The gun culture is powerful in rural Oregon, and
I had to temper my hopes, as I listened to Dave talk
about people who hold liberal views: “We’re more
conscientious about who we talk to, we who hold
these views, we don’t talk about i t It’s kind of a
silent society. The culture of people purchasing
firearms, as well as the people selling firearms is
much more a culture of zealots than it once was.
Our small town people were not gun zealots in the
past, but many are now.”
He also spoke of the way that this zeal plays out
in gun stores, where bigger and more powerful
guns are favored: “ I’ve seen gun salesmen in gun
stores selling a gun that is not a good match, trying
to sell people the most powerful gun on the shelf,
or selling a woman who wants a handgun for
protection a gun that’s way too big. That’s a
problem.” Dave relies on what our forefathers had
in mind, an informed and an engaged electorate: “I
almost want to think that a silent majority is in
favor of reasonable gun standards.”
I have another friend, Aucha Kameroff, middle-
aged now, whom I taught many years ago in rural
Alaska, when she was a schoolgirl and I a teacher
with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest.
Aucha is a Yup’ik Native Alaskan, an
independent, strong woman. Aucha’s son Frank
died by suicide with a gun; she is raising his three
young boys, while working as a regional probation
supervisor in Kotzebue on the Bering Sea coast
She hunts and fishes in traditional ways. She has
seen the lethal damage that guns can do, very close
up, in the tragic numbers of Native suicides and
murders. She respects and cares for the weapons
that sustain her family and carry on her cultural
traditions. She uses them for good, guarding the
safety of her young boys, sharing her skills and love
of hunting and fishing with them. She knows all
there is to know about what guns can do.
Late last fall, I went to two events, both of which
lifted my spirits a little. The first was a vigil, held
the very night of the day that nine people were
murdered at Umpqua Community College. I was
deeply touched by the clergy assembled at the
entrance of City Hall in Portland. Rabbis, black
preachers and a few white Protestants prayed with
and for the people of Roseburg. These were city
people, not small-town ministers, people who would
stand out in Roseburg because of their rabbinical
hats and beards or their skin color. They might
have hesitated to go there, but they hastened to
speak out, to stand with the people of Roseburg, to
lend their gravitas to the tragedy of those lives lost
A few young students from Umpqua Community
College were there as well; one slight young woman
stood and spoke at the microphone among these
older serious men, in a quavering voice, of her
sorrow and her gratitude that the assembled people
had come to mourn with her.
The second was a march in my neighborhood,
around Peninsula Park and to the elegant pavilion
in the sunken rose garden, a march organized by
Moms Demand Action, a partner to Everytown for
Gun Safety, which was established after the killings
at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Their mission
statement includes these words: “Moms Demand
Action supports the 2nd Amendment, but we
believe common-sense solutions can help decrease
the escalating epidemic of gun violence that kills
too many of our children and loved ones every day.”
Moms Demand Action has a campaign called
“Wear Orange.” They encourage demonstrators and
supporters to wear orange to symbolize safety, as
hunters do in order to see each other in the woods.
This honors hunters, really, because what we all
want is just safety, for our children, our friends, our
neighbors, and people we like and don’t like.
After this demonstration, a bright sea of orange
standing out on a gray and rainy day, I posted a
note about it on Facebook, to which two old high
school friends responded with suspicion. These two
men, who are both avid hunters and gun-owners,
wondered what this was about. Did this group
advocate taking their guns away? Is it anti-hunting?
Because of this smart “Wear Orange”
campaign, I was able to give them an answer that
made sense to them, that Moms Demand Action
does not want to take their hunting rifles away, but
wants reasonable controls on assault weapons, to
end the relentless series of mass shootings to
which we have become accustomed. These men
understand hunter orange. They do not want little
children gunned down. They did not object to my
use of the phrase “gun violence.” They want to go
back out to the woods to hunt, safely. They seemed
to be satisfied with my answer.
It felt like a small victory to me.
Moms D em and Action fo r G un Sense in America,
momsdemandaction.org. Moms D emand Action
organizes demonstrations and letter-writing
campaigns, am ong other actions. You can connect
with the local chapter on the web site. Ceasefire
Oregon, www.ceasefireoregon.org/, works to promote
reasonable, effective g u n laws.
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