DU Historians please help me out

[hunter]

16. My great grandmas were wild west.

They didn't tolerate fools with guns and they were the only law that mattered. Fools and their guns were soon parted.

As a child on several occasions I witnessed my mom going full Berserker on fools with guns. (I may be a little PTSD about it.)

My mom's grandma owned the original family homestead. She regarded hunters from the city as a lower life form that endangered her children, cattle, and dogs. She once told me a very un-great-grandmotherly story about a hunter she confronted as he was taking a runny shit. Poor fellow got the hell out of there and drove back home soiling the seat of his fancy truck.

My name is Hunter, and yes, I've hunted animals for dinner, but I still think most people with guns are fools, the police included.

I live in an exceptionally violent U.S. city. It's "Wild West" in a different way. The police are perpetually understaffed and don't respond promptly to calls unless someone is dead, bleeding profusely, or on fire. For most anything else they'll ask you to file a report on their internet site, or if you can't do that, to come down to the station to file your report in person. Visiting the station is a trip. The clerks sit behind bullet proof glass, you sign in, and wait for your name to be called. The people you are waiting with are far more diverse than the "Group W" bench of Alice's Restaurant.

I've confronted people with guns, I've been confronted by people with guns, and I've seen shootings. When my kids were young, and we were living in a rougher neighborhood, we were out playing in the yard one day. I heard an angry confrontation near our house and saw, over the fence, a police officer shoot a man in the chest. I was glad my kids couldn't see over the fence. We followed our usual gunfire drill of retreating to the back bedroom to play on the floor until it was all over. The guy I saw shot that day lived. Our paramedics and emergency rooms are well practiced with gunshot victims. But the same guy was killed a few years later by a rival gang.

I've never been in a situation that might have turned out better had I been carrying a gun. Once the guns come out everything is FUBAR, and outcomes are pretty random and grim no matter who has the guns, "good" guy or bad. I've no desire to participate in that sort of madness.