I was travelling through Randburg recently with a friend when I saw the most remarkable billboard. I’m glad I wasn’t in the driver’s seat because I would almost certainly have careered off the road in my outburst of surprised laughter.
“Your friendly one-stop gun shop.”
The advert was painted in bold red and white on a hoarding above the shopping centre.
Surely the words friendly and gun just don’t belong in the same sentence?
Oops ? there they are again!
I thought grocers were friendly, not gun shops. But maybe that’s just the limitations of my thinking.
At this point I’d like to ask all the pro-gun lobbyists to sit right back down again. Some of my best acquaintances have guns.
It was once pointed out to me that a gun is just a piece of metal, like a knife; and that, in the wrong hands, like a knife a gun can be dangerous.
The difference for me is this ? my trusty kitchen knife was designed to harm nothing more than a tomato or a piece of cheese, while a gun is specifically designed for the purpose of putting a rather large hole in a human.
I’m sure that a gun at the right moment can be a very friendly thing to have around, but personally I can’t defend myself possessing something that is specifically designed to hurt others.
But there is clearly a cunning someone at the friendly one-stop gun shop who is experimenting with trendy marketing ploys, possibly to catch the attention of gun-shy people like myself. I’d never thought of this before now but, if I were to buy a gun, I would definitely want to do it in a friendly environment, and absolutely in one stop.
But what exactly does the advertiser mean? I wonder. The typical one-stop shop offers bread, milk and batteries ? but not bullets (give them time).
Maybe the one-stop gun shop has seen the marketing gap in our violence-rife society and is one step ahead of the rest.
Could it be a bit like the CNA that offers you books and chocolates?
Guns and roses perhaps?
I’m being silly. What they probably mean is that the whole gamut of guns is available.
So that’ll be the Uzi for the watchtower on the farm, a little silver something for the wife’s handbag, and an AK-47 for my buddy in the taxi business.
What it implies, of course, is that guns are easy to access and useful things to have, and can be tagged on to the bottom of a shopping list without so much as a second thought.
Guns are going mainstream. Hang on a minute. They already are. We just don’t like to think about it. Our society is flooded with weapons. Admittedly most of them are illegally obtained from very unfriendly types but they are with us.
A few years back Nadine Gordimer wrote a book called The House Gun. The gist was that a crime was committed because a gun, instead of a vase, was to hand in a moment of rage. So a nasty domestic row suddenly escalated into a messy murder.
I wonder how many of the crimes in this country have occurred because a gun just happened to be around? Picture it. You are having a really vicious argument (usually with someone you love very much) and you start fishing around in your brain for the meanest, nastiest thing you can say.
I think reaching for a gun is probably the physical manifestation of that sentiment.
If we’re honest, we know it’s possible to reach a point when we are a little out of control and our desire to hurt, or just shock into horrified silence, overrides our better judgement.
If you can do it with words, could you be tempted to do it with a gun? It has high drama after all. Your lover really knows you mean business if you start brandishing a weapon. Of course it’s not loaded, and of course you are not going to fire the bloody … Oh god, what have I done, what have I done?
I wonder if it ever happens like that.
Perhaps I stay away from guns not only because of a latent hippie karmic thing but also because I might scare myself with it. Gun owners surely have to be the most responsible people in the world.
Finally, I think I might just have figured out the billboard. Perhaps the friendly one-stop gun shop offers friendly advice and a one-stop psychological evaluation when you make your first purchase? Maybe I’ll pop in some time.