Lieutenant Joshua Kruse, United States Army

There is something of a family tradition on the farm the day after Thanksgiving, but it has changed over the years. The younger men and a few of the women would go out in the nearby fields to hunt quail. After restrictions were imposed on hunting coyotes the quail population fell. For a couple of years someone would go out early on that Friday morning and buy a few boxes of quail (heaven knows where) and then scatter them in the bushes. The hunt resumed. I used to joke with the guys that I was better armed: they had shotguns but I had a Canon.

 

Eventually the marksmen turned to shooting clay pigeons. (See https://flic.kr/p/dvLvNN). As the years passed and most of that generation had families, the turnout decreased. Now it's just target practice out behind the house with whoever is around. This is my nephew who graduated from West Point last spring, Lieutenant Joshua Kruse. He is supposed to know how to use these things.

Not making any comment about guns here. No one in my immediate family has ever owned one. It is an integral part of the culture in rural Kansas. My relatives there use them with the highest safety standards.        

#docs4gunsense

There was a physician at the March For Our Lives, pictured above. His sign and message were very simple. Yes, there is a spelling error but there are lots of good doctors in this country who are not native English speakers.This one may work at the emergency room of one our urban hospitals.  You can imagine what he has seen.   

Able To Bend Steel In His Bare Hands

As it used to say in the lead-in to the old Superman TV show that I watched regularly when I was a kid:

Announcer: Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

Voices: Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!

Announcer: Yes, it's Superman, strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way.

Yes, truth, justice and the American way. Would that my country shared the values expressed in the poster.

Reminds me of Laurie Anderson's O Superman, one of my favorite songs ever.       

Enough

Assez. Suficiente. Genug. 足够 Tillräckligt. Достаточно. 十分な。Genoeg. מַסְפִּיק! Basta! No bloody more. They are young, impassioned and organized. They are the future. They will vote their opponents out of office.      

March For Our Lives

The Crowe family joined more than 10,000 of our neighbors in the March For Our Lives yesterday. These are just two of the things I saw. More to come.        

It's Okay, He's Supposed To Know This

Guns are as much a part of the culture of rural Kansas as lenses are of mine. I'm not going to editorialize about it. Some people hunt. Some just shoot targets, which is what is going on here. Above is my nephew Josh with (I think) an AK 15. He is a third year cadet at West Point, the United States Military Academy, so he is required to know this stuff. Below, D.J, my niece's husband, gives a lesson to Brody, my - I'm not sure - grand nephew? I get confused about the terms for more distant relations.

I've never owned a gun and never will. I've fired one just a few times, probably all in Kansas. The great emphasis on safety these people have is impressive. Where I grew up, the only people who had guns were the police and a limited number of bad guys. Different worlds.

      

Orlando and St. Louis

This was taken a week ago Sunday at that Pagan Picnic thing. I didn't think I was going to use it on the blog. A bit of photojournalism to put on Flickr but entirely grotesque.   

And then Sunday in Orlando. 

THE OCCASIONAL RANT: there are some things about country that disturb me greatly. Guns and violent homophobia are examples, along with people like this who say someplace is safe only when law abiding citizens are packing heat. Idiots. Evildoers.

NO MORE ASSAULT WEAPONS. I've had the privilege to see a lot of the world. NOWHERE in the first world has a gun death rate ANYWHERE close to America's. Let us think of Australia's reaction to a mass killing with an assault weapon.

Which leads to the question of Mr. Trump and what he had to say on Monday. I cannot find the words to respond. I believe in pluralism. Within some loose boundaries, we should gladly tolerate people we disagree with. But Trump is far beyond what is marginally acceptable. That man is so dishonest, so narcissistic, so sick, I...I... 

Almost universally, I welcome people who piss me off. Not this one. How can we respect anyone who supports him?   

Thursday Arch Series

The gun guys and gals proceeded to the Arch after their rally in Citygarden. The monument and its grounds are a national park. I thought you couldn't bring firearms into a national park without special permission. I was wrong.

Notice the young mother with a toddler in a stroller in the third picture. The mom was packing, as you can see in the last photo. (Nice handle decor. I thought we got past that 150 years ago.) Note also that the child is holding a toy gun, one of those Nerf models that shoots foam plugs. Nice touch.

I'm finished with this.                 

No Guns

The counter-demonstration at the gun rally had a bigger turnout than the pistol packers. Most but not all of them seemed a bit shy. (Would you be shy if you had a semi-automatic rifle slung over your back?) It was interesting, though, that many of the gun owners engaged their opponents in conversation. No one was yelling, although I doubt anyone was converted.

The well-armed crowd had the right to do what they were doing in the great State of Missouri. Whether it was a good idea is another question entirely.               

Gun Violence

There was an anti-gun counter demonstration in Citygarden on Saturday. More were on that side, seeded with of people from a regional Amnesty International conference going on nearby. Other demonstrors marked the walkways with body outlines of the kind used by investigators at homicide scenes. They represented unarmed people killed by gunfire from police. 

In the last picture, the statue of Pinocchio raises his arms to the sky and asks the gods why.                    

Happiness Is A Warm Gun

Automatic weapons. On the street. In downtown St. Louis. Do you remember the Beatles' song Happiness Is a Warm Gun, with John Lennon's goat bleat of a voice crying bang bang shoot shoot? We all remember how John Lennon died.

There was a gun rights demonstration yesterday that began in Citygarden, surrounded by art. According to the event's Facebook page (taken down by the time of this writing) the purpose was “to raise awareness of the right to keep and bear arms under the Federal and Missouri State Constitutions.” Children were welcome but, as the FB page put it, "unarmed, of course."

You can carry a concealed weapon in this state if you have a permit. That's so in a lot if not most of America. Apparently you can carry it right out on your hip. And you can openly carry an assault rifle down Market Street.

There was a counter-demonstration. We will see more of this.                

Concealed Carry

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Firearms regulation is mostly left to the states in this country. Every single one of them except Illinois permits carrying a concealed weapon, mostly but not always with a license. You have to be at least 23 years old, take an approved training course and pay $100 but otherwise it's not too hard to get one in Missouri. Somebody could walk into my office packing heat. I'm sure it's happened. There are some exceptions. You can't carry a concealed handgun in a prison (that's a relief), bars (except the owner), publicly accessible hospitals (does that mean it's okay in a locked psych ward?), casinos (I said hit me!) or any church (amen, brother). Plus a few other places.

The gentlemen above were answering questions and selling merchandise for this trade at the Gyppy Caravan. Note the hunter-orange Cardinals cap and the tee shirt from the National Rifle Association convention that was here in April. The flea market booth below was run by a very friendly family selling toy wooden assault weapons. Buy one and get a pistol at half price.

Didn't make a lot of comments yesterday. The family made a late decision to see Othello at our summer Shakespeare In The Park festival. You have to show up very early to get a good seat on the lawn so we bring a picnic dinner and arrive before 6. To me, the main theme of Othello is humanity's boundless capacity to be wrong.

Armed And Dangerous

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Okay, I forgot that yesterday was Thursday. Sometimes when I work stupid hours like this, I lose track of the day of the week and occasionally the time of day. I just rely on my iPhone calendar to tell me what to do next. So no Arch yesterday. Sometimes it needs a rest. Me, too.

We're still in Kansas until I shoot some new local material. This is son Andy out with the skeet shooters, with his cousin Ryan in the background. He's not actually dangerous. In fact, he's rather kind-hearted and wouldn't shoot anything but a clay pigeon. For example, he's in the midst of a career change from a software engineer for businesses he doesn't care about to a math teacher in the Chicago public schools. Andy does not carry a firearm on the streets of Chicago, although under some circumstances this might be advisable.

"I'll Keep My Guns..." (Guns Weekend, Part 2)

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Seen on the back window of a huge SUV in downtown traffic. Another example of why you should always have a camera handy. In this case, mine was resting by me in the car on what Americans call the shotgun seat.

This is a specifically anti-Obama sticker. One of his campaign slogans was "change you can believe in." These people scare the bejeebers out of me. It involves the far-right (and pretty common) paranoid delusion that liberals, or progressives as we call ourselves now, actually, really want to create a socialist dictatorship to deprive drivers of GMC Yukons of their freedom (to waste energy?), money (via taxes) and, of course, their guns. Sheesh. We just want everyone to be happy, healthy, safe and maybe have some fun.

I got a bunch of good pictures yesterday at the second annual St. Louis Idiotarod, a benefit for Operation Food Search. Coverage is starting today on Downtown St. Louis 365. Worth a look.

781-GUNS (Gun Weekend, Part 1)

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Much of the world knows that a lot of America is gun happy. I won't try to assess the psychology and sociology of it - frontier spirit, traditions of hunting for food, fierce individualism, the thrill of packing big heat, all that stuff. In my state, Missouri, you can carry a concealed weapon into most places (like, um, church or a baseball game) as long as you pass a simple background check. As you walk down the street, you have no way to know who is armed.

I've shot a gun a couple of times. Once in college, plonking beer cans with a 22 on a Vermont farm. In recent years, taking a shotgun from my in-laws in Kansas, trying (unsuccessfully) to hit clay pigeons. I did get a tree straight on, though. I don't want a gun. I don't like guns. Guns are for shooting people and animals. Peace to all our brothers and sisters, I say.

The place above is on Manchester between Hampton and Kingshighway. There will be another STL gun photo tomorrow.

Today's post on Downtown St. Louis 365 is about mystery and chocolate.

Bull's Eye

The Second Ammendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." We have been vehemently arguing about what that means for more than two centuries. Some Americans feel that gun ownership is a most fundamental right. The late actor Charlton Heston, for many years the president of the National Rifle Association, once said that "I'll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands." Other Americans, including the members of this household, are horrified by our country's gun culture.

The place in these photos is very plain. It makes its presence and purpose clear but there are no windows to reveal what happens inside. What's your view on who should have guns and under what circumstances?

Tomorrow: Thursday Arch Series

Tragedy

Americans and guns. Again. On Thursday night, an enraged man approached the government buildings of Kirkwood, a pleasant suburb of St. Louis. He was carrying a large handgun. The man shot and killed a police officer, taking his weapon. He then walked around the corner into City Hall, where a council meeting was taking place. Upon entering the council chamber, the assailant opened fire with both guns, killing another policeman and three city officials. The mayor was critically wounded. Other Kirkwood police officers rushed into the room and shot the gunman dead.

The event has dominated St. Louis news and was reported nationally, such as this New York Times article. The shooter was a small contractor who was in constant conflict with the city. He had disrupted previous council meetings, been arrested for disorderly conduct more than once and had recently lost a lawsuit against the city in which he claimed that his constitutional right to free speech had been violated. And he had a gun. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

I took pictures around the Kirkwood City Hall and the police station this morning. This kind of public outpouring of grief and sympathy is common in the US. Back in April, I reported on similar expressions when a St. Louis Cardinals pitcher died in an auto wreck while extremely intoxicated and driving at high speed. There is no question that these feelings are genuine but the decorations in front of City Hall today seemed somehow festive, full of bright colors and the Valentine's Day decorations now in stores.

The police station was something different. There were fewer people people and flowers, but still the Valentine's hearts. A single police officer stood alone across the street next to his car. His face was empty. He covered his eyes with black sunglasses. I wanted to be a good photojournalist and approach him, talk about how he was feeling and ask if I could take his picture in that setting. I've been trained to do this. I couldn't.

Afterwards, I drove downtown to my office as I usually do on Saturday. As I approached the Mississippi, the sky was cloudless. The steel gleam of the Arch was exceptionally bright.

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I'm working on several other pictures I took this morning. Some of them will be posted here on Sunday.


TOMORROW: More from Kirkwood.