Front Sight, Press

“We were somewhere around Barstow
on the edge of the desert
when the drugs began to take hold.”
– Hunter S. Thompson,
the first line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson took his own life on February 20, 2005. In the fall of 1971, I was at Maryville College in my abortive freshman year. I lived in a dorm. I went up to the room of another guy in the dorm named Walter. Walter was an interesting guy. He had been to Japan and studied Zen and acupuncture. He could do the best back massage I ever had in my life. He also had some great Lebanese blond hashish. I noticed a copy of Rolling Stone with some grotesque cartoons on the cover — “The Fear and the Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S. Thompson. I scanned the words and decided this was some weird shit. Being a visual person, the ugly cartoons made a bigger impression on me.

Hunter was from Louisville, my home, but he was about 15 years older than I, so I never knew him. His writing and the school of “gonzo journalism” made a big impression on me. The idea of putting the writer’s emotions and imagination into the reporting of facts and events was important, easily abused but significant. He just did consciously and overtly what everyone else was doing unconsciously and covertly, but he did it with a violence that demanded attention. I’m not a journalist so the issues of gonzo journalism and how it fits into mainstream journalism are largely academic for me, but I was a fan of Hunter S. Thompson.

Gunz

Shooting appliances in your front yard and wounding your assistant while trying to hit a bear does tend to send the wrong message, that guns are the toys of choice for the deranged. But guns aren’t toys. We may find recreation in working with guns, target shooting, building guns — stuff like that — but guns aren’t toys. I didn’t like the way Hunter played with guns.

I’m a son of the rural South. I grew up “playing” with guns, shooting things just for the hell of it, blowing up appliances with a .357 Magnum, plinking at bottles and cans just to see how much accuracy we could achieve, launching things into the air and blasting them with a shotgun. It is fun. I understand the attraction. I also understand that guns are dangerous. I learned the absolute immutable rules of gun handling very early: Treat all guns as if there were loaded; be sure of your target and what’s behind it; keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot; never cover with the muzzle anything you don’t intend to destroy. When I got my first air rifle at the tender age of six, my grandfather managed to condense the essence of gun safety to me in one traumatic utterance, “If I ever see you point it at somebody, I’ll wrap it around your neck.” The lesson took.

There is a strange neurological effect for me in firing powerful guns. It is at once exhilarating and relaxing. It’s like a really good drug (hmmm… do I sense a connection here?). I have often noticed, especially on the way home from a pistol match, a very distinct tranquility not unlike the effect of valium.

The way that Hunter played with guns was something else entirely. He was most often intoxicated or doing his damnedest to make people think he was. His gun play always carried the odor of a publicity stunt, as if these acts with guns were carefully designed absurdist theater engineered to project the image of a wild and dangerous man who might very well hurt somebody if the wrong combination of circumstances and chemicals came together. It was a sort of myth building. I’m talking here about the public image; I didn’t know him personally. Alone in his own space he may have been a model of responsible gun handling and mature behavior, but somehow I doubt it. Regardless, his personal life doesn’t concern me. The public image of him standing in the snow murdering his typewriter with a shotgun does. At the very best, he left us an enduring parable of what not to do. At worst he served as a precursor and model for the likes of Michael Moore and the Brady jihad to characterize gun owners as “wackos.” The big difference is that Hunter embodied it, internalized it, and became the crazed gunman. I didn’t like the way Hunter played with guns.

Suicide

I hate it that Hunter sat at his kitchen table and ate his pistol. He should have died of a massive overdose of iguana pituitary. Instead, he became a poster boy for gun control — a crazy old white man with overwhelming firepower who finally succumbs to drug abuse, pain, time and his own lethal toys. I really hate that.

I won’t say that there is never a situation that justifies suicide because I think there are some, but they are rare and extreme. Most of the suicides I see are something short of the extreme situation that could justify suicide for me. I don’t want to judge people who take their own lives; I haven’t walked in their shoes or felt the demons that brought them to the place where they feel they have to kill themselves. I will say that from the viewpoint of an outside observer, most of the suicides I have seen have a way of negating the life and meaning of the victim’s existence. They are like an emotional car bomb going off in the midst of the suicide’s friends and loved ones.

I didn’t like the way Hunter played with guns.