Handle Every Gun as if it is Loaded

 Late one evening, (or early the next morning), about thirty years ago, I was helping my friends Lynn and Steve polish off a case of Natural Light beer in the basement of Lynn’s parents’ house. As is the case with most of the “lost nights” of my inebriated youth, I don’t remember what we talked about, but I do recall laughing a lot. That is, we laughed a lot—until the moment when Lynn calmly reached for one of his hunting rifles, aimed it squarely at Steve’s forehead, and without a moment’s hesitation, pulled the trigger.

Click.

In a span of about five seconds, Steve’s emotions changed from being happily oblivious to thoroughly terrified and to absolutely furious. As I watched the scene unfold from a few feet away, I, too, went from feeling completely mortified to utterly outraged.

“Relax,” an amused Lynn said as he revealed a small object he’d been holding in his hand. “I removed the firing pin.” Steve and I failed to see any humor in the stunt, and we proceeded to blast Lynn with a double-barrel of fury and revulsion until we took our leave of him.

A year or so later, Lynn and another member of our circle of friends named Wes went to a shooting range to test their marksmanship with a pair of handguns: a .22 caliber semi-automatic and a .44 magnum.

After they had emptied their clips, they walked downrange to retrieve their targets. About halfway there, Wes slipped in mud and fell backwards. As he hit the ground, his right index finger, along with the rest of his body, tensed up, and he unknowingly squeezed the pistol’s trigger.

BANG!

For a split second, Wes was frozen in fear, then he heard a sound much more shocking than the report of the weapon. The sound was Lynn’s pained voice. “You shot me!” Wes couldn’t believe his ears. He couldn’t believe he had just shot his friend.

“Ha, ha. Very funny,” Wes said nervously as he climbed to his feet.

 

“I’m not kidding! You shot me in the ass!” Lynn yelled. Wes desperately tried to convince himself it was just a bad joke. Afterall, Lynn had a reputation for making poorly-conceived gun jokes. Reluctantly, Wes looked as Lynn turned to show him that there were indeed two new holes in the seat of his pants.

In the following years, the two friends managed to find the dark humor in the situation. Lynn has never missed an opportunity to tell people, “Wes here once shot me in the ass.” The natural question most people then ask is, “Wes, why did you shoot Lynn in the ass?” To which Wes always answers, “Because I didn’t lead him enough.”

Of course, the real reason Wes shot Lynn was because he failed to make sure that the weapon he was carrying was actually empty. Although he checked his clip and saw that it was spent, he did not check the gun’s chamber. And while Lynn was fortunate to be hit in the posterior, rather than in the head, a vital organ, or a major blood vessel, he had been blessed with another crucial stroke of good luck that day. Prior to Wes’s turn with the .22, the gun that he was holding when he shot Lynn, Wes had been using the .44 magnum. Had he been holding the .44 when he slipped and accidently pulled the trigger, the more powerful weapon might have shattered Lynn’s pelvis or lacerated an artery. Lynn was indeed lucky that day. As lucky as anyone who has been shot can be.

I tell you these stories because of what they have in common with the recent tragedy that befell actor Alec Baldwin, cinematographer Halyna Hutchens, and director Joel Souza on the set of the film “Rust”. In that situation, an assistant director yelled “Cold gun!” when he handed a prop gun to Baldwin as they prepared to shoot a scene for the film. According to reports, Baldwin pointed the gun at Hutchens and, believing it to be safe and not loaded, pulled the trigger (perhaps by accident.) Hutchens died and Souza was hospitalized after being shot at close range. Inexplicably, the “cold” gun had been loaded with live ammunition. Whether this was a miscommunication, an oversight, or sabotage is under police investigation.

All three of these incidents could have been avoided had the people holding the weapons followed one very simple and critical rule: Handle every gun as if it is loaded.

Had Lynn treated his hunting rifle as if it were loaded, he would have never pointed it at Steve and pulled the trigger, scaring Steve and I half to death. Accidents happen, and in his intoxicated state, Lynn could have easily thought that he had removed the firing pin, even if he hadn’t.

Lynn himself would not have been shot had Wes handled his handgun as if it were loaded. Knowing Wes like I do, he would have never deliberately carried a loaded gun downrange through slippery mud with the safety off.

I don’t want to insinuate that Alec Baldwin is the person responsible for the death of his colleague. On movie sets, the armorer, the prop master, and an assistant director are in change of making sure that prop guns are prepared, inspected, and certified to be safe before handing them to an actor. When the assistant director yells “Cold gun” on a set, actors are not expected to do their own inspection prior to filming a scene. They are actors, not firearms safety specialists.

Furthermore, a “cold gun” should never be loaded—not even with blanks, much less with live rounds. Had Baldwin’s prop gun been handled as if it were loaded, the terrible tragedy might have been avoided.

Please protect yourself and those around you, handle every gun as if it is loaded.

Time to Print New Business Cards

By now you have surely noticed that the Journal has a new general news reporter working the Southern Boone County beat; a fellow named Travis Naughton. “THE Travis Naughton?” you may be asking. “The narcissistic, bipolar, alcoholic, bleeding-heart-liberal, substitute teacher, public address announcer, atheist wedding officiant, and stay-at-home parent/grandparent who has been ranting and raving on the Journal’s opinion page for the last ten years? THAT Travis Naughton?!”

Yes. THAT Travis Naughton. Me.

I can already hear “FAKE NEWS!” being shouted by my several and enthusiastic detractors. In fact, one of the first people I reached out to for a news story that would be appearing on the Journal’s front page said, “It’s always risky answering questions for a biased journalist. Media without biased opinions are something that appear to be quite rare nowadays. Southern Boone definitely deserves an unbiased media in times such as these.”

 

I wholeheartedly agree.

On Page 4, the Journal’s opinion page, I am free to share my opinions on just about any subject I’m interested in. I’ve heard positive and negative feedback from readers over the years, which tells me two things: One, you don’t always agree with what I write, and two, despite the very real risk of being offended every now and then, you are nevertheless gracious enough to set aside a few minutes each week to read whatever happens to be on my mind at the time.

 

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for spending that time with me. I mean it.

That being said, opinions are for the opinion page. Bias has no place on the front page of the newspaper. While I firmly believe that Walter Cronkite was the last truly unbiased member of the news media, I will make you this promise: I vow to do my level best to report both sides of every story whenever there are two sides to report. Like my skeptical interview subject so eloquently stated, Southern Boone absolutely deserves unbiased news coverage.

Although I’ve been accused by some of being a decent writer, I didn’t major in Creative Writing in college, and now that I’m a reporter, I must confess that I didn’t major in Journalism either. I earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy. (I like to think of it as a B.A. in B.S.) Though a lot of folks consider a Philosophy degree to be fairly useless, I disagree. By reading the greatest thinkers of all time, I learned how to make well-reasoned, sound arguments—a skill that has served me well as an opinion writer. I believe that skill will serve me well as a reporter of facts, too.

While my politically-themed opinion pieces rely on formulating strong arguments, most of my weekly columns are a short form of storytelling. It is a fact that great journalists are often great storytellers. Writers Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, and Mark Twain are prime examples of this. All three of these famous storytellers were outstanding reporters. I realize I am not in the same league as these legends, but I certainly aspire to be.

So, my credentials as a journalist are thus: I learned the art of writing and formulating sound arguments in college. After that, I wrote a couple of long-form features for the Columbia Business Times that received high praise by my editor and sparked my interest in reporting. I wrote and self-published a novel (not quite as good as “The Old Man and the Sea”). I’ve been writing a weekly newspaper column for ten years. And today’s issue of the Boone County Journal features a front-page news story written by Travis Naughton—yes THAT Travis Naughton—for the fourth week in a row.

I’m a writer. I’m a storyteller. I’m a columnist. I’m a reporter.

I am a journalist. (Time to print new business cards!)

 

Getting Back to Normal

 It’s been over a year and a half since life in these United States has felt “normal”. More than 700,000 Americans have died of complications related to Covid-19 since the pandemic began.Yet last weekend, life felt normal again. Finally.

Fall has always been my favorite time of year. Football, post-season baseball, and local arts & crafts festivals are in full swing in Autumn. Last weekend, enjoying all of those activities felt perfectly normal again.

 

The weekend began with the Southern Boone Eagles football team defeating School of the Osage on SoBoCo’s Senior Nightbefore an enthusiastic crowd of spectators. The next day, Ol’ Mizzou resumed its 110-year Homecoming tradition after a mostly virtual celebration last year. The city of Columbia hosted the parade and football game which both attracted huge crowds of revelers. My wife and I enjoyed tailgating in the parking lot outside of Memorial Stadium and cheering the Tigers on to victory on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. After a year of no tailgating allowed, it felt great—and perfectly normal—to visit and laugh with old friends again.

On Sunday, we rounded up the whole family and headed to Hartsburg for the famous Pumpkin Festival which was cancelled last year due to the pandemic. The corn fields and the streets of the tiny town were as packed as ever with locals and visitors excited to attend the beloved festival once again. While there, my family drank our fill of homemade root beer, ate funnel cakes and turkey legs, and saw lots of familiar, smiling faces. I was greeted with bone-crushing hugs and energetic waves by a few of my former students, which was, of course, the highlight of my day.

When I wasn’t outside enjoying the gloriously warm fall weather, I was tucked cozily into my favorite recliner while watching the Major League Baseball playoffs, a couple of college football upsets, and the Chiefs playing on Sunday Night Football. Every venue had one thing in common: tens of thousands of fans packed into the stands, overjoyed at the opportunity to enjoy life as if a deadly pandemic wasn’t still raging throughout the world.

Yes, life felt normal again last weekend. It felt good to participate in all of the things we used to enjoy before the world as we knew it shut down last year. But is life really returning to normal, or was last weekend just an illusion?

New cases of Covid have been trending downward over the last few weeks, but does that mean the end of the pandemic is near? With school districts including Southern Boone, Jefferson City, and Columbia either ending mask requirements or considering ending them, will Covid cases in schools start trending upward again soon? Will kids who are infected at school then bring the virus home to their family members? Time will tell.

In the meantime, everyone who is eligible to receive a vaccination should do so in order to protect those who cannot be vaccinated due to their age or pre-existing health conditions. The vaccines have proven to be overwhelmingly safe. Yes, there have been a few documented cases of bad reactions to Covid vaccines, as is the case with all vaccines. Yet billions of people around the world have received their jabs without any serious reactions. I don’t personally know anyone who has had a reaction to a Covid vaccine that merited a hospital visit, but I do know people who have been very sick and/or hospitalized (and some who have died) who were unvaccinated. Statistics show that over 95% of people being placed on ventilators and/or dying of Covid were NOT vaccinated. 

If we want to end this pandemic so that life can truly return to normal, then we need to stop listening to anti-vax conspiracy theorists and lunatics who think that only Satanists wear masks. When people say, “Do your own research,” and their idea of doing research is reading outlandish, unsubstantiated claims made by a blogger, we have to use some common sense and defer to doctors and actual medical researchers. 

Those health professionals are not part of a sinister plot to strip us of our rights. If you have made it to this point in your life without contracting polio, smallpox, mumps, measles, rubella, tuberculosis, or typhoid fever, then you have—until this point in your life—trusted your health to the doctors and medical research community responsible for vaccines. And I’d wager that you don’t know the ingredients in those vaccines any more than you know what’s in the Covid shot.

Get your shots, wear your mask in crowded places and indoors, wash your hands. Those are very simple things to do. I have done all three, and I do not feel like my rights have been infringed upon whatsoever. I do not feel oppressed. I have not felt the sting of tyranny. I am free, I am vaccinated, I am healthy, and I am alive.

I thoroughly enjoyed everything about last weekend, and I hope that we can continue to have many more weekends just as enjoyable as time goes on. If we want to get back to normal once and for all, it will take a commitment from all of us to be decent human beings and do our part to end this pandemic.

Fifty and Fantastic

 On September 25, yours truly just completed his fiftieth lap around the sun. That’s right folks, I’m fifty now. The big 5-0. Half a century. Fifty years old. Heck, I’m a full week older than Walt Disney World!

I don’t feel fifty. I certainly don’t act like I’m fifty. When I shave my grey chin whiskers, I don’t look fifty. Well, I didn’t think I looked fifty—until an incident occurred last week that made me question that belief.

I was sitting in my 2010 Chevrolet Camaro Super Sport after playing a round of disc golf at Albert-Oakland Park in Columbia when a pair of college guys parked beside me. One of the enthusiastic young lads said, “Nice car, dude!” I had been looking down at my phone, and after I looked over at the compliment-giver to say thank you, he quickly amended his initial statement. “I mean, nice car, sir.”

Of course the young whipper-snapper was just trying to show some respect for his elder, as his parents, (who are most likely my age,) taught him. But as I sat there in my “mid-life crisis”car, I couldn’t help feeling like I had been savagely attacked.

“Does that thing have a V-8?” the starry-eyed kid asked. I recovered from the initial blow quickly, (for a man of my advanced age,) and answered in the affirmative. The precocious youngster glanced back at his shiny new Hyundai, (no doubt bought by his elderly parents,) and said, “Oh, that’s cool. All my car has is great gas mileage.” I had absolutely no idea if that was another quasi-accidental insult or just a straight-up burn. Either way it hurt, almost as much as my elbow did after throwing a Frisbee around for an hour.

When I was in college, way back in the last millennium, I played one or two rounds of disc golf almost every single day. I don’t remember my elbow being sore back then. But how could I be expected to remember anything from those days? After all, we couldn’t count on Facebook memories popping up on our smartphones back then to remind us of all the things we’d forgotten about doing in past years. We didn’t have Facebook. We didn’t have smartphones. We didn’t have cell phones. And we walked to the course and back home again barefoot, uphill, and in a foot of snow—every single day.

On my birthday, my kids were discussing how the world has changed since I was born. One of them asked, “Was TV a thing when you were young?” I was flabbergasted. When I said that it was, one of them added, “Yeah, but it was probably black & white.”

I assured them that my family did in fact own a color television when I was a kid. I did not mention that we also had a black & white set, a rotary dial telephone that we RENTED from the phone company, and an honest-to-goodness outhouse in our backyard.

Fine, I’m old. But you know what? I’m actually okay with that.

Reaching fifty years of age is a major milestone to be sure. Quite frankly, I never expected to live this long. For about half my life, I lived by the motto: “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” The irony is that I drank so much alcohol that I effectively lobotomized myself. The truth is, had I not decided to quit drinking almost five years ago, I might not have made it to fifty.

At age fifty, I have a smoking-hot wife to whom I have been happily married for twenty-five years. At age fifty, I have two sons, a daughter, and a one-year-old granddaughter—all of whom I love beyond measure. At age fifty, I have more friends than I can count and many more than I deserve. At age fifty, I have a small fleet of cars and trucks—including a trophy-winning Camaro SS that some people might think is a “midlife crisis” car, but because I’ve been having midlife crises since I was in my 20s, it’s more of an “I made it to fifty and by god I deserve to drive whatever the hell I want” car.

Yes, I’m fifty—and I’m fantastic.