Trigger Warning   Most every day, the same goddamn thing, guns — weaponry of war, the terrorist’s tool, crime’s best friend. Every day another hundred dead, a thousand wounded, and no rules — that’s the American way, the sweet smell of gunpowder, the patriot’s perfume, our great gift to a grateful world. We sell, they buy — it’s win–win! The things that go boom in the night make for such good movies.                                                                 Let me tell you about my gun. It’s a Ruger M-Seventy-Seven thirty-aught- six — bolt-action, scope-mounted, far from new. My dad’s, now mine. Still in that funky old orange leather case with his name on the tag. Not cleaned or fired in forty years, as cold as lethal steel can be.                                   He never bragged about killing, it was all about food, the meat that made me — venison lasagna, elk steaks, antelope tacos. What should we have eaten instead?                                     My wife hates guns, doesn’t want one in the house, gives me ten good reasons. Fine, I say — no ammo, then.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont December 2025