This has nothing to do with guns.
One of the very, very few advantages of getting old is that you can remember how things used to be, and if you can remember that, the present doesn’t seem to be quite so grim. As Christmas 06 slouches toward Bethlehem waiting to be born, The End seems nigh. We can’t solve any of our problems, we are led by fools and worse, and the good old days seem very far away indeed.
Well, let me tell you about the good old days; in particular, Christmas of 1957. This was during the Cold War, and the U.S.S.R had just put the first two satellites into orbit, Sputnik One in September, and Sputnik Two in November. What this meant was that not only did the Rooskies have the H-Bomb, they had ICBMs to deliver it to us, and all our rockets could do was crash and burn on the launching pad.
You want to talk fear? I can tell you we were scared but good. The fear was so pervasive that on its Christmas-week cover, Newsweek magazine printed these words:
“And the angels spoke unto them, saying ‘Be not afraid…’”
We lived through it, and we got our own rockets, and despite some close calls, we did not put an end to mankind.
And we may survive this, too.
Merry Christmas from the Gun Nut.