The following story is true.
A few years years back, I was walking two large dogs on a rural road in Greene County, not far from my home. They were newly arrived rescue dogs, and they were alarmed by vehicles on the road—the breed is trained to guard, and they saw the vehicles as threats. Whenever one would come by, the animals would pull and lunge. Since they each weighed 120 pounds or so, controlling them was something of an effort.
A red pickup truck went by, going uphill. The dogs behaved predictably, and I struggled to get them back into walking mode. Two minutes later, the same vehicle returned, going downhill. This pissed me off, and I gave its driver the finger. He backed up to ask “what my problem was,” and a “conversation” ensued.
I pointed out that he had traversed the same space twice within a couple of minutes, and asked him if this was part of his entertainment routine, driving back and forth on a country road. He replied that he had gone to see a friend, who wasn’t home. I asked if he had ever tried using a telephone. And so on and so forth.
Now this was a big guy, but with the curious, high-pitched, whiny voice that many of Greene County’s “native” men seem to possess. He did not seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer. I asked him if he had a rifle in his truck, just to see if he conformed to the stereotype. “Yes I do,” he said proudly. “And if you don’t like hunting, why don’t you go back where you came from?” He pointed out that his “daddy” and his “daddy’s daddy” had been hunters.
Several days later, I was walking the dogs again, this time with my wife, when this guy—let’s call him Joe Moron—came by again. This time he feinted toward my wife and her dog with his pickup. We followed him to a neighbor’s house, this particular neighbor being another proud Greene County native. Further words ensued. When my wife noted that he had come close to hitting one of our dogs with his truck, Mr. Moron noted that “next time I will.” I told him that if he ever hurt my wife or one of our dogs, I would kill him. This was both a rhetorical commonplace and not; I was very angry. What I envisioned at the moment was a fistfight in which I left him bloody on the ground, even though he had 50 pounds on me and was a good 20 years younger.
“Oh, I’ll remember that,” was his response.
Fast forward a week or so. We’re out with the dogs again, about 25 feet from the entrance to our driveway, when we find two dead coyotes. They had been shot and dumped there, a crude and savage message. The following week, another pair of coyotes turned up dead on an adjacent road, where the original dog-walking incident took place. My wife and I found this upsetting, of course, but not really alarming, as we didn’t believe Moron had the personal daring or the intellectual wherewithal to actually harm us or our dogs.
We did feel bad for the coyotes, though. Four of them were needlessly shot, simply to make some redneck’s inchoate “point”. Another neighbor, a sensitive, intelligent woman (and a non-native), was terribly upset, and she put up a sign accusing the coyotes’ killer of moral depravity and cowardice. She was right, of course.
OK—what is the point of this rambling anecdote, you may ask?
Simply this: many people own guns who shouldn’t. Stupid people. Uneducated people. Violent people. People not fully in control of their thoughts or emotions. A right-wing Supreme Court has decreed it is their right to do so. But New York State has recently taken steps to disagree with that catastrophic decision, and to restore some balance to the questions of gun ownership and gun control.
The state didn’t go far enough, in my opinion. But at least it’s a start.
