Big Mike: I'm A Lucky Guy

The Great Gun Battle continued at Dick's Pizza last night. Oh, okay, I'm being overdramatic, as usual. Whenever there's an opportunity for me to be alarmist, panicky, hyperbolic - you name it - I'll take it. Ask The Loved One. Heck, even my nephew, Jittery Jimmy, had to reel me in the last time he was down here to visit. We were standing in the backyard and I heard a woodpecker.

"Quiet!" I commanded. "Listen to that! It's a woodpecker. Isn't that amazing!"

"Uncle Mike," Jittery Jimmy said, firmly, "it's not amazing."

So no shots were fired nor were harsh words even exchanged. But I like the sound of The Great Gun Battle so there it is. Last week, I recounted a log-rolling chat between Printer Bob and All-American Allen about guns. My point was, it's hard for us Chicagoans to understand how the rest of the country feels about firearms. The gun is as dear to many people in this great land as pizza or the Cubs are to me.

I felt self-satisfied for recreating their discussion fairly. I thought I'd acquitted myself well, not portraying them as loons or wild-eyed survivalists. I even closed the post with All-American Allen saying, with a hint of pride, that he'd never shot a human being and hoped he'd never have to.

Man, I thought, aren't I magnanimous?

The answer, I learned last night, is not so much.

Weatherman Loren and his pop, Bandleader Leo, came in to watch the Kentucky men's basketball team play a first-round game in the NIT. During an early timeout, Loren ambled by and patted me on the back.

"I read you're post about guns," he said.

Immediately, at least three nearby heads turned our way. One of them asked Loren what it was all about. He tried to be kind but as he hemmed and hawed through his explanation, it became clear he felt I'd wronged the good folk of Kentuckiana.

"Well," Loren finally said, turning toward me, "I gotta tell you. It read pretty much like you were telling us what a bunch of hillbilly rednecks we are."

I was crushed. I'd meant nothing of the kind. Loren said he understood that but still....

"Lemme put it this way," he continued, "if we were 60 miles south of here, youd'a got your ass kicked."

I felt lucky indeed. Even luckier as the night wore on. I chatted at length with All-American Allen, as Republican as a man can be. He feels about Barack Obama pretty much what I felt about George W. Bush - this is one lousy president. No matter. Rather than tear each other's throats out, All-American Allen and I made our respective cases without a hint of mayhem. Hell, our talk was so civil most people today wouldn't even consider it a political discussion.

All-American Allen is about my age but - damn him - he's tall, good-looking, strong, and trim. His imposing stature was on my mind as we tentatively waded into our conversation. All-American Allen appears capable of lifting even this pasta-stuffed bovine and hurtling me through a plate glass window.

Had I been sitting on a barstool next to a Goliath like All-American Allen 60 miles south of Dick's Pizza, I might have bit my tongue. The Bourbon Trail is about 60 miles south of these precincts. It's a gorgeous landscape with rolling hills, broad vistas, and the occasional passing Ford F-150 pickup in whose loadbed compartment is stored who knows what variety of ordnance. Even if a fellow from the Bourbon Trail lacked the sinew to heave me through the nearest window, it's a good bet he might use me for target practice.

So now I have a bond with All-American Allen. We're not going to convince each other of anything but we came away from our chat at least respecting each other. And I neither flew through a plate glass window nor took a round of buckshot in the ass.

Big Mike's Dee Brown Update

I met a man two weeks ago at Dick's who claimed to be former NBA all-star and 1991 Slam Dunk Champion Dee Brown. When the man and his partner, a woman named Natasha, departed, the citizenry in Dick's seemed skeptical he was who he said he was. I was as dubious as anyone. I did a little digging and found that the two were the real thing. Natasha is Brown's business associate and the two are in town to open a Louisville location for his The EDGE basketball training facility.

Big Mike: Aiming For Freedom

Startling fact: I'd never held a gun in my hand until I moved to Kentucky.

When The Loved One and I came down to Louisville two years ago, I found a massive outdoors store across the Ohio River in Clarksville. It bills itself as the largest of its kind east of the Mississippi.

What struck me first about the place, after I'd noted that it's only slightly smaller than NASA's Vertical Assembly Building, were the homey, ye-olde-shoppe-type signs on the front door directing customers to check in their weapons at the information desk. This policy, I'd learn after a few weeks in town, is rather liberal compared to those of grocery and liquor stores as well as government buildings here, all of which post prominent signs prohibiting people from carrying concealed firearms inside - period. Their policies regarding shotguns and rifles are left to the imagination.

Anyway, the outdoors store had a firearms department that would do for an NRA member what Viagra does for me. I'd never imagined that so many guns could be in one place outside of al Qaeda headquarters or the office of a hip-hop record producer.

I spent an hour and a half just looking at the guns. When I came to a case full of Glocks, the clerk asked me if I wanted to hold one.

"Oh, I don't know," I said nervously. "I've never held a gun before." The clerk's knees buckled. Once the shock wore off, he repeated his offer.

"In that case, you have to feel this," he said, pulling one out of the case. Gun aficionados seem to have a sensual relationship with their weapons. They talk about the feel of a gun in a way that makes it seem more like a sweetheart than a hunk of metal and polymer.

"Naw, that's alright," I said. "I don't have a license. I'm not a gun guy. I'd feel funny."

"C'mon."

"Really? Should I? You think it'd be OK?"

"Here."

He brought the Glock closer to me, like a pet shop clerk offering me a kitten. I tentatively grasped it. I actually curled my finger around the trigger and aimed the gun at a mannequin dressed in the latest camouflage.

"Isn't it beautiful?" he asked.

"Oh sure, " I replied, although I was lying. It wasn't beautiful. It wasn't anything at all other than a hunk of metal and polymer in my hand.

It took me moving to Kentucky to truly understand how deeply people in this great nation feel about their guns.

I listened in on a conversation between Printer Bob and All-American Allen at Dick's Pizza the other night. Barack Obama's face had appeared on the big screens and the two of them commenced lamenting the crumbling of our great nation. The talk got around to guns.

"I'll tell ya,"All-American Allen said, "when I went to the gun show in December, I never saw so much traffic in my life. You couldn't move."

"Oh yeah," said Printer Bob, who'd also attended.

"These people," All-American Allen continued, jerking a thumb toward the big screen, "they just don't get it. They don't realize that every time they say they're going to do something about guns, everybody goes out and buys more guns!"

"That's right," Printer Bob said. "Guaranteed. If they say the words gun control, the gun shows are packed for the next six months."

"Don't get me wrong," All-American Allen said, "I'm not like some of them. You see guys at the shows that have guns and ammunition buried in their backyards. I like guns but I'm not a nut."

"Same here. I only have the one gun," said Printer Bob.

"But look, if they come after my guns, they're never gonna get them. All I have to do is say I sold 'em to my friend. What are they gonna do about it?"

"You can never get rid of all the guns in this country."

"It's impossible! How are they gonna do it? The cow's out of the barn."

"This isn't France or Germany where they can just take 'em away."

"Whenever a country wants to take away your liberties, the first thing they do is take away your guns."

"We want our freedom," said Printer Bob.

"That's all," said All-American Allen. "That doesn't make us bad people. Believe me, I've never met a nicer, more caring group of people than gun owners. I mean it! If I had to take my wife to the hospital and I needed someone to take care of my kids, I'd call one of my friends - and they're all gun owners. All good people."

It's ironic that this exchange came a day after 26 people were killed in shooting sprees in Alabama and Germany.

"It sounds old but it's true," Printer Bob said. "Guns don't kill people; people kill people."

"I've never shot a person in my my life," All-American Allen said. "And I hope I don't have to."