As a young person, being different from the men around me, whether family members or casual acquaintances, was not something I consciously contemplated. As I was growing up and working on defining my so-called manhood, I observed the behaviors of the men in the family and neighborhood, but I never cultivated those behaviors that make a man a real man. And that mostly has to do with men’s love affair and obsession with their guns.
Call me cowardly, timid or weak, but the fact is that from my early childhood to this day, I never developed or established any emotional attachment to guns or any type of weapons and firearms. This is unlike so many of the men I know, who have at times projected an uncontrollable passion toward instruments that basically are manufactured to hurt, kill or frighten a living creature, which can be a human or an animal.
My first introduction to guns took place when I was a seven- or eight-year-old child, as I watched my uncle, with an almost ceremonial devotion, cleaning and polishing all the bits and pieces of his pistols, rifles and machine gun with only an occasional break, while he deeply inhaled a large smoke of Marlboro and a gulp of a Dewar’s Scotch, which he kept nearby. That image of my uncle expressing his love and devotion toward his weapons will remain with me as the manliest of all manly acts ever performed, in my imagination. Later, I felt the pathos of guns display its glory every New Year’s Eve night, when men in the town blasted the sky with their guns and machine guns, with the intention of pushing back the Old Year like it was the enemy and giving a clear warning to the incoming year so it would behave better than the year that simply became a distinct memory.
Although my experience with people who adored and worshipped their weapons created a sensation of fear, anxiety and discomfort in me, it also provided me with the understanding and appreciation that guns carry a larger than life dimension and meaning in the hearts of those who own guns, store guns and take good care of their guns. There is a sacred bond and a love affair between men and guns that goes way back to the beginnings of our societies and our earliest moments of communal behaviors and relationships.
Guns are more than an instrument of protection for our families and communities. Guns provide men with a deep sense of invincibility, immortality and pride. Guns carry a perception of an instrument that has deep mythological proportions. And although the gun industry and gun lobbies are the perfect benefactors of this passion, a man’s love affair with guns goes far beyond logic and proper behavior.
For someone like me, whose heart breaks and I am ready to shed tears whenever I see a deer hit by a car laying down along the side of the highway, I am appalled when men, as if it were a spectacle of sportsmanship, kill pheasants, ducks and geese, without showing any remorse or compassion toward those beautiful creatures who adorn our skies.
Speaking of beautiful creatures, this is how we can describe those young children who were recently massacred at the Uvalde School shooting in Texas. What makes a person walk into a school and shoot at young children? It might be a lifelong research and study for psychologists, but for me, I observed and learned from watching my own uncle whose love affair with his weaponry surpassed his love toward his immediate family and humanity as a whole. That’s exactly what makes a gun a strong symbol of power, faith and sacredness.
And that, in simple words, is crazy and I am glad I turned out to be a whole different kind of man than all the men I grew up with and live with now, even though I know for sure that for all these men, I am just a coward or a wimp. That’s fine with me.
Varoujan Froundjian is a digital artist and writer. He can be reached at: varlink3050@gmail.com.
