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Conceal and carry: And the lead poisoning is free!

GUNMARCH

TO:
Shannon Rose

Eclectic Media Productions
Tampa, Florida

Dear Ms. Rose:
I am in receipt of your May 17 e-mail headlined, “FREE AMMO FOR THE MONTH OF MAY.”

It sort of stopped me in my tracks.

Free ammo for  me? Golly gee.

Reading further, I learn that a gentleman named Tim Schmidt, president and founder of the United States Concealed Carry Association and its Concealed Carry periodical, is telling us that “right now ammunition is nearly impossible to find,” and “To combat that, the United States Concealed Carry Association is giving away 1,000 PHYSICAL rounds of ammunition every day for 31 days during the month of May.”

The merry, merry month of May.

In the springtime, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing, nay ding a ding ding, Sweet lovers love the spring… .

All an ammo-seeker has to do is subscribe to the U.S.C.C.A. magazine — the kind you read, not the kind you shoot — and the free bullets are yours, though it’s not clear whether that means one round per new subscriber or 1,000 rounds.

I wonder if sure-shot Dick Cheney has ever subscribed to your publication.

Tim Schmidt, claimant of a degree in engineering from Michigan Tech University, describes himself as “a passionate defender of the 2nd Amendment” and donor of $10,000 “to lift the handgun law in Chicago in 2010.” Last month, April, an even prettier ring time — when he met his wife at Michigan Tech — his U.S.C.C.A. gave away 30 new guns to new subscribers.

“I know without a doubt,” says Mr. Schmidt — why do these gun guys never have the slightest doubt? — “that what we are doing at the U.S.C.C.A. is helping communities across the nation become more safe.”

With friends like that… .

It is time to reread Hemingway’s “The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Margo Macomber had no doubts either, when she grabbed a gun against a charging buffalo. And blew her husband’s head apart by mistake.

Myself, whenever the subject of guns comes up, I always think of Pop Taylor. He looked like Walter Brennan, if you can remember Walter Brennan — Bogart’s leathery sidekick in “To Have and Have Not.” Pop Taylor was a New England version of Walter Brennan.

I can hear him now, the calm, dry rifle counselor, as I’m lying on my belly on the grass of the 50-foot target range at Camp Menatoma, Readfield, Maine, a .22 cradled in my arms.

“Squeeze it, son,” Pop Taylor is saying. “You don’t pull the trigger, you squeeze it. If you pull it, you’ll miss.”

And then Pop Taylor says one more thing: “Never point a weapon at anything you don’t intend to kill.”

The merry month of May. A maypole, my Eclectic friend, is a longstanding symbol of sex, of love. It is not a Bushmaster .223 or an AK-47. So, dear Ms. Shannon Rose, what are you and your Concealed Carry client offering us — love or death?

I can’t wait till June and High Noon.

Yours very truly,

JERRY TALLMER