Too many writers feel the need to bash audiences over the head with their message. They pose dilemmas and promply offer solutions. The best part about Jay Allison's "Owning Guns" are the questions left unanswered. In this essay, he talks about his desire to buy a gun after his divorce, not for bad intentions, but for a sense of ... we don't know exactly. He doesn't say. He hints the handgun purchases might offer a sense of emotional safety, not physical safety. (The writer fired guns as a youth.) And he's smart enough to check in with his kids about it. His daughter advises him against it: "It's not you, Dad." He goes ahead anyway, buying a couple of handguns that he later fools around with while watching TV. We hear the click-click-click of the empty chamber as we imagine Jay watching TV, allowing the numbness of the media to wash over him as he ponders his uncertain future. There are other great audio snippets: A gun shop owner matter-of-factly describing his wares, the interaction with his kids and the bang-bang-bang of the gun on the firing range. This piece already aired on ATC, but it's worth another listen.

Oh please: not Frank Sinatra again!...

Frankie (along with Billie and Vivaldi) is played daily in every café, American and European, this side of creation, and I don't ever, EVER need to hear him again in a Morning Edition piece.

In this particular Morning Edition offering, Mr. I-Got-You-Under-My-Skin (Cue: Big band trumpets) seemed to pop up here, there, and everywhere almost at random--and was mixed far too LOUDLY under Jay Allison's voice. (Or so it sounded on RealPlayer.)

That's my technical gripe. As for content: I got a mite confused. Did Jay Allison really interview his kids for a potential public radio feature as he was showing them his new gun purchases? And did his minidisk recorder just happen to be running as Jay spontaneously, in some sort of Apocalypse Now-like episode, fired his empty pistol at the wall (Cue: "Click... click...click...")? And did Jay truly and honestly feel more--ahem--"manly" after his divorce by buying a few more guns?

Gosh, if so, then I must say that this strange and funny piece--which comes across as part true confession and part artistic confection--leaves me wondering if Jay Allison is a strange and funny person. (Or is he just an ordinary American with a little thing about guns?)

The good part about this radio essay is that it reminded me of two strange and funny gun episodes from my own life. Decades ago, I overheard a housemate--a pacifist, vegetarian philosophy student--talking on the telephone with his girlfriend.

"I've decided." he said, "to eat meat again."

Ah!, I thought--and pricked up my ears.

"But I'm not going to buy it," he continued. "I'm gonna hunt it and kill it and clean it myself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah...I do have a gun. Got it yesterday. It's out in the car..."

And so forth. That's the philosophical approach to gun possession.

Now for the second story: Fast forward a few decades to the 1980s when I worked at NPR. One day I went shooting with a Russian language teacher of mine and my brother (who is a member of the NRA and has hunted a lot). First we went trap-shooting and then fired at targets on a range. This was my first time with a gun.

Range shooting was real boring: a bunch of guys with rifles on supports, shooting at targets, observing the results through binoculars--and then jotting down notes. I was expecting a dramatic scene from High Noon and this was more like a methodical rocket-launch. I couldn't hit targets, but was quite good at trap-shooting, which involves quick pointing and firing. In fact, I actually bagged more skeets--clay pigeons--than did my rifle-owning brother.

"That is because target-shooting is science," said my Russian language instructor, Natasha. "But skeet-shooting...is ART!"

The next day, I boasted about my shooting exploits to my (then) colleagues at All Things Considered. To my astonishment, they were not impressed. Indeed, they heartily disapproved.

"Alex!" they scolded, "How could you--of all people--shoot those poor little DEFENSELESS skeets?

Because, I explained, weary of do-goodism. Skeets are tasty--especially four and twenty of them...baked in a pie...
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This topic is certainly a great illustration of the culture clash between Americans and Europeans so I appreciated Jay Allison making that one of the central themes of his essay.
He's right - Europeans just don't get the American attraction to guns, and I'm not surprised that he felt he had to really think for answers that would satisfy this European bewilderment.
For me one of the positive points of the piece was that in these short few minutes, there was an arch of development. The author's evolving attitude to guns. He describes well what makes them so attractive to him, how he derives comfort from things that would scare the life out of me for example.
And I very much liked his open ended statement at the end - leaving the listener thinking that his attitude to guns is still in a process of evolution.
I think the Sinatra song popping up three times in this short piece was uneccessary and distracting. I just wanted to focus on what he was saying and found that focus slipping when the music came in.
I did like the short inserts from the gun shop and of his kid ('oh dad' she starts off and in just those two words, one can hear very well this young person's opinion of dad's toys. Did I detect a dose of disappointment with just a dash of exasperation?)
I do have my own opinions on the subject of gun ownership, and while the author didn't turn me into an instant fan of guns, it was interesting to hear a mild mannered and intelligent man discussing his passion for them. It made me as a resident of Europe think that maybe not everyone who likes to play with guns is a bullet short of a full barrel.

This is a great essay from well-known producer Jay Allison. It traces his relationship with guns from his childhood when he received NRA safety training to becoming an anti-gun activist because of a friend’s murder to purchasing a couple of guns following the 9-11 attacks. Jay had some great scenes in this essay. I especially like his writing about a scene from Europe where he contemplates his relationship with guns when looking at pictures from the Iraqi prison abuse. This was a very well-done and presented commentary/feature from one of Public Radio’s most innovative and respected producers. It’s a piece that I would air on Minnesota Public Radio.