Ahh, spring, my favorite season of the year. With it come new flowers and a new season of touring bands. It also means I have to spend a couple of weekends weeding my property, getting it prepped for my wife to plant the annuals for the new season. Most of our land has stuff that comes back every year so it is mostly the left over perennials from last season that I am raking out.
We have a typical Chicago lot that is 30 feet by 120 feet, pretty typical lot size in my neighborhood. Most people have one big garage that stretches the width of their lots so they have very little yard space unless they have a double wide. We have an ancient single car garage that looks like it was built for a Model -T Ford rather than today's gas guzzling behemoths. So with this little garage we have an area in the back that we call the "nook" that backs up to the alley.
So here I am raking it out, with my sunglasses on and not really paying attention much and I rip up out of the surface of the soil a big "chunk" of black stuff. I thought it was a big chunk of bark. I continue raking.
So there I am using my Leathermanä tool to saw out some plants that I wanted to thin out and I again notice up close the "chunk", which now resembles something more plastic than organic. I lean a little closer to the object and I start to make out details of some sort of handle. So I flick the "chunk" with my knife and the soil that was clumped around it breaks off and I start to realize that it is shaped like a gun. At first glance it looked like a toy gun, I was still about two feet away at the time from the "chunk", when I realize that it could be a real gun. So I stand up real quickly and start freaking a little. "Is it real" I ask myself, so I surmise that I better call the cops and have them get this out of here. So I walk into the house and I start freaking again.
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"What if it is a plastic gun?"
"A toy?"
"Mikey, you better go in and check just to be sure, so that if you do call the cops and they show up and discover it is a toy gun, you don't want to look like a loon." The village goofball with dreads.
So I go back outside and get real close to this "chunk". Up to this point the only contact I have had with it is with the rake and my knife. So now my mind is really wondering.
"Should I keep it?"
"What if this was used in a crime."
"What if it was loaded"
"What if it was loaded and Snot Junior found it while playing!"
Ok, just call the cops, it is real no doubt about it. I could see the details of the chambers where you put the bullets. They were empty. I could see shiny metal and the pin were you pull out the bullet thingy to reload. It is real... call the cops.
So I call 411 the non-emergency number and tell the dispatcher the story, she quickly transfers me to the 911 line. Wow! I am thinking.
About fifteen minutes later a cop shows up and starts writing on a clipboard. The neighborhood kids get wind of what is going on and they are gathering at my house. One of them asks how the officer his day has been going and he retorts snidely " So far so good".
Hhmmm, friendly neighborhood police hospitality?
So I take the officer to the spot of the "chunk" and explain the story. He reaches down with a gloved hand and places the gun on my grill counter closer to my house. It was a Smith and Wesson. 357. Not a cheap gun by any measure. Since my yard is not a gun storage facility I surmised that this gun was dumped off in my yard after being used for some nefarious reason. Nobody dumps a perfectly good gun in some strangers yard.
You wouldn't know it by the cop's demeanor, though. I won't go into details but it appeared to me that this was no big deal. I am thinking is this man so jaded by what he has experienced that this was nothing, something to be forgotten about. Insignificant.
Here I am thinking I am helping society out by possible finding the missing link in a gun crime.
Or I am getting another weapon of mass destruction out of circulation.
Or maybe I am just a wuss and that finding a gun in your backyard is common in the big city.
Or maybe it is I just don't understand how a product that sole purpose is to remove life from this planet is useful in a civilized society. I don't understand how a product could be so prevalent in our society but pretty much go unregulated.
I believe that we should be able to own guns, but it should be treated a little more rigidly than it is. This isn't going to go into some anti gun rant. I don't have time to go there. But for a moment there I had reality staring me in my face. I struggle to understand how someone could think that having a gun in your hand makes you better person or a more free person. I also don't understand why anyone would need to own more than two guns, I mean you only have two hands of which to fire them with.
Maybe collectors of antique guns, would have reason, so it goes.
But I do know that that gun was dumped in my yard to hide involvement in a crime.
And not all gun owners commit crimes but most crimes are committed with guns.
Maladjusted Single Issue Gun-nuts.
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