A Northerner's fear and loathing in Kingsport
COMMENTARY
By JOHN R. MacARTHUR
The Providence Journal
NEW YORK - Last March, I traveled for the first time to the
northeastern corner of Tennessee, a part of the country I
associate with scrawny dogs, fundamentalist preachers and scary,
gun-toting adherents to the frontier "patriotism" of Daniel Boone
and Davey Crockett. But mostly it makes me think of guns.
Of course, I know my stereotypes about this part of the South to
be unfair, that scenes from the movie "Deliverance" are in fact
just scenes from a Hollywood movie made by slick and cynical
Northerners. Not everyone in rural or small-town Tennessee
carries a gun. In any case, who was I to be feeling paranoid in
Sullivan County, Tenn.? I live in one of the most violent cities
in America -- New York -- where children carry guns and use them
to redress frivolous slights, while the police are among the most
trigger-happy in the nation. I rarely feel worried walking down
the street in Manhattan -- and I never think about the huge
number of guns that might be used against me.
Besides, my wife and I were on a business trip in the heavily
industrial part of Kingsport. More than ever these days, the old
regional differences between supposedly violent redneck South and
"socially advanced" North have been flattened or erased
altogether by franchise shopping, interstate highways and chain
hotels designed to reassure people like me that sameness is the
greatest American virtue. Nobody in the Tri-Cities region was
going to pull a gun on me.
But prejudice dies hard, and I was decidedly spooked when we
crossed the crest of the Appalachians from North Carolina on U.S.
Highway 23, for the time being still a difficult, snaking
two-lane hill climb hugged by old-fashioned "home-cooking" cafes
that looked less than inviting to a visiting Northerner --
especially one with liberal beliefs and a fervent commitment to
gun control. Behind the down-home mountain culture of hospitality
lay, I imagined, a wilder, primitive culture of resentful Bible
thumpers whose commitment to the U.S. Constitution extended only
to the Second Amendment and the establishment clause of the
First.
But while these biases and fears make me feel downright
unpatriotic, not to mention ungenerous, I can't say that my
stereotype was entirely unjustified -- that my American culture
and the East Tennessee version might be just as different as
Japan's and South Africa's. For when I checked into the Marriott
Meadowview Resort and Convention Center, the first thing my wife
and I noticed was the sign promoting the gun-and-knife show
scheduled to take place the following day. Of course, being
ironic city folks, instead of getting nervous we laughed about it
and then laughed again over dinner at Skoby's Restaurant, the
closest thing to a celebrity hangout in town. (Even if we didn't
see any celebrities, we knew Skoby's was a hotspot because the
owners had prepared a brochure informing the public that Willard
Scott, Richard Petty, Tammy Wynette and Pat Summitt, "Head Coach
of the Lady Vols," had all eaten there.)
By the time we went to bed back at the hotel, my ironic
condescension toward Kingsport and its citizens was in full
swing.
I'd even picked up a book by Patty Smithdeal Fulton titled "I
Wouldn't Live Nowhere I Couldn't Grow Corn," a collection of her
columns from the Jonesborough Herald and Tribune that purported
to exhibit Mrs. Fulton's homespun wisdom and humor. Who's afraid
of the scary old South after reading that sort of treacle?
But the next day, my snobbish attitude changed abruptly. The
gun-and-knife show was attracting a bigger crowd than I had
expected, and I found myself in the parking lot among small knots
of men dressed in camouflage fatigues, many hefting one and even
two rifles against their shoulders. From the look of them, they
might have just finished locking and loading at a Pat Buchanan
campaign rally.
In the foyer of the convention center, the scene was even more
alarming. The men in the parking lot evidently had failed upon
leaving the building to heed the sign that exhorted: "No Guns
Past This Point!!!" Nearby, another sign explained, "Tables for
Eating Only!" In case you didn't understand the reasoning,
written beneath two crude depictions of a hamburger and a hot dog
there appeared the further instruction, "No Guns on Tables."
I could see why the organizers were concerned about guns being
placed casually amid the silverware: Many of the show's
registrants had brought their small children to join in the fun.
Sophisticated city slicker that I am, walled off by my sense of
the absurd, I still thought that these signs and these parents
were very frightening and very depressing.
There is no purpose in preaching here about the American gun
culture. The argument against guns is made again and again, year
in and year out, to very little effect. If the assassinations of
the liberals Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and the
near-murders of the conservatives George Wallace and Ronald
Reagan failed to galvanize the country against the gun lobby,
then nothing will. The Second Amendment (which even liberal
anti-gun legal scholars will concede really means what it says)
isn't likely ever to be repealed.
But since the Minuteman began the Revolutionary War with musket
fire -- I feel emboldened to make a modest proposal to break the
impasse about gun ownership in America. I suggest a historic
compromise between North and South that would permit the saving
of many lives in big Northern cities and provide endless
gratification for gun lovers south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
I propose that in exchange for unlimited ownership of
long-barreled firearms, including assault rifles, the Southern
politicians, who abort every serious gun-control initiative,
agree to support a bill that bans all handguns and sawed-off
shotguns everywhere.
I'm sure the legalization of assault rifles would upset a few
liberals, but they well understand that most gun violence is
wreaked by hidden pistols and pistols lying around on the table
at home. And they know that maintaining the ban on assault rifles
is mere window-dressing, just a dodge for politicians like
President Clinton who want to play both sides of the fence.
If all we gun-control advocates can ever hope to do is try to
reduce deaths by firearms, then let's give the states of the Old
Confederacy their due. Let them lock and load at will, as long as
we can see the glint of their rifle barrels.
John R. MacArthur, a monthly contributor, is publisher of
Harper's Magazine and a New York-based author. He wrote this for
the Providence Journal.
America has a serious social and cultural problem, guns have nothing to with it.
