[AZ-Observing] Re: Cherry Rd -Friday Night

     Although Bill F has rather conclusively cited the statistics that are
not on the guns' side (except for having removed mountain lions from our
midst), and though this argument will not be settled here, I offer this
perspective on the subject from Peter Fleming.  He was the brother of the Bond
novelist, Ian.  Peter spent his youth (circa 1930) travelling in rather rough
circumstances in exotic locales.
     The following is excerpted from his most excellent "News From Tartary"
(1936), which describes travelling with Ella 'Kini' Maillart from Beijing
to Srinagar more-or-less on foot through quite forbidden territory in the
Taklamakan Desert and Sinkiang---about 3500 miles in seven months.  (Look up
Maillart on the Web to read about an astonishing traveller and her long life.)
     Before the book was published Fleming reported some details of their
adventure in the London Times, and was roundly castigated by readers for
carrying only "a second-hand .22 rook rifle, which surpassed itself by keeping
us in meat throughout the three months during which there was anything
to shoot."
     "On the day following the appearance of this article a gentleman wrote
a very good-natured letter to the Editor, saying that he could not help
feeling 'slightly annoyed at my inefficiency' at setting out to cross Central
Asia with such a poor selection of weapons, and recalling that in Central Asia,
as in Brazil [an earlier adventure], 'only a rook rifle stood between
Mr. Fleming and an untimely death.'
     "For some reason I was irritated by the last sentence, with its
implication that in remote parts of the world one carried weapons with a
view to shooting oneself out of tight corners.  I have never been in a tight
corner myself [this massively understates many situations in both travelogues];
but my instincts and my common sense tell me that there are two possible
explanations for finding yourself in a position in which you feel that you
have got to use firearms in self-defence.  Either you have been foolish or you
have been unlucky; and the chances are that if you do shoot you will be
committing more folly or incurring more bad luck.  The methods of melodrama may
serve for an ugly scene.  But when the ugly scene is over you are still a long
way from the rescue party and the third act curtain and 'God Save the King';
and if you are (as we rapidly became) [on the China trip] entirely dependent
for your food, your guides, your transport---in a word, for your continued
existence---on the goodwill of the local inhabitants, it is well not to
decimate the latter.  Even if by holding your fire you rather tamely lose your
life, you can in most cases congratulate yourself, as you look down from
heaven on the unkind wastes that you had still to cross [again a gross
understatement of what they went through], on having chosen wisely between
a quick death and a slow one."



\Brian
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