‘People carry guns,’ Mom Used to Say

“Say your prayers, varmint!”

“OK rabbit … you forced me to use force.”

“Stranger, you just yupped yourself into a hole in the head!”

“I’ll blast your head off for this!”

These are all quotes from Yosemite Sam, Looney Tunes’ roughest, toughest, double barreled, gun-toting hombre.

Sam’s a trigger-happy guy with a big mouth, a short temper and severe anger management issues. Sounds like a lot of people we know or have seen in the news lately.

Back in the day when few people had guns, cartoon characters like Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd gave us belly laughs as kids. Warner Bros. produced the popular Loony Tunes animation shorts from 1939 to 1969, and Sam and Elmer spent a lot of that time chasing Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. But getting shot by a gun or hit with an explosive device didn’t mean death. They were just momentary gags and characters always happily returned victorious after an assassination attempt. If only real people could defy death like that.

Fast forward to 1999 and we have the launch of the highly successful adult animated series “Family Guy” featuring Stewie Griffin, a precocious, sociopathic toddler who talks and acts like an adult and is obsessed with violence and killing his mother. Such a sweet child.

While this is all fictional pop culture, we must admit that it reflects who we are as a people. Turn on the news and you’ll see the proof.

A boy who survived a bullet in the head for ringing a doorbell. An Instacart driver looking for an address who escaped with his life when a homeowner drew fire. The cheerleader who took a bullet for mistaking another car for hers in a dimly lit parking lot. A group that dodged bullets and lost a friend while making a U-turn out of the wrong driveway. The father who took a bullet in the back while running away from a neighbor who was angry about a basketball rolling onto his lawn.

It would be easy to call the recent spate of shooters just a “bunch of crazies,” except mundane interactions weren’t so lethal just a few short years ago. These are our neighbors.

There comes a point when you must question how the proliferation of guns in our society is contributing to this growing phenomenon. I’m not talking about mass shootings with assault rifles now. This is just the “average Joe” with a pistol losing his cool for nothing.

Less than 10 years ago, a neighbor renting a house next door to mine had loud parties. One night, I got so mad that I marched into his backyard and asked him to lower the music. My husband warned me that wasn’t such a hot idea and that I should just call the police next time because, “you never know.”

For years I would shout at and flip drivers the bird who cut me off on the road, as Miami drivers are known to do. My mother, ever a paranoid woman who got more so with age, would say from the passenger seat “You shouldn’t do that, people carry guns.” Sometime later, deadly road rage incidents started making headlines.

I remember many a time when Mom – while regaling me with a story of an incident in her day – would sarcastically say “It’s a good thing I don’t own a gun because I would probably use it … daily.”

Looking back on those moments makes me laugh, but they really aren’t funny.

Firearm fatalities have now outnumbered motor vehicle traffic deaths 48,830 to 45,404, according to the CDC’s most recent figures. One in five U.S. households bought a gun from March 2020 to March 2022, according to NORC, a nonpartisan research institution at the University of Chicago. One in 20 Americans purchased a gun for the first time during that period. Gun shop owners say business is booming.

The old line about buying a gun “for protection” communicates that fear drove that purchase. Make no mistake, everyone who buys a gun is prepared to use it and could be easily “triggered.” It’s not there for decoration.

Mom is very hard of hearing now and bed bound in an assisted living facility with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease. Thankfully, she doesn’t watch the news anymore.

Mom, how right you were. And the husband? Yes, he was right, too.

Emily Cardenas is the executive editor of the Biscayne Times and The Miami Times newspaper. She previously worked as a producer at WTXF in Philadelphia and at WSCV, WFOR and WPLG in Miami.