Gun (out of) Control

I am and you might be too young to remember that creepy old Technicolor Vincent Price movie “The House on Haunted Hill,” but good movies on television were hard to find in the ‘90s and yesterday’s B movies get an A+ when graded on today’s B feature curve. Every Halloween AMC has days and days of classic cult horror films and watching Vince stalk around this cobwebbed castle, putting his guests at unease became a tradition for me and my old man. In a twist on the old stay in the haunted mansion one night challenge, each participant (I think there were a dozen) received a “party favor.” What kind of door prize would Vincent Price supply? Why, a gun of course.

BANG! Concealed weapons permits double while population dwindles to half in New Orleans after Katrina storms out. Suddenly New Orleans is the U.S. murder capital. It’s a renaissance for local weapons dealers, who report record sales. With already 37 deaths (more than a dozen a month!) in 2007 and an incalculable number of guns in the city, I don’t know how anyone can sleep at night, let alone gun store owners.

When we think of New Orleans we think of beads, booze, boobs and food; it’s a big fat party, right? Well, now it’s a party in a ghost town where everyone has guns. The Big Easy bears an eerie resemblance to “The House on Haunted Hill.”

New Orleans is the city America abandoned, or forgot, or is trying to forget. Amid all this talk about staying the course in Iraq, we pulled out of New Orleans too early, and now it may be too late. What authority would an armed city bow to? Better yet, what authority would want to walk into a potential war zone?

Storm survivor, artist, and senior—she’s 64—Vivian Westerman renders all commentary obsolete, firing four abrupt sentences:

"I got a 6,000-watt generator and the cutest little Smith & Wesson,
snub-nose .38 you ever saw," and "I'm a marksman now. I know what I'm doing;
there are a lot of us. The girl next door is a crack shot."
-Mary Foster, The Associated Press

That says it all.