It must be strange living with guns. People may decide at any moment to whip them out and take a shot at you. Perhaps because they were annoyed at you, perhaps it was just in a moment of excitement. It's also true that you could decide on a whim to pull your own gun out of your holster and shoot back at them. Hell, maybe go and shoot someone else while you are in the mood.
There are indeed a few people I would like to shoot, when I think of it (and the world would be a better place for their passing) but, since I live in Spain, I don't have a gun. Being British, the best I can come up with is to shake my fist in their general direction after they have safely passed by.
This is probably for the best. The picture, by the way, is me at the cowboy film set in Tabernas. Don't worry, it's a cap-gun.
As it happens, and talking of firearms, I am soon away to visit family in far-off Texas, a place where one can easily acquire a gun from the local supermarket. Or maybe an arsenal, since they often do a special three for two service. I once asked a fellow I'm friendly with over there as to how many fire-arms he had. He answered with - 'if you know how many guns you have, you don't have enough'!
Guh-uns: he said. Two syllables.
It turned out - and this was some time ago - he had seventeen.
On that visit, I was pruriently looking one day at the guns for sale in Walmart - a sort of gigantic Carrefour. Just looking, I really didn't want one.
Anyhoo, I saw a wrist-rocket (the kind of catapult that might be used by Tom Cruise) for sale and thought that might be a good thing to get, after all, we are infested with cats at home. The salesman said I needed to show him my driver's licence, to keep everything ship-shape.
He was a bit surprised to see a Spanish one (a country that didn't appear in his computer), but we agreed that it was, in reality, a driver's licence in Spanish, so he put me down as coming from Puerto Rico.
I never got to shoot any cats with my catapult - you see why they named it that - and I think the rubber has since perished. Maybe I'll go and buy another one while I'm there. It's going to be a long winter.