The Fastest Gun Alive — A Case for the Second Amendment

Christmas morning. There I stand dressed in my finest — my Christmas cowboy outfit, six shooter hung low. Maybe a Hopalong Cassidy rig. Roy Rogers. Red Ryder. Doesn’t matter. There I am, the fastest gun alive. Darn tootin. Six years old and nobody faster.

Fast forward to 1964. Too many westerns under my belt and James Bond takes on Dr. No. I sit in a theater in St. Louis Missouri waiting for the bus to Fort Leonard Wood and advanced training. First chance at the PX I buy my first James Bond book. By Christmas I have read them all and can field strip a Walther PPK in my sleep.

A couple of years later I order my first pistol from the big hardware catalog at the local hardware store , a Bernardelli Model 60. Looks and feels just like James’s Walther. Just costs a whole lot less. I am officially hooked.

More years go by. More firearms. Smith and Wesson Model 19s, K38s, Browning Challengers, and finally Dirty Harry’s S&W Model 29 a 44 Magnum. I join the Corvallis Sheriff’s Department and can’t resist competitive shooting. Back in the seventies it was PPC and revolvers. I took home trophies, even a few first places for the 2½ inch revolver category.

The fastest gun alive.

50 years later, I still go to the range. Speed drills now with 10mm competition Tanfoglios and Nighthawks. Always felt you should stay a step ahead.

Which brings me to a film, The Fastest Gun Alive, an old western starring Glenn Ford. He plays George Kelby, a quiet storekeeper in a small town. He proves his skill to the townspeople by shooting two silver dollars tossed simultaneously into the air. Now they know who the storekeeper really is. More than a merchant. A man with six notches on his father’s gun.

But here is the thing about George Kelby. He is the fastest gun alive, and he has never once drawn against another man. The notches aren’t his. He has the skill, the nerve, the weapon. What he has never had to do is use it against another human being.

In six years in the Army and my time with the Sheriff’s Department I never once drew my weapon and pointed it at another person. Let alone fired it at one.

That is not a confession of weakness. That is the point.

The Second Amendment was never about Vinney the desperado riding into town looking for a fight. It was never about bravado or immunity or masks or the performance of toughness by people who have never actually been tested.

It was about George Kelby. The storekeeper. The neighbor. The man who can shoot two silver dollars out of the air and hopes he never has to prove it to anything other than a paper target.

I still go to the range.

I still stay a step ahead.

And I still hope, genuinely, completely hope, that the cap gun stays on the shelf where it belongs.

But I know what I’m doing if it doesn’t.

Vinney may not.

In today’s uncertain world, the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution affirms a simple principle: responsible, law-abiding citizens have the right to protect themselves and their families.

Christmas in Atascadero, probably 1951.