Why are there so many guns used and so many people shot in my novel, “Skyscrapers?” Am I a gun nut? Do I favor concealed carry, keep my brass knuckles in my back pocket and my derringer in my bra?
What I do is irrelevant. Every single morning, I open “The Chicago Tribune” and “The Chicago Sun-Times” to confront multiple stories of gun violence. There’s yesterday’s shootings, which can result from gang or turf warfare, or jealousy, or feeling angry and seeing a likely target, or just random nonsensical violence which involves shooting babies in buggies or strangers seen through a car window and mistaken for someone else. These are followed by stories of trials of people accused of shooting someone and the verdicts that are handed down. Each verdict incarcerates someone but seems to deter no one.
Chicago is a gun-happy city and yet I feel safer here than I did in London during the IRA offensive in the 1970’s. As became evident from the Boston marathon tragedy, bombs not only kill, but they do grievous damage to victims who survive. However, I know from friends who are surgeons that it’s one thing to try to repair damage to a person shot with a revolver and quite another to repair a person shot with a semi-automatic or automatic weapon. There is no reason a private individual should have access to such weapons, which are suited only to full scale warfare. And yet, a lot of private citizens have them. The damage they do is horrific, leaving victims without a spleen or a kidney or unable to walk or talk.
“The Chicago Tribune” Sunday edition ran a full-page ad from a gun dealer. Especially featured were “authentic Tommy guns” in perfect condition. If you remember, Tommy guns were associated with the Al Capone, Eliot Ness era in Chicago. Before that, the “weapon of choice” was the Winchester repeating rifle, which helped white people to conquer the native Americans. The guns sold to Indians were the old one-shot-and-reload weapons used as late as the American Civil War. Needless to say, the Winchester gave the white interlopers an unfair advantage.
When I started writing “Skyscrapers,” I knew that if I was going to feature drug dealers in any way that the novel would include guns, and probably a lot of them. The two industries are closely related. Not only do drug dealers need to protect their expensive wares and turf, but the worst shootings tend to be those in which the shooters are high on one or several substances. I can’t help but wonder to whom those “authentic Tommy guns,” (an earlier form of the Israeli-invented Uzi) were sold to. Evidently the target audience must be people who read the Chicago newspapers, which means we’ll probably see the results in those same papers sooner or later.
Maybe I should keep a derringer in my bra, after all. Although it wouldn’t be much use against an Uzi.
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