It's a clear day, the traffic is moving. My car is old and cheap to begin with but the windows are down with the stereo loud and I feel as important as the anyone else. We're all on the bridge together with the water blue and alive below us, the sun feeling close at 93 million miles, the spring air fresh and young.
There's a truck in front of me a couple of cars, a new truck, brand new, and I'm mildly surprised when I see bumper stickers plastered all over the back of the cab. The biggest sticker is bright red white and blue, an election sticker. The name on the sticker is Reagan, big white letters laid evenly into the colors that never run. It's bigger than any actual bumper sticker, a statement, and it’s clever, pining for a time in the driver’s mind that never actually existed some thirty years ago.
There’s another sticker below the Reagan sticker, this one just simple black and white. It’s another parody sticker, made to look like an NBA or MLB logo, with the silhouette of a man, but instead of the man bouncing a basketball or handling a bat, he’s aiming a rifle. The rifle has a long scope, and the man is looking into it, like a long range hunter, or an assassin aiming into Dealey Plaza on November 22nd, 1963.
The sticker on the truck works on many levels. It’s clever, lampooning the corporate logos of popular sports. It’s hip, much more hip than other anti-gun control stickers like the NRA logo or a Charlton Heston quote. It’s also subtly threatening, the man could be possibly aiming his gun at a deer, or a duck, or possibly a politician voting for stricter regulations on guns.
A number of American politicians have been shot in our history, probably the most famous being John F Kennedy when he was shot in the head by a high powered rifle in Dallas. While there are disagreements about the true nature of Kennedy’s assassination, from the reasons why to how many shooters were involved, everyone does agree that Kennedy died and that a gun was the means. Gabby Giffords is the most recent high profile politician to be shot. She was shot in the head by a mentally disturbed man and still survived.
Another politician that survived being shot was Ronald Reagan. He was walking out of a Hilton in Washington DC when he got shot March 30th, 1981, along with a cop, a secret service agent, and his press secretary. It wasn’t a sniper rifle with a long range scope that wounded them but a .22 caliber Rohm RG-13 revolver. The shooter was a mentally disturbed man obsessed with Jodie Foster. Everyone who was shot that day ultimately survived, although Reagan’s press secretary was permanently paralyzed. He went on to sponsor and push a bill through congress called the Brady Bill that required background checks for all firearm sales by federally licensed gun dealers.
I wonder if the driver of the truck knows this. I wonder if he really knows much of anything about Ronald Reagan beyond the myths that have grown up around the name and image over the years. I wonder if the driver of the truck has ever had a gun aimed at him, or been shot by a gun, or had a family member or friend killed or injured by a gun. I wonder if the driver of the truck really thinks a gun is the thing that will protect him when a government come to crush his rights and well being. I wonder if the driver has really thought it all through.
By now the truck has disappeared beyond the other cars as traffic slows down around the S curve of the bridge. It’s spring and I have better things to ponder, turning the radio to the baseball game.
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