How about a magazine limit with a twist?

I was shopping with my wife the other day when I somehow got lost and ended up in that bizarre part of the store that reflects a particular inanity of pop-culture, packages it in a glossy sheen and sells its contrived reality back to the world in a palatable, monthly format. The magazine section is undoubtedly the most questionable acreage of the store, and yet there I was, absorbing the shining, smiling faces that begged me to open the tomes they covered.

I am sure a clever person could learn a lot from these publications, that sociologists and psychologists could divine subtle unintuitive understandings of the culture that produced them, but unfortunately for the good readers of the Frontiersman, I am not one of those individuals. That is certainly not going to stop me from telling you all what I think, however.

Standing there in the sickly florescent glow, I was struck by a simple observation. There are a lot of gun nuts up here. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t use this label in a derogatory manner. I have many friends who would certainly be accurately described by this moniker as well as a few relatives, and it is a simple act of laziness and a dull sense of humor that draws me to the term “nuts” over the syllable-rich “aficionado.” But the evidence was staring me in the face; 41 publications were devoted to the field of projectile firing.

I flipped through a few of them and they seemed almost pornographic in their depiction of firearms. The sensual light glinted off the barrels as pictures of the weapons were spread across multiple pages. Some were caught in the act of ejaculating bullets, even. Hardly kids stuff.

I am the first to admit that compared to many, my knowledge of guns is quite limited. I remember my dad buying me a .22 at the Palmer High Gun Show when I was a kid and occasionally going hunting while growing up. I took the hunter safety course when I was in high school, and more or less have a pretty good understanding of how the ol’ thundersticks work. But I could not fathom how one could fill 41 monthly publications with articles about guns. Mind you, these are not hunting or sportsman magazines.

Nor could I imagine how Palmer, with its relatively small population, could support such an ample supply of these publications in an otherwise impressively limited section.

I sometimes find solace in this usually dismal corner of the store by perusing the more scientifically inclined magazines, which are often tucked in dark corners behind the newest issues of Insecure Teenager or Heavy Metal Tattoo. On the surface, the simple number of the nerdy magazines announces to the visitor the sad state of affairs, at least when measured by my skewed metrics.

But as this is a column about my homecoming-induced discombobulation. I will not bore you about the mind-blowing cosmological discoveries revealed in this month’s Scientific American. I will, however, say that the magazine department at Fred Meyer has given me a small window into how much people in my fair city do, indeed, love guns.

Oddly, I never really understood this. I knew people use guns and I knew a lot of people like guns, but the tone of the articles and the nature of the pictures suggested a love deeper than I ever imagined. In my strange little brain, guns are filed in the same category as things such as hammers and doorknobs. I use these objects when I want to complete a particular task and I appreciate them for what they do, but I would never subscribe to Hammer Weekly or Doorknob Aficionado, and I can’t even profess a strong opinion regarding the ongoing doorknob versus door lever controversy.

Which, I think, is part of the reason why the gun debate in the United States is so particularly onerous and vitriolic. Some people really, really love guns. Some people really, really hate guns. And, if my sample of one is any indication, there are some of us who do not have any strong emotions attached to these metal spewing tools.

Which brings me to the sad irony that we live in a nation that cannot seem to sit down and talk about how we can stop all this fighting because we cannot stop fighting long enough to do so. So here is what I propose we do. Let’s remove the magazine sections in stores, because they usually don’t have anything there that I really like and Fred Meyer sure could use a larger selection of cheese.

Pete LaFrance grew up in Palmer and has moved back to the area after a number of years living abroad.