Concept of the First Amendment

I am a native Wyomingite who grew up in Lusk, attending grade school and acquiring my family values in the 1960s. Like many (if not most) Wyoming children of my generation, my family took me on family trips to Thermopolis where I was deeply impacted by the hot springs, the buffalo herd, the Swinging Bridge, Roundtop, and the utterly unique landscape of this particular place (not to mention the journey here through the Wind River Canyon or over the Bighorns from Buffalo). I went out into the World, again, like many Wyominites of my generation.  I had the extraordinary good fortune to move here four years ago.  

I don’t know what was happening in this part of Wyoming in the interim, but in Eastern Wyoming in the first half of the 1960s, people were aware of the Centennial of the Civil War. Adults were patriotic about Wyoming being a homesteader, Free State, the fruition of the abolition of slavery. Both of my father’s parents, yes, his father and his mother, a woman, proved up on homesteads the generation before him. I remember red, white and blue buntings and to my recollection, there were no Confederate flags anywhere, flying from flagpoles along any roadways.  I remember it was common to see light caliber rifles and shotguns hanging in the gun racks of pickup trucks, this was normal, this was Wyoming.  But folks, the idea that someone would wear a sidearm into town was the absolute epitome of bad taste and poor manners.  If a rancher kid did that, his mother would know about it before he got home because her friends would have called to ask what in the world was up with her son. Johnny Cash had a song: “Don’t bring your guns to town, son.” and I can’t remember anyone doubting Johnny Cash’s virility.  

I don’t know what is going on, but, the entire concept of the First Amendment is that in America, you can express yourself without being armed.  If you believe in the First Amendment, you demonstrate that by speaking your mind, you don’t carry a gun to back up your opinion, that is the opposite, that is lack of faith in the ideal itself, in your fellow Americans. 

We can make fun now of the Old West, we can tote an empty six shooter into our Historical Museum when Wyoming Whiskey is doing their weekend, that’s great!  But go to the museum, look at the historical photos of the Hole in the Wall Bar, nobody’s packing, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t allowed.  I don’t think Butch Cassidy himself was taking Etta Place into establishments with armed men, it was uncouth. I just want to say, maybe I’m wrong, but I believe the idea of carrying a gun into a School Board meeting is flat out “Historical Revisionism” at its worst, something Republicans in this Republican Wyoming, find extremely distasteful, and I would suggest anyone advocating such a thing, here, in little, far removed from Chicago or any infamously violent, crowded American urban area, should take a good look in the mirror and ask themselves, “Why am I so afraid?”

Respectfully, Paul  Berry