Death in 3-D

It was announced today in the news that a federal judge in the U.S. has blocked the online publication of the blueprints for a 3-D printed plastic gun. The publisher of the blueprints has argued that it is a First Amendment - free speech, - not a Second Amendment - the right to bear arms - issue, since the online publication is in the exercise of his freedom of speech. The NRA is, needless - heedless - to say, fighting the federal court decision, and President Trump has come out with a typically incoherent statement on the issue (the president's learning curve looks like Mount Everest).

The gun cult in the United States is taking on ever more ridiculous and dangerous proportions. Last month in Florida a black man shoved a white man to the ground during an altercation involving his girlfriend. The indignant white man then pulled out a gun - for which he had a permit! - and put one round in the black man's chest. The black man was pronounced dead at the hospital. The white man wasn't charged with any crime because of Florida's preposterous "stand your ground" (Trayvon Martin)  laws that make it perfectly legal for people to commit cold blooded murder if they feel threatened with death or "grievous bodily injury." In other words, if you're about to get your arse kicked in a fair fight, all you have to do to spare yourself the embarrassment is pull a gun on your opponent and shoot him to death. Why can't a boxer who is being pummeled by his opponent in the ring do the same? In the Bruce Willis movie, The Last Boy Scout, a football running back pulled out a pistol and shot the tacklers who stood in his way of a touchdown. Wouldn't his actions be considered legal in a "stand your ground" state?

If this scenario seems nightmarish to some people (or Home Sweet Home to others), the great Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, in his memoir, My Last Sigh, describes, in his inimitably amusing style, the "gun cult" in Mexico that held sway throughout the 1940s and 1950s. I am fully aware of the fact that many Americans who advocate concealed carry laws, would like to see their country return to a Wild West environment in which everyone wears a sidearm and taking the law in their own hands becomes routine. I, however, refuse to accept the fanciful notion that my fellow citizens, who can't even be expected to behave themselves behind the wheel of their cars, can be relied on not to murder me by mistake.

Here is Buñuel's account: 

There is a peculiarly intimate relationship between Mexicans and their guns. One day I saw the director Chano Urueta on the set directing a scene with a Colt .45 in his belt. 

"You never know what might happen," he replied casually, when I asked him why he needed a gun in the studio. 

On another occasion, when the union demanded that the music for Ensayo de un crimen (The Criminal Life of Archibald de la Cruz) be taped, thirty musicians arrived at the studio one very hot day, and when they took off their jackets, fully three quarters of them were wearing guns in shoulder holsters. 

The writer Alfonso Reyes also told me about the time, in the early 1920s, that he went to see Vasconcelos, then the secretary of public education, for a meeting about Mexican traditions. 

"Except for you and me," Reyes told him, "everyone here seems to be wearing a gun!" 

"Speak for yourself," Vasconcelos replied calmly, opening his jacket to reveal a Colt .45. 

This "gun cult" in Mexico has innumerable adherents, including the great Diego Rivera, whom I remember taking out his pistol one day and idly sniping at passing trucks. There was also the director Emilio "Indio" Fernandez, who made Maria Candelaria and La perla, and who wound up in prison because of his addiction to the Colt .45. It seems that when he returned from the Cannes Festival, where one of his films had won the prize for best cinematography, he agreed to see some reporters in his villa in Mexico City. As they sat around talking about the ceremony, Fernandez suddenly began insisting that instead of the cinematography award, it had really been the prize for best direction. When the newspapermen protested, Fernandez leapt to his feet and shouted he'd show them the papers to prove it. The minute he left the room, one of the reporters suspected he'd gone to get not the papers, but a revolver ~ and all of them took to their heels just as Fernandez began firing from a second-story window. (One was even wounded in the chest.) 

The best story, however, was told to me by the painter Siqueiros. It occurred toward the end of the Mexican Revolution when two officers, old friends who'd been students together at the military academy but who'd fought on opposing sides, discovered that one of them was a prisoner and was to be shot by the other. (Only officers were executed; ordinary soldiers were pardoned if they agreed to shout "Viva" followed by the name of the winning general.) In the evening, the officer let his prisoner out of his cell so that they could have a drink together. The two men embraced, touched glasses, and burst into tears. They spent the evening reminiscing about old times and weeping over the pitiless circumstances that had appointed one to be the other's executioner. 

"Whoever could have imagined that one day I'd have to shoot you?" one said. 

"You must do your duty," replied the other. "There's nothing to be done about it." 

Overcome by the hideous irony of their situation, they became quite drunk. 

"Listen, my friend," the prisoner said at last. "Perhaps you might grant me a last wish? I want you, and only you, to be my executioner." 

Still seated at the table, his eyes full of tears, the victorious officer nodded, pulled out his gun, and shot him on the spot. 

This has been a very long digression, but in order not to leave you with the impression that Mexico is no more than an infinite series of gunshots, let me just say that the gun cult seems finally to be on the wane, particularly since the many arms factories have been closed. In theory, all guns must now be registered, although it's estimated that in Mexico City alone there are more than five hundred thousand guns which have somehow escaped licensing. Curiously, however, the truly horrific crime ~ like Landru's and Petiot's, mass murders, and butchers selling human flesh - seems far more the prerogative of highly industrialized countries than of Mexico. I know of only one example, which made the headlines a few years ago. Apparently, the prostitutes in a brothel somewhere in the northern part of the country began disappearing with alarming frequency. When the police finally decided to investigate, they discovered that the madam simply had them killed and buried in the garden when they ceased to be sufficiently profitable. In general, however, homicide in Mexico involves only a pistol shot; it doesn't include all the macabre details that often accompany murder in Western Europe or the United States.

How magnanimous of Buñuel to commend Mexicans for not being nearly as murderous as we Americans! The way he describes it, Mexicans sound so much more responsible as gun owners than Americans, and only shoot one another out of honor or economic facility, instead of from a fear of losing a fair fight or when they flip their lids. Speaking for myself, America increasingly seems like a nation of cowards or lunatics.