\nLast week, after publishing \u201cDon\u2019t Take Your Guns to Town<\/a>,\u201d I took the train across the East River to see a movie. A bit of distraction seemed necessary in that moment, even if it was in the form of a demonic clown named Pennywise. Sitting on the Manhattan-bound C train, I noticed a man in a grey flannel suit to my left. He, like most modern passengers, was fixated on his smart phone. The glow of its screen did not reflect Candy Crush, Snapchat, or Instagram, however, but a P.O.V. shooter game. The tap of his thumb did not cause hearts of affirmation to burst with confetti, but rather, launched bullets from a high-power rifle, bumping off \u201cbad guys\u201d one by one. I watched as my well-dressed neighbor selected guns, tightened his scope, and fired and rooftop gunmen.<\/p>\n

At that moment, it had only been four days since the mass murder of festival goers in Las Vegas, and seeing any gun, whether real, toy, or two-dimensional gave me a swift kick of nausea. It goes without saying that the events that plagued Las Vegas on October 1st\u00a0still plague us today, and will continue to do so \u2013 and it is because of that lasting sickness I write on this topic again.<\/p>\n

There were a lot of things that didn\u2019t make the final draft of last week\u2019s Only Noise, in part because I felt there was a hierarchy of importance with certain details \u2013 namely pointing out the arcane excuses for assault rifle-ownership in America. What I did not have the word count to include, were profiles on the scores of musicians who have had the guts to protest groups like the N.R.A., and ideologies which uphold the mass armament of US citizens with little to no discernment.<\/p>\n

Artists like Harry Nilsson, who, after his best friend John Lennon was murdered by a crazed fan with a .38 revolver, became the official spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV<\/a>). In 1981, a year following Lennon\u2019s death, Nilsson told the L.A. Times, <\/em>“I’ve never been an activist before, but when I was one of the people who had to hold Ringo’s hand after\u00a0John Lennon\u00a0was shot, I became involved. I said to Ringo one night just after the shooting, ‘If I could take this from you, I would. But I can’t.’ I was helpless, and that was the worst time in the world for me.\u201d Nilsson\u2019s life work became twofold: music, and gun control. Eventually he became National Chairman of a campaign called End Handgun Violence Week, which ran between October 25th and October 31st in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n

247 people<\/a> have been fatally shot in this country in the 10 days since the Route 91 Harvest Festival. Perhaps the CSGV could bring back End Handgun Violence Week, although the public faces far more frightening weaponry than just handguns these days.<\/p>\n