by Ray Rhamey
She gazed at Chloe’s downy face with a rush of adoration, ran a fingertip along a rounded cheek, and provoked a giggle and a quick kiss. Oh, if only this place would be good to her child. She wondered again if she’d done the right thing.
A freeze-frame of those punks gunning down that kid in the courtyard popped into her mind. How could this be worse?
Brakes squealing the way they had at every stop for two days and two thousand miles, the bus stopped at last. The driver announced, “Welcome to Portland, folks. Since this is a port of entry, you will be checked for lethal firearms. Thanks for traveling with Greyhound.”
Wondering what that was all about, Jewel led Chloe out to the parking lot. The air reeked of exhaust fumes and the black smell of sunbaked asphalt, but the sky was pure blue with puffy white clouds. A breeze sighed through the lot and took the fumes with it, replacing them with a piney scent. Jewel took a deep breath, gathered her bags, and shepherded Chloe into the bus station.
Inside, passengers formed lines leading to inspection stations like in airports, schools, and government buildings—X-ray tunnels for luggage and bags, and electromagnetic sensor gates for people to pass through. Food smells drifted her way from a mini-mall on the far side of the building.
A big sign above the inspection area declared, “POSSESSION OF A LETHAL FIREARM IN OREGON IS AN AUTOMATIC FELONY CONVICTION.” Wow. They were serious about this.
She joined a line. Three people ahead, a passenger set a small three-barreled pistol in a basket. The security guard glanced at it and passed it through to be collected on the other side by its owner.
In the line next to hers, a scruffy young guy who’d gotten on the bus in Montana stepped through the sensor gate. It beeped, and a guard told him to empty his pockets. The man dropped a large folding knife into the basket, his eyes darting as if he expected to be busted. The guard examined it, then handed the basket around the gate. This time the alarm kept its peace when the young man went through. As he collected his knife, the guard said, “You be careful with that, son.”
The next person in Jewel’s line to undergo inspection, a white-bearded old dude, whipped out an automatic pistol and dropped it into a basket. The guard picked it up and ejected the magazine. Instead of bullets, it held stubby cartridges tipped with white balls. They were maybe half the length of an ordinary cartridge.
The guard shoved the magazine back into the gun and passed it on. “Nice-looking conversion.”
The old fart smiled and cleared the sensor gate.
Jewel whispered into Chloe’s ear, “Honey, we are way-y-y out West.”
The fortyish woman in front of Jewel took a snub-nosed revolver from an attaché case. The guard popped the chamber open and found the brass-and-lead bullets Jewel expected to see. The woman held out a photo ID and said, “I have a permit to carry that, officer.”
“Sorry, ma’am, nobody does in Oregon, not even cops.”
She pointed at the old dude ahead and protested. “But that man had a gun.”
“His weapon was re-chambered for legal defensive use. You don’t have to surrender your weapon, but if you refuse I’ll have to arrest you.”
The woman warded him off with hands out. “Whoa! What do I do?”
“You can check your weapon and get it back when you leave the state. If you’re concerned about your safety, stoppers are available for five dollars. If you’re going to stay in Oregon, you can have your weapon modified.”
“Stoppers?”
“Defensive weapons.” The guard pulled one of the three-barreled pistols from a holster on his belt. “Like this.”
The woman scowled. “I’ll check my gun for now.”
He placed her pistol on a conveyor belt that took it behind him to a table manned by another officer. The woman followed her weapon.
Jewel dropped her luggage and purse on the conveyor and guided Chloe through the gate. On the other side, a female security guard picked up Jewel’s purse. “Whose is this?”
Now what? “Mine.”
“I need to check inside, ma’am.”
“Go ahead.” She hoped the chunk of cash left over from Murphy’s bundle wouldn’t arouse suspicion.
The guard pulled out Jewel’s Mace and nodded. “That’s what I thought it was. Don’t see it much anymore.”
Jewel said, “Isn’t it okay?”
“Oh, sure. New to Oregon, right?”
“Yeah.”
The guard pointed toward the first storefront in the mini-mall. A sign read, “Oregon Newcomers Aid.” “Over there”—she dropped the Mace back into the purse—“you can find out about better things than this.”
“Thanks.”
Jewel had no interest in the newcomer place—government and authority had never done anything for her and plenty against her. She led Chloe into the mall.
The aroma of french fries from a McDonald’s set her to thinking about breakfast. She knew Chloe would be hungry soon, so she turned that way.
She passed a busy store named the Crosman Stopper Shoppe. She hated cutesy names. Its windows displayed pistols that had three barrels like the one she had seen in line, and ranged in color from bright red to ocean blue. Repulsed by the sight of so much weaponry, she moved on.
Ahead of her, the scruffy-looking young guy from the bus trailed an athletic teenage girl. She wore shorts and hiking boots, and had a big purse slung over one shoulder and a holster at her waist, a turquoise pistol grip sticking out.
A familiar tension in the man’s body drew Jewel’s attention. He darted quick looks at the crowd around him. Jewel did the same; there were no cops or security people in sight.
With a practiced motion he pulled out his knife, sliced through the strap of the girl’s purse, snatched it, and ran.
The girl yelled, “THIEF!” as she drew the turquoise pistol from her holster. The crowd parted, clearing an opening between the girl and the running man.
Her gun gave a compressed-air cough.
A blur of something hit the thief’s neck and the back of his head, but he kept running.
A grandmotherly woman, had to be eighty if she was a day, pulled a gray pistol from her bag and fired from the hip. It shot a white blob that expanded into a stringy mass and wrapped around the thief’s ankles. He hit the floor hard and slid, belly down.
He rolled over and hacked at the sticky strands with his knife, and then a vacancy came into his eyes. He lay back and went limp.
The teen went to his side and retrieved her purse. The granny joined her, and the girl said, “Thanks, ma’am.”
“Sure thing, honey.”
A cop edged through the gathering crowd. He checked the thief’s pulse, nodded, and said into a collar microphone, “Got a snatcher at the Greyhound mall. He’s down with nap and tangle. I need transport.”
The cop turned to face the girl with his body cam and she told him what had happened, including the granny in her story. The officer got the granny’s version and then smiled and shook her hand.
Paramedics arrived with a gurney, and the curious moved on. Jewel’s thoughts spun. People shooting each other down in malls, cops giving gun-toting grannies a pat on the back . . . What the hell kind of place was this? She found herself thinking that maybe this was one time she could use a little governmental guidance. She took Chloe to the Oregon Newcomers Aid office.
She found the usual tourist information—maps, a rack of brochures touting the depths of the Oregon Caves and the heights of Crater Lake.
At the store’s rear, comfortable chairs, red-and-yellow floor pillows, and a low table created a reading area that included heaps of picture books and half a dozen toys. A young mother, her baby in an infant carrier on the floor beside the toys, browsed brochures.
Next to the reading area, a glass case displayed an array of hand weapons. Atop the case a sign read, “STOPPERS AVAILABLE HERE. PROTECT YOURSELF & STOP CRIME.” That sounded like the place to find what she needed to know.
Chloe ran to the baby’
s side, dropped to her knees, and cooed baby talk.
Jewel said, “Now, Chloe, you leave that baby alone.”
The mother watched Chloe for a few seconds, then smiled and said, “She’s fine.”
“Thanks.”
Jewel gave Chloe firm instructions to stay put and play. She grinned when Chloe grabbed a stuffed bunny from the toy pile and made it dance to win a smile from the baby.
Most of the pistols in the case had three small-bore barrels in a triangular arrangement of one over two. Jewel saw no trigger. There were three buttons where the hammer would be on a revolver.
A chubby guy in his fifties, weathered skin like brown leather, stood behind the counter. She found his accent—Australian?—a little hard to understand when he said, “G’day. M’name’s Tucker. New to Oregon?”
“Yeah.”
“A lot of newcomers look at all these guns and wonder what the hell is going on here.”
Jewel smiled—the dude was reading her mind.
“Well, all this is part o’ getting rid of guns that kill. And a bunch of gun manufacturers helped, if you can believe that.”
“Get out of here. They helped get rid of guns?”
“Spent millions.”
“They did this out of the goodness of their little hearts?”
He laughed. “Hell, no. For the fatness of their big wallets.” He smiled. “To be fair, at first they fought it—‘twas the people who beat ’em with an initiative. The gun lobby blocked every try in the legislature, but the direct initiative to make possession of a lethal firearm an automatic felony, with some exceptions, won big, eighty percent of the vote. Seein’ as how the only reason to have a lethal gun is for killing, havin’ one is the same as assault with a deadly weapon. That was the stick.”
“There’s a carrot?”
“Yep. State offered to buy the guns or replace ’em with nonlethal defensive weapons for next to nothin’. The new guns were, of course, made by the gun companies at a fat profit. On top o’ that, the government put on a big push for everybody to arm themselves with stoppers for self-defense. That meant a huge new market for gun makers, and fortunes were made.”
He grinned. “I bought air-gun stock, myself.” His eyebrows lifted. “Stoppers are pretty new here, less than a year, and I’m already seein’ ’em all over the place. I think it’s gonna spread to other states, an’ though there’s somethin’ like eighty million gun owners in the U.S., there’s a few hundred million folks that aren’t. Imagine the money to be made sellin’ a couple hundred million stoppers.”
Jewel said, “Makes more sense to me just to get rid of the damn things.”
“Naw. Can’t just ban guns altogether, not in America. Never happen. Not practical, not feasible, and not the right thing to do, either. These days, lotta mates an’ sheilas need to defend themselves. And how ’bout hunters who maybe do have a right to hunt?”
Jewel tapped the case with one of her many rings. “These, uh, stoppers, is that right?”
“Yeah, stoppers.”
“They’re just defensive?”
Tucker opened the case and took out a weapon. “You’d have to work hard to kill someone with a stopper—you’d do better with a nice, heavy rock.
“Yeah, you can abuse ’em, like puttin’ a loudmouth to sleep for no better reason than his mouth, an’ I’ve been tempted, but they take away your right to carry and hit you with a stiff fine if you do. Could go to jail for assault, too.”
“How come I never heard of these? I mean, you could sell a ton in Chicago.”
He shrugged. “They’re pretty new, and there’s laws in a lotta states that won’t let ’em be sold. Yet.”
He handed her the gun. It was hard plastic instead of metal, and lightweight. Her hand welcomed its shape, and her thumb went easily to the red, white, and blue buttons at the top.
She said, “There’s no trigger.”
“That’s the buttons. This’s a basic stopper—got a compressed-air cartridge in the handle. You can recharge it at gun shops and gas stations. The buttons can trigger three different kinds o’ rounds.”
He opened the weapon and took out the top round, a casing with a paper tube. “This’s nap. It shoots a quick-acting sleep drug.” He took a pair of scissors from the counter, snipped off the end of the tube, and emptied what looked like miniature red BBs into his hand. “Break ’em on skin and you’re asleep in a minute or so.”
That explained the purse snatcher’s glazed expression as he lay unresisting in the mall.
Tucker said, “Cops love nap. Nobody gets hurt, and they have a peaceful criminal ready for arrest.” He took out another round, a white ball like on the bullets she’d seen earlier. “This’s tangle, sticky stuff that wraps around you.”
She nodded. “I saw that in the mall.”
He grinned. “It takes a special chemical to dissolve it.” He removed the last round, another tube, this one with plastic caps on each end. “Whack is a mix of chemicals that makes your eyes shut tight and confuses you. You can load all three kinds of rounds, or just one.”
Jewel knew how effective just two of the stopper’s loads were. Hit somebody with all three and they wouldn’t be a danger—they’d be a mess.
Tucker said, “The state gave people two years to swap their lethal firearms for stoppers or have ’em re-chambered to fire nap, tangle, and whack. More’n that, there was a big ad campaign asking folks to carry defensive weapons. The state subsidizes the cost—you get a forty-dollar weapon for five bucks. You should have seen the lines. Gun makers loved it.”
Jewel said, “So no more guns?”
He shook his head. “Hunters can have rifles or shotguns with three-round magazines. Can’t do much mass murdering with those. Or they can trade illegal rifles in for long-range tranquilizer guns, or the state will pay to re-chamber them for tranquilizer darts. With nonlethal guns, a hunter has to work a little harder to bring down his game, can’t blast ’em from hundreds o’ yards out, but heck, it’s supposed to be a sport, in’t it? Y’got a choice when you bring down your game, too—either finish it off or let it go. And wounded animals don’t run away to die slow and painful. Even shotguns work with a load of tangle. Funny thing is, a lot of hunters are changin’ over voluntarily ’cause they like the sport of it.”
“Do a lot of people carry stoppers?”
“I hear one out of three and growing. The bad guys are way outgunned.”
She thought of the quick action in the mall and the crowd’s casual attitude. They hadn’t been afraid when the thief struck. Jewel flashed on how different it might have been if she’d had a stopper when those shitheads grabbed her in Chicago.
She hefted the pistol and said, “How do I . . .”
He smiled. “You register, do a little trainin’, and pass a test.”
She was torn. She’d hated guns all her life and had been teaching Chloe how wrong they were. Yet here she stood, a gun in her hand and a growing desire to have it. Being attacked in Chicago came back to her, only this time she imagined it was Chloe instead. She nodded. “I’ll do it.”
Tucker got a senior woman who worked the front of the store to look after Chloe and took Jewel to a small target range in the back. Training was simple: a video on how to use the weapon and what to expect from its capabilities, instruction from Tucker on how to aim and use each of its rounds, and a short session of shooting at a target.
She wasn’t cut out to be a gunslinger, but the stopper was “point-and-shoot” easy for hitting a close-up target. Tucker stressed that it was a weapon to take seriously, and that she couldn’t use it on someone except to prevent harm or stop a crime.
After Jewel passed her test, Tucker encoded her Social Security number into a chip in the forest-green stopper she chose. “This way, if you ever lose the gun or it’s stolen, when it’s recovered it can get back to you. It’s also a way to identify people who abuse their weapons.”
He grinned. “I’ll tell ya, it was pretty wild here for th
e first month or two, people put to sleep and whacked all over the place just because somebody got pissed off. A couple people did die—”
“C’mon, how nasty can you get with something this harmless?”
“You can pump nap into somebody until an overdose shuts down breathing. The shooters who did that kind of stuff were soon nabbed, and things settled down. Durin’ the same time, gun deaths dropped by eighty percent.”
She paid five dollars for the stopper. At Tucker’s suggestion, she also bought a package of extra nap rounds—they came in a tube that looked a lot like a tampon package.
Jewel found Chloe cuddled up next to the senior woman, happily absorbed in The Little Engine That Could. The second Chloe noticed Jewel, she stopped repeating “I think I can, I think I can,” wriggled off the chair, and ran to her. “Mommy, I’m hungry.”
“Okay, honey, we’ll get breakfast.”
She gathered their bags and followed Chloe’s skipping exit from the store. There was a comfort in having her new stopper in her purse. Now to get a Mickey Dee’s breakfast into her daughter before they got on the bus for the last part of their trip to . . . what?
Looking into a Gun Barrel
Noah slowed his car as he neared the turnoff for the Alliance campus, now seeing its openness filtered through his new paranoia about people stalking him with guns. Anyone could walk right in.
It had been a mistake to take a look at the Mackinac Militia website. There had been three articles by Colonel Martha Hanson about Noah Stone, each one railing about the “enemy of freedom” and the traitorous damage he was doing to the fundamental rights of Americans. Oh, she hadn’t said anything directly about shooting him, but after telling her minions that Noah Stone was coming to take away their guns, she had asked, “What are you going to do about it? Are you going to stand and fight?”
And then there’d been a photo of a hunting-rifle cartridge with his name written on it.
