Guns look bigger when staring down the barrel

ROBERT GARDNER

* EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daily Pilot has agreed to republish The Verdict,

the ever-popular column written for many years by retired Corona Del

Mar jurist and historian Robert Gardner, in exchange for donations to

the Surfrider Foundation. This particular column was originally

published on Jan. 29 1994.

I doubt that any rational person condones the kind of senseless

violence to which young and immature minds are being exposed, hour

after hour and day after day, in so-called action-packed movies and

on television.

Being exposed to this kind of senseless mayhem has to have an

influence on a child’s personality. On the other hand, had I been

exposed to this pattern of violence as a child, I might have behaved

more heroically than I did in a certain situation in my younger days.

It happened in 1937 when I was a very young, very gung-ho deputy

district attorney. I had secured an arrest warrant for a man who was

alleged to have done some very nasty things to his young daughter. I

arranged to have the warrant placed in the hands of a close friend,

deputy sheriff Jim Workman. I told Jim I wanted to be along when the

warrant was served so that I could, hopefully, secure a quick

confession and save the daughter the trauma of a trial.

And so it was that on a certain Saturday morning, Jim called me to

say he thought he had located the defendant in Santa Ana. So, armed

with a yellow tablet and a pencil, I went along.

We went to the address alleged to be that of the defendant’s

family. We received no answer to our knock on the front door so went

around to the back door. While Jim spoke to the family, I strolled

around the backyard.

It must be remem- bered that we were dealing with the kind of a

home that doesn’t exist anymore, not with the price of property

today.

The back yard was about 40 feet of hard-packed dirt leading to a

scattering of outbuildings, a chicken coop, a one-car garage and a

tool shed.

For no reason at all I opened the door to the tool shed and to my

horror came face to face with the defendant. Even worse, he stuck a

rifle in my face. It was the biggest rifle I had ever seen. I could

have walked down that rifle barrel without stooping. The defendant

said, “Go away.”

At that moment, had I been properly indoctrinated in modern

action-packed movies, I would have, with a lightning-like movement,

shoved the barrel aside, spun around and kicked the defendant in the

head and with a couple of well-placed karate chops sent him to the

floor.

At least that’s what Chuck Norris would have done. Or, if I were a

follower of another school of action-packed movies, I would have

kicked him in the you-know-whats, then, when he bent over in agony,

given him a knee to the face, smashing his nose and scattering teeth

all over the floor.

I did neither. All I had been exposed to was watching Tom Mix get

on and off a horse. That didn’t fit the occasion. So I did exactly

what he told me to do. I went away.

In so doing I took what was probably the longest walk of my life,

about 40 feet of backyard expecting any minute to get a bullet from

that big rifle right between the shoulder blades.

I told Jim what had happened. He said, “Let’s get him.” I said we

weren’t going to do any such thing, that we were going around the

corner of the house to get out of the range of that big rifle. We

called for reinforcements.

When the reinforcements arrived it was no modern SWAT team, all

dressed in distinctive black uniforms and carrying lots of high

powered rifles. Instead it was a group of overweight sheriff’s

deputies, all standing around kicking the dirt, smoking, spitting and

debating how to “get that guy.”

The debate came to a halt when we heard a gunshot from the shed.

We rushed over, opened the door and found the defendant dead on the

floor. He had committed suicide. That, of course, took care of my

anticipated confession and certainly saved his daughter the trauma of

a trial.

As a coda to the above hair-raising experience, I should, in all

honestly report, that the huge gun the defendant shoved in my face

turned out to be a .22. I discovered that guns look bigger when one

is looking down the barrel.

Maybe not to Chuck Norris, but to anyone not indoctrinated in

action-packed movies, a gun barrel, any gun barrel, when shoved in

your face, looks like the Holland tunnel.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a resident of Corona del Mar and is a longtime

observer of life in Newport Beach.