Shotgun brings home turkeys, tragedy

By: 
Ross Bielema
Columnist

It was the most difficult gun I’ve ever cleaned.

Now, I’ve probably cleaned guns 5,000 times over the years, and it’s never a fun task, but most of the time, it’s just tedious, not difficult.

The only problem I had was removing the barrel of the 20 gauge Browning Gold Hunter, a semi-auto camouflage shotgun owned by a friend. I went to YouTube and quickly found that I was doing everything right, but just needed to work it out of the receiver.

The difficult part was removing the gun from the case and getting up the courage to look at it in the first place.

This shotgun, once shared by a father and son during many happy and even humorous turkey hunts, was last used by the son to take his own life.

After the funeral, the boy’s father — an acquaintance who is married to one of my wife’s best friends — pulled me aside and asked if I would be willing to clean the gun for him. I said sure, although I was not certain I would be able to do what I promised.

Originally, the plan was for me to retrieve the gun from the police department that was holding it. The 26-year-old boy lived alone, and of course, the police had to investigate the suicide, retaining the gun as part of their case.

Dad was able to get the gun from the police station. It was in a case when I picked it up from him.

The gun sat in a corner of the kitchen for days. I didn’t know what I would find when I opened the case and was relieved to find no evidence of its horrific last use. I suspect the police had cleaned the gun, because even the bore was shiny and showed no powder residue. Dad didn’t ask the police about the gun’s condition, and I certainly didn’t ask him.

The process of getting up the courage to wipe down and lubricate this infamous but otherwise ordinary looking hunting tool was doubly difficult for another reason. In 2012, one of my best friends took his own life with a .38-caliber revolver. I wasn’t aware of his past history of suicide attempts, although I did know he was going through a divorce and hadn’t seen his youngest son in nearly a year. His family asked if I wanted the gun and I said no.

Craig Johnson was a classmate who had grown up with me in my small hometown. At one time, I had been a bully to him and in later years, regretted it. We came to be great friends, taking trips together and sharing a few deer hunting adventures in Wisconsin. Craig was never a hunter, but he did get a non-resident license one year. When he went to the van for a break less than two hours after legal shooting time started, I shot a nice doe. I still remember him looking at that still-warm doe, thumping on her neck like it was a prize horse and saying, “That’s a beauty!” It was a special moment.

Craig was a brilliant metallurgical engineer who helped run his own metal fabrication plant with his two brothers. He loved science fiction, and I remember him breathlessly telling me about this new movie coming out that was sort of a cops-and-robbers-in-space tale called “Star Wars.”

I sat next to him in the theater, watching laser cannon barrels moving in and out amid the now world-renowned sound effects during one of the battle scenes. “Lasers don’t have recoil,” he whispered as I stuffed popcorn in my mouth. “And there’s no sound in space because there’s no oxygen.”

Thanks, Craig!

I told that story at his funeral.

Guns often get a bad rap for “causing” crimes and death. Someone recently coined the terms “gun deaths” and “gun crimes.” Of course, we never say, “car deaths” or “alcohol deaths.” According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were 45,979 suicides in 2020 and firearms were used in 24,292 of those cases. I certainly don’t blame the gun, but it is an efficient and more certain way to kill something, whether you are saving a life or taking your own life.

What we need to do is start having a dialogue about suicide. The pandemic and some of our government’s responses to it have created a generation of fearful, confused and, in some cases, unstable young people. Masking, isolation and “social distancing” for school-aged kids has now been seen to have been the absolute worst way to deal with a virus that largely ignored those under age 20.

I was grateful to hear the minister discuss suicide frankly at the young man’s funeral, offering suggestions to watch for it and where to go for help. Sadly, those most hurting often don’t speak up and ask for help. It’s our job to not only watch for it, but look for it. Ask questions of those you love and get involved in their lives. Watch for triggering events, such as an injury, a broken relationship, money problems and the abuse of alcohol and drugs.

The quick help for anyone is to dial 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. www.suicide.org offers a list of state suicide support groups, including Survivors of Suicide in Shawano.

Guns have almost always represented happy memories for me, but they can be misused. The best thing you can do is to keep your guns locked up or otherwise out of the reach of children and anyone who is despondent. It takes only seconds to lock up your firearms, but it could save the life of a loved one.


Ross Bielema is a freelance writer from New London and owner of Wolf River Concealed Carry LLC. Contact him at Ross@wolfriverccw.com.