Scott Cawelti

Some fifteen years ago, legislators were proposing that parents be punished with fines or jail time when their kids commit gun crimes using guns that belong to the parents. The law was supposed to force parents to keep their guns under serious lock and key.  Such a law was never implemented, and for good reason.   

Here is what I wrote about it in July of 1998:  



7/12/98

Visitors to America comment on the easy availability of pistols, rifles, and shotguns. A trip to any Wal-Mart or Scheel’s reveals racks of serious weapons for sale.

A trip by a pawnshop sign shows they have AK-47s and Glocks, ready to go.

These same visitors can’t help but notice on-screen gun violence as well. American movies and television gleefully reveal people shooting and getting shot for sheer entertainment value. Americans, it seems, hate reading about real shootings, but love cinematic gunplay. Go figure.

I myself was raised around guns. On family picnics, my dad regularly shot his.22 semi-automatic at various targets, including bumblebees. In the fall, we dined regularly on pheasants he had brought down with his twelve gauge.

For a real treat, my dad would occasionally let my brother and I fire his rifle at targets, and I learned how to handle it with respect and care. I also learned how to shoot a pistol, though that was scary because of the kick and how hard pistols can be to aim accurately.

One thing I knew: Guns were off limits unless he was around. They were kept under serious lock and key, and if I were to take them without his permission or knowledge, he would have found a way to make my life a short-term hell.

Pointing a real gun at anyone was absolutely taboo, and was punished harshly with a lecture and the immediate removal of the gun.

Of course I owned BB rifles and pistols, and before long bought an old .22 for myself. I would wander the railroad tracks out west of Cedar Falls shooting at squirrels and occasionally a rabbit, not to mention cans and bottles. Nobody got hurt, and it was probably the most fun a kid could have without drugs, sex, or rock and roll.

Never once did I consider taking a gun to school or actually even pretending to shoot anyone. That was simply beyond my comprehension. 

However, I did know kids who were brought up like me who weren’t quite so normal. I knew a classmate who would regularly shoot a rifle out his window and knock walnuts off trees. Just thinking about that scared me, since I knew how far and fast a bullet would go.

Naturally he didn’t do this with his parents around, and if they knew, they would have punished him severely. Did that stop him? Of course not. Should his parents have been held responsible if one of those bullets had hit someone?

Apparently so, according to legislation proposed last week. This law would allow parents to be prosecuted as criminally negligent if they allow their children “easy access” to firearms.

Now this potential law makes sense at first glance, as do so many laws drafted in response to headlines. Stop the guns at their source, namely the home and parents.

At second glance, however, the law makes less sense. In a gun culture such as ours, guns don’t just come from parents, and parents have little control over where they do come from.

In fact, parents have little say over whether their children become gunslingers or not.

Even in the late Fifties, when guns were far more rare, I could have gotten one within an hour from any number of friends, all of whom owned them or knew others who owned them. All without any parents’ knowledge or permission.

To turn parents into lawbreakers for their children’s actions smacks of desperation, a rush to do something to seem responsive to voters.

Any such law won’t prevent young shooters from continuing to kill people with guns. It will only create more misery for their parents, who hardly need more grief.

So what is the solution? We can hardly ask kids to stop treating guns as a means of revenge, or of gaining power, or just as a way of showing off. Their heroes are shooters, and any kid who wants to feel heroic will see guns as one of the quickest means, sick as that seems.

Here’s the hard truth: People who have been touched in any way by gun violence cannot find gunplay in movies or on TV entertaining. I know several people who avoid “action-adventure” films either because they know what guns really do (one is a surgeon) or because they empathize with victims too much.

As more people know the reality of guns and refuse to find shoot-em-ups entertaining, America’s gun culture may fade.

Ideally we’ll stop worshiping John Wayne and James Bond and Dirty Harry and start seeing on-screen gunplay as more horrifying than entertaining.   And guns will be used and seen only as serious weapons of war or as well-guarded recreational diversions.

But more innocent Americans will have to die first.

Summer, 1963-- I was giving guitar lessons regularly in my family's living room to anyone who signed up. One day, a young woman showed up who could strum, knew a few chords, and wanted to learn finger picking and chord patterns.   Nothing to unusual there.

Then she sang.  I had never heard such a perfectly modulated, on-pitch,  pure female voice.  Bonnie Koloc in her late teens was singing better than most professionals, with virtually no vocal training.  

By 1978, when I wrote this, she was in fact a well-established professional singer. 

This is how she started.  

America, as everybody knows, is a land of humble origins. And Iowa is certainly the heart of humble origin land. The Everly Brothers began quietly in Shenandoah, Johnny Carson started lowly in Corning, John Wayne commenced meagerly in Winterset, Cloris Leachman awoke slowly in Des Moines, and Bonnie Koloc arose tenderly (and humbly) right here in Waterloo and Cedar Falls.

For those of you who don't notice such things, Bonnie Koloc is just finishing her sixth album; she has sung to rave reviews in Chicago and New York, she has appeared on Dick Cavett, in concert with Gordon Lightfoot, John Prine, Steve Good­man, Tom Rush and others. The audience for her music (and her wonderful performances) has grown steadily. And Bonnie deserves it all; she knows and believes in quality work.

Anyway, Bonnie Koloc has been a friend for years, and she was in town for a visit last week. Seeing her reminded me of her own humble musical origins. I know, because I helped give Bonnie her start, right in my own humble living room. It went like this... (harp music, wavy lines)

I'M SITTING in my living room waiting for my next guitar student. It's a hot summer day, 1963, and I'm tired and grouchy from watching 10- year-old boys named Ronald or Gerald or Jamie claw at the D chord while their proud but sweaty mothers look on.

I look at my list and see that the next student is Bonnie Koloc. I remember the name because she has been singing off and on for parties and variety shows in the area. I've never heard her sing, though. She is late, but finally tumbles in, out of breath, and takes out a big Harmony Sovereign guitar.

She smiles sweetly and strums a chord, slightly out of tune. She says, "I can play a little, but my rhythms are off, and I want to play more with my fingers and less with my thumb."

I GROAN quietly inside and think:  A long lesson. Oh well, at least she knows some chords.

I suggest that she play the D progression and she looks at me like I'd just suggested she play "Malaguena." Yup, it's going to be a long lesson.

I say, "You know—D to G to A7—those three chords?"

She says, "Well, I know D and G, but does A7 go with them?"

I sigh, she smiles again sweetly, and I suggest that she forget the D progression and just play a song—any song she knows well.

She begins to play and sing the first verse to "John Riley"—a beautiful old English ballad. Suddenly I look up, wide awake. This voice, where is it coming from? I literally look around the room, for it is absolutely a stun­ning sound—clear, liquid, right on pitch with a perfect natural vibrato. Then I see Bonnie looking at her hand, trying to figure out a way to use her thumb less. But the voice is hers.

I stop her. "Good God," I say, "Where'd you get that voice? Let me play behind you." I begin, and she sings all of "John Riley." It is so beautiful I want to cry. She has a natural sense of phrasing, and her voice does everything she wants it to. I'm sick with envy, but overjoyed to hear this all-but-perfect voice.

"LOOK, BONNIE, I say, "have you ever made any money with your singing?" She says no, and I suggest that she call Clair Bruce; he runs the Cypress Lounge downtown where I played last summer.

She says, "Do you think I'm ready? I'll have to use my thumb an awful lot when I play."

"Bonnie," I say, "just sing. Play your guitar with your elbow, but sing. Don't let that voice go unheard any longer."

She calls Clair Bruce, who hears her sing, and gives her her first singing job for money, at the Cypress Lounge... (wavy lines, more harp music).

The rest, as they say, is history, or rather herstory.

It was nice to be there, humble though it was.