Toting Guns in the Streets

There’s a section of Chandler that makes me think the City Council sat down one day and decided that there aren’t enough Street names that invoke the Old West in this town. So they threw out some ideas, Lasso and Spur and probably some other equally Old Western, benign suggestions. Then someone, probably a Republican, card-carrying member of the NRA decided that the history of the gun was too intertwined with the Old West not to have gun street names. Thus was born Derringer Way, Winchester Place, and AK-47 Lane.

Okay, I know six shooters supposedly tamed the Old West, but do you really want to live in the section of town where most of the streets are named after guns? Does a responsible City Council invite Old West sensibilities into the fair City of Chandler? Do we have to be worried about the NRA and NAR collaborating? Is Ocean Street really that bad of a choice for a desert city?

I’m not saying we should bury the link between Cowboys and guns. Though frankly, it would have been nice to have found child-friendly images when I wanted to buy Cowboy stickers for my 3-year-old cousin. (I’m sure he knows that Cowboys have guns, but I don’t want to be the bad influence auntie.) Instead, I found Cowboys wielding some serious weaponry--not one with a lasso, or even a skillet. I’m sure that whitewashing history is not the answer, but there is so much more to the Old West than bleeding to death from internal injuries and infection caused by inept shooting and barbaric weaponry.