Fifty Shades of Black by Arthur Black Page A

handgun powerful enough to drop an enemy soldier with a single shot.
    I can see how the Army might lust after a powerful heater like the Browning M1911. It’s more difficult to figure out why any state legislature feels it needs to honour an instrument the only purpose of which is homicide. You’d think that American politicians might be just a tad sensitive to the idea of venerating a weapon of semi–mass destruction after US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot along with ­eighteen other unarmed citizens in Tucson by a lunatic armed with—guess what? A semi-automatic handgun.
    But then, Arizona has a different take on handguns—a different take on a lot of things—than most of us. It has a state reptile (the rattlesnake)—even a state tie (the bolo). And if you google “Arizona motorcycle seat” you will see an item that’s very big among some bikers in the Grand Canyon state. It’s a leather motorcycle saddle with a couple of extra features: along the back is a cartridge belt for bullets and on the flank is a holster for a long-barrelled revolver.
    Just what I want to see thundering down the highway at me—a biker on a Harley with one hand on the throttle and the other thumbing back the hammer on his hog leg pistol.
    Wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in Arizona I guess. Former state senator Republican Lori Klein was asked in a 2011 interview if it was true that she carried a raspberry pink pistol in her purse.
    â€œAw, it’s so cute,” she enthused, as she pulled out a .380 Ruger and pointed it at the reporter’s chest. The nervous reporter noted that the gun seemed to have no safety mechanism. Klein assured him that it was all right because she “didn’t have a finger on the trigger.”
    Not every American politician takes a Dirty Harry attitude to guns. One of them once said this at a press conference: “With all the violence and murder and killings we’ve had in the United States, I think you’ll agree that we must keep firearms from people who have no business with guns.”
    Sounds pretty reasonable to me, but what do I know—I’m a beaver boy, a Canadian. American politicians ignored the politician when he made that statement.
    And that’s a pity. His name was Robert F. Kennedy.

 
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    Of Diamonds and Medallions
    C hristmas, in all its weirdness, is coming.
    Of course it’s weird—flying reindeer? Trees in living rooms? Legions of non-union elves toiling above the Arctic Circle for room and board and one day off a year—you think that’s normal?
    And isn’t it just a tad weird to look forward to a beard-o in a red suit slithering down the chimney in the middle of the night? To welcome a break and enter by a guy whose entire vocabulary consists of three “hos”? We Canucks are pretty happy-go-lucky about it. The Dutch? Not so much.
    Dutch folklore features an Old Testament Santa, more Mafia don than jolly saint. In the Netherlands Sinterklaas rewards good kids with candy. Bad kids? Fuggedaboutit. They get a lump of coal.
    Personally, I’d go for the lump of coal. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, for starters. Besides, it’s been a long time since I held an actual chunk of anthracite. When I was a kid our cellar was half-full of the stuff every winter. I wasn’t that enamoured of coal then because I had to shovel it into buckets and hump them upstairs to the fireplace.
    So I can empathize with rebellious Dutch kids. Back when coal was the common source of domestic heat, getting a present of a chunk of the stuff was a bit like being slapped with a wet haddock.
    Times change. Why, just last month a chunk of coal about the size of your ear sold at Sotheby’s auction house in Geneva, Switzerland.
    For a little over twelve million dollars.
    True, it was a rather special lump of coal—found in a mine in South Africa last year and lovingly cut and polished by the