As noted in the CBS Sunday Morning report, this is an example of one of the early communications that comprised the marketing campaign for the AR-15 style automatic weapons.
By Edward M. Bury, APR, MA (aka The PRDude)
The term “AR-15 style” has been added to descriptions of the automatic weapons originally designed some six decades ago for use by military personnel and now the weapon used by those bent on killing as many innocent people as possible.
In the many years since AR-15 style became the gruesome qualifier for the rifle that resulted in truly horrific fatalities to grammar-school-aged children, teenagers and adults in towns and cities across America, I never took the initiative to learn the distinction behind this “style” of long gun.
While watching the CBS Sunday Morning program May 29, I gained insight on the development and marketing of AR-15 weapons through this report that focused on the $73 million lawsuit between the families of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School nearly a decade ago and Remington Arms, the company that developed the compact firearm.
Listen to the report from Tracy Smith, then make a determination about the Remington Arms marketing campaign for the firearm it developed many years ago and the incorporation of the AR-15 into modern video games. Read this Associated Press story about the carnage caused by these rifles (and other firearms) during mass shooting events over the past several years.
Then, like me — and not to be flippant — do you concur that AR-15 style rifles should go out of style?
On this Memorial Day 2022, our day to honor those Americans who gave their lives for our freedom is tarnished somewhat by the shooting deaths that took place last week at a grammar school in a small Texas town, and the week before at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
In both mass shootings, authorities say the gunman was 18 years old and a troubled loner. And both purchased AR-15 style weapons when it was legal to do so in their state.
Yes, these bad boys are based primarily on imagination and have never actually existed. Unless, of course, you happen to have visited Middle Earth.
By Edward M. Bury, APR, MA (aka The PRDude)
Those of us who write fiction — and with full disclosure I am a very minor participant in that community, at least for the moment –frequently must rely on experiences, memories, and research to structure the plot and develop the characters that result in prose and perhaps even poetry.
Of course, unbridled imagination can certainly provide the foundation for fictional works, especially if the story takes place “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” or involves characters who are of the Orcs ancestry and inhabit Middle Earth. You get the idea.
But fiction based on real life and times is primarily driven by facts and happenings that can be somewhat substantiated. In reading the Saul Bellow novel, The Dean’s December, I gained insight into life in one of the most repressive Soviet Bloc nations during the height of the Cold War.
However, as the plot unfolded, I was shaken by how Bellow employed a truly horrific crime — one that I covered as a reporter 40-plus years ago — into the narrative. I’ll explain shortly; first, some of what I learned by reading the novel, published in 1982.
Set in Bucharest, Romania in around 1978, protagonist Albert Corde, a former Chicago-born and raised journalist and now a journalism professor and dean at a university, visits the nation with his wife, Minna. Romanian born and internationally renowned in astronomy, Minna’s mother is gravely ill, and plans are being made for her burial.
The cold and bleak December days in Bucharest provide a fitting backdrop for what life was like in this Eastern European capital city, where cartons of Kent cigarettes are used as bribes, windshield wipers are removed by drivers otherwise they are stolen, and conversations are hushed or held in a public park for fear of being overheard by the authorities. Plum wine is the alcoholic beverage of choice, and a lack of regular heat keeps people wearing overcoats to stay warm in their cramped apartments.
The Library of America published version I read of The Dean’s December contained detailed notes on phrases and works referenced in the novel (reading Bellow can be challenging, certainly not the kind of fiction a James Patterson fan would enjoy), along with a chronology of the author’s life. He did spend time in Bucharest when the nation was ruled by Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, who was tried and later executed by firing squad in 1989 along with his wife after trying to flee the country.
Back to The Dean’s December. As noted, Mr. Corde was a Chicago journalist; toward the end of the work, he reflects on an interview with a public defender representing Spofford Mitchell, a fictional man charged with a gruesome murder. As noted on page 904: “The victim was a young suburban housewife, the mother of two small children. She had just parked in a lot near the Loop when Mitchell approached and forced her at gunpoint into his own car.”
Before reading much further, I ascertained that Bellow structured this element of work from a truly horrific kidnapping, rape and murder that took place in Chicago in 1978. Read about it from this Murderpedia post. (Perhaps, like you, I was not familiar with this online repository.)
As noted above, I covered this gruesome story while a reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago, a place I’ve written about in this space, most recently during a reunion in 2019. If memory serves me correctly, I covered pre-trial motions involving the defendant before his trial in 1980. The outright cruelty and callousness of the man convicted shocked the city, and the story was big news throughout the trial.
(On a somewhat related note, another character in the work, Mr. Corde’s Chicago buddy renowned columnist Dewey Spangler, also began his journalism career at City News.)
With the plot in The Dean’s December shifting from Bucharest to Mr. Corde’s memories and thoughts of his life in Chicago, I could identify other instances where Bellow reflected on the city where he spent much of his childhood in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and years at the University of Chicago. Other Bellow novels and short stories also incorporate many aspects of the city, its people, its thoroughfares and its culture.
As identified in the passage from The Dean’s December, Bellow also was very much aware of many of the unsavory and truly dark sides of Chicago. The crime depicted in the novel certainly contributed to the plot and development of Mr. Corde; but to this reader, it brought back a memory I had hoped would never return.
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