Meth, Mormons and Guns: The Idaho Falls Story

“You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Idaho Falls.”

I have talked about it before that there is nothing worse than being up at 5 A.M. I honestly think instead of legislation for daylight savings time, they should just legally remove anything on the clock before 7 am. Recently though on an overnight in Idaho Falls, Idaho, I found something worse than being awake and at 5 AM, which is forced-listening to gun-control rhetoric at five AM. First a little needed background about Idaho Falls. If you haven’t been there,

What Idaho Falls looks like from the air.

you really should go. It’s a beautiful quaint little town on the west side of the Tetons and Yellowstone. There is a crystal-clear river running through the middle of town. From an airplane at ten-thousand feet, it looks like a throw-back of Americana that you see in old movies, that may or may never have actually existed. The houses are in cute little rows, with manicured lawns. The dads hunt and fish with their sons (you can see them bonding with their fly rods even from the sky). There are t-ball games going on around the clock while moms bake fresh fruit pie (you can’t see them but you can smell them from the air). There are lots of people experimenting with meth out of boredom (you can’t actually tell that from the air, you have to get down on the ground  see the missing teeth.)

Mom baking up some meth.

Something that is difficult to tell from above at 10,000 feet is that Idaho Falls is a very Mormon place. Now I am not dissing on the Mormons. They take enough crap. I generally like the Mormon people I meet. They are always super-friendly, committed to family and big into bathing (unlike smelly hippies.) They are also cultivating these nice, picket-fence places to live, which I find refreshing (again, unlike smelly hippies, who form communes. Those inevitably become murder-camps, because, like, hey man, nobody want to live in a stupid-commune.)

I saw this family at the airport.

Idaho Falls is really Mormony though. And let’s be honest. You know what I am talking about. Everybody has kind a weird vacant look in their very blue eyes and a strange perma-smile on their face. Everyone has five kids that already have five kids that all look very similar and extra-related. It’s the kind of place that Salt Lake City Mormons are like, “Way too Mormony for us.”

Walter White should live in Idaho Falls.

Added to the uber-Mormon vibe, is a rampant anti-government streak in a large portion of the population. (How do you know this Marc? Well on my last visit to Idaho Falls, I talked to five people and all of them, within the first five sentences mentioned something about hating the government in an off-handed way: “Hi. Welcome to Idaho Falls. Where you coming from? Hopefully not Washington D.C., where they are trying to control us all.”) Combine these things together and as an outsider you can’t help but feel that you have stepped into the episode of The Twilight Zone where everybody is Mormon and on meth.

This is what happens when you combine Mormons and meth.

Okay so you get the back drop of where I am: I am spending a short-overnight in Weirdsville, Idaho. I have to get up at 4:30 AM and be in a cab at 5:00 AM. Did I mention I hate getting up early? I have to reiterate that at 5 AM I am fully capable of murder. For little things, like I put my shoes on the wrong feet. When my alarm goes off I contemplate giving up. On life.

So at 5 A.M., when the cab driver greets us with loud music playing and “everyone is trying to take our guns” conversation . I know I am going to have to find a happy place deep inside myself. I close my eyes and try to find peace. My mantra? No one gets killed today, not by my hands.

My cab driver in Idaho Falls.

The cab driver makes it very difficult to stay in my peaceful state because he almost immediately brings up the bombings in Boston. What really upsets him is the man-hunt phase for the terrorists, where the people of Boston were locked down in their houses without firearms, because guns are illegal in Boston. This was just a current-events shoe-horn for him to talk about what he really wanted to talk about, which was the government is trying to take our guns.“I mean I think it’s criminal that people can’t defend themselves. Why shouldn’t lawful citizens be able to own firearms and defend what’s theres? If you take away their guns what are you supposed to defend yourself with? A kitchen knife? You know that the criminals will have guns. That would never happen in Idaho Falls because the people here are armed to the teeth…etc.” I am not saying that he might not have a point, but did he consider that he lives in a weird little place that

WARNING: Criminals headed to Idaho Falls, this is what you can expect to find.

no one knows about or goes to? I don’t think all the armed criminals, found Idaho Falls on a map, drew a big circle around it and wrote “don’t go there.”I should probably disclose my own views on gun control. I am pretty moderate:

I don’t think there should be huge blanket laws that govern every part of the country. Just because you live in a densely populated area doesn’t mean everyone does. I don’t see how the gun situation in New York City or Los Angeles is the same as the middle of Montana. It should be like fireworks. The further you get away from people, houses and fire hazards, the more cool stuff you can have. If you live in Manhattan, you can have a starter gun, that shoots blanks, to signal distress. Sorry, at least you have Broadway. If you are in Wyoming you can have a grenade launcher because you have to keep yourself entertained somehow. SIDENOTE: It makes sense to me that you really don’t want dense-gun ownership in cities although I find it ironic that the further you get from a city, the more unlikely your need for a gun.

What do you say to someone with this bumper sticker on thier car?

Of course, my cab driver was on the extreme end of things. He proudly stated that as soon as they started talking about banning assault rifles, he ran out to Dick’s Sporting Goods and bought one of his own. It cost him $900 which on a cabbie’s wage, especially in Idaho Falls, where he has three fares a year, I am sure the cost was no small portion of his yearly income.

I just can’t see why people should have assault rifles. I think gun companies promote these weapons using fear-marketing that somehow the average citizen is going to end up in a gun-battle to defend themselves at sometime in their life. I also don’t see how any hunter worth his title could possibly need and assault rifle as a opposed to your standard hunting rifle. I guess I could also carpet-bomb the forest, is that hunting too?

My cab driver was not of a similar opinion. He quoted studies of how most woman can’t handle a shotgun comfortably so he trained his wife on how to shoot the assault rifle. Now she can defend their home against the impending hordes as well. She had even taken a liking to how smooth the assault rifle was when firing; very little kickback. It’s much easier to kill what you want to with an assault rifle. Side note: He told me to watch this video.

Did I mention I am all about strict background checks and psych evals for people to be able to own guns? I don’t think the cost of these things should be passed on to the tax-payer either. If it costs $300 dollars for a pysch-eval from a reputable doctor, then you have to pay that out of pocket if you want a gun.

After what seemed like an hour but was closer to twenty minutes, we arrived at the airport, the cabby released us from his captive audience and I could go on with my day. So why am I whining about all of this? Was it really that a guy was expressing his opinion about something that at times seemed fringe? No. Fringe people make this world more interesting. I’m not even sure I disagreed with everything he was saying.

It had to do with the time in the morning. It’s unfair to verbally assault people with your politics before the sun comes up because no one wants to debate with you. Especially me. I can’t function at that time. I have to take the passive resistance route and say nothing. Which later, when my brain wakes up, makes me feel a little dirty. Like, “That guy was spouting some pretty crazy stuff and you didn’t even bring up that it might be a little ‘out there’. You just nodded your head and let him keep going against your will.” You were intellectually assaulted.

I read the wrong book on meditation.

So I guess I just wrote this for my own mental health. It’s post-traumatic therapy because I didn’t say anything at the time. I just bent over and took the verbal assault instead of just saying, “Hey man, it’s too early for this.” My therapist says I need to start speaking up when something annoys me, instead of bottling it up inside. She also said that if my mantra is, “No one gets killed today, not by my hands,” I probably shouldn’t be allowed to own a gun. I agreed. Oh and not to go to Idaho Falls anymore. My therapist didn’t say that. I did. Self-reminder. But you should. You totally should.

What are your opinions on gun control? Or anything else? Please share below! And if you like my goofy blog, please share with your friends! And if you hate it, please share with your friends!