Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol as an indictment of nineteenth century industrialization and economic social classes. The following is a modern take on the tale exploring a different issue.

When Scrooge awoke it was so dark that he could hardly make out where the walls ended and the window began. He was just trying to discern which way was up when he heard the chimes of Marley’s old clock downstairs begin to ring and listened to learn the hour.

To his astonishment, the chimes continued to intone, six, seven, eight, all the way to twelve. Yet, how could this be when it was past two when he had gone to bed? Was it possible he had slept through an entire day and it was now the following night? He glanced at the red glow of the alarm clock and verified it was midnight.

He lay in bed puzzling yet could make nothing of it and decided to think on it no more, for he had more pressing matters to dwell upon. Only an hour until the promised visit of the first spirit! He vowed to stay awake until the hour had passed, desperate to convince himself that it was all but a dream. He watched the clock as the minutes slipped by. A quarter past! A half passed! A quarter to it! He watched in anticipation as the hour crept closer and watched the digits flip.

“The hour itself,” said Scrooge triumphantly, “and nothing else!”

He spoke before the hour chime from the old clock below, which now sounded with a deep, hollow, melancholy ONE. Light flashed upon the room in an instant and Scrooge found himself face to face with an unearthly visitor.

It was a strange figure of a middle-aged man dressed from a bygone era. He was wearing dark boots which rose to his knees into which a pair of brown trousers were tightly tucked. He wore a dark brown overcoat with a green vest beneath out from under which peeked a white shirt. In his hand he tightly gripped what appeared to be an old musket. But the strangest thing about the figure before him was that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright jet of light, by which all of this was visible. This could no doubt be dimmed by the tri-corner hat he carried under his other arm.

“Are you the Spirit whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Scrooge.

“I am!”

“Who and what are you?”

“I am the Ghost of Gun Rights Past.”

“I see,” said Scrooge. “Or rather,” he continued while raising a hand to shield his eyes, “I don’t see much at all. Would you mind putting on your hat?”

“What!” exclaimed the Ghost. “Would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap and force me to wear it more and more often?”

Scrooge denied any knowledge of willfully “bonneting” the Spirit at any period of his life and inquired as to what business brought him there.

“Your welfare,” said the Ghost. “Rise and walk with me.”

Scrooge rose, but seeing that the Spirit moved towards the window stopped short.

“But Spirit, I am mortal and would fall were I to step out the window!”

“Grasp my rifle,” intoned the Spirit.

It had been many years since Scrooge had touched a gun, but he did as he was instructed. As soon as he did, they passed through the wall and stood upon an old country road. The city had entirely vanished and fields spread out upon either side.

“Why, I know this place!” said Scrooge. “I was a boy here!”

“Do you remember the way?” asked the Ghost.

“Remember it? Why, I could walk it blindfolded!”

“Strange to have forgotten it for so many years,” observed the Spirit. “Lead on.”

They walked along the road and Scrooge recognized every tree, every rock, and every fencepost along the way. A small group of boys came down the road from the opposite direction, and Scrooge knew them as his childhood friends.

“These are but shadows of the things which have been,” advised the Ghost. “They have no consciousness of us.”

They passed by and Scrooge felt a twinge of nostalgia. It strengthened when he caught sight of his grandfather’s old farmhouse. Up the walk they went, onto the porch and right through the door. What nostalgia Scrooge had before was nothing compared to the memories that came flooding back at the sights, sounds, and smells of the old farmhouse. The Spirit pointed and Scrooge saw his younger self planted in the rocking chair by the fire reading while his father and grandfather gathered their clothing and gear.

“Tomorrow is opening day of deer season,” Scrooge explained to the phantom. “I was too young to go with them but always wanted to.” His voice grew sad, “my grandfather died of a heart attack before he ever got a chance to take me. My dad quit hunting for a few years after that. He tried to get back into it when I got older but…”

“But by then,” the Spirit finished for him. “You had moved to the city and believed your teachers who told you that hunting was cruel and uncivilized.”

“It was a different time then,” Scrooge explained. “People hunted not for sport but for food.”

“They still do, not only for food, but for tradition and bonding.”

“It was different then,” Scrooge sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as much as the Spirit. “Plus, we are far out in the country. If there was trouble it could take the Sheriff more than an hour to arrive.”

“Haven’t you said,” countered the Ghost, “that citizen self-defense is vigilantism?”

“It was a different time,” said Scrooge quietly.

“Indeed it was. There you sit, a young boy, yet above the fireplace within easy reach is a hunting rifle.”

“I knew not to touch it,” answered Scrooge. “At least, not without adult supervision. Sometimes my grandfather or father would take me out back and set up targets.”

“But I thought kids and guns don’t mix?” asked the Spirit.

“It was a different time! Kids didn’t go around shooting each other then!”

“But haven’t you’ve written in your editorials that it is the easy availability of guns that leads to youth violence? Yet you have a gun within easy reach, as did all of your friends. Not only that, but didn’t your grandfather have an entire cabinet full of rifles, shotguns, and pistols?”

“It was a different time!” Scrooge repeated. “Times are much more complicated now.”

“Surely all those guns laying around must have lead to a lot of shootings?”

“No, people were more responsible back then.”

“You’re saying that it isn’t the guns that cause crime, but the people using them criminally?”

“Exactly!” said Scrooge.

The Ghost smiled thoughtfully and waved its hand, saying as it did so, “Let us see another time!”

Scrooge’s former self grew larger at the words and the walls of the farmhouse shimmered and changed. Scrooge soon found himself standing in his father’s hardware store. His younger counterpart was sitting behind the counter. On the wall behind him was a rack with assorted rifles and shotguns.

“More guns,” observed the Spirit.

“Father sold them for a time,” answered Scrooge. “That was before gun control laws were strengthened and the government cracked down on who could sell guns. Before then, all kinds of stores sold guns and you could even buy them through the mail.”

“There must have been a lot of mass shootings,” said the Ghost with a knowing look on his face. Scrooge was silent.

Just then the door opened and rang the small bell which hung above it. Both Scrooge’s looked to the door as a young girl came in.

“Fran!” exclaimed the older Scrooge. “My sister!”

They both watched as the girl ran across the store and talked and laughed with the young Ebenezer.

“Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered,” said the Ghost. “But she had a large heart!”

“So she had,” cried Scrooge. “You’re right. I will not argue it, Spirit. God forbid!”

“She died a woman,” said the Ghost, “and had, as I think, children.”

“One child,” Scrooge returned.

“True,” said the Ghost. “Your nephew!”

Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly, “Yes.”

“Remind me how it was that she died,” inquired the Spirit.

“She was killed in an automobile accident by a drunk driver,” said Scrooge sadly.

“Yet you had a glass of brandy before going to bed tonight,” reminded the Spirit.

“I don’t understand your meaning, Spirit.”

“You blame guns for Marley’s death yet do not blame alcohol for your sister’s. Both were killed by the criminal actions of another, why do you blame the person for one tragedy but an object for the other?”

Scrooge began to grow angry. “Spirit!” he said, “show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?”

“One shadow more!” exclaimed the Ghost.

“No more!” cried Scrooge. “No more. I don’t wish to see it. Show me no more!”

But the relentless Ghost ignored his pleas and again the scene began to change until Scrooge found himself back in his house, yet something was different. Many of the furnishings were the same yet somehow not the same. Scrooge had no time to contemplate for with a loud bang the back door flew open and a man burst in and Scrooge suddenly knew just when he was.

“Spirit!” said Scrooge in a broken voice, “remove me from this place.”

“I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,” said the Ghost. “That they are what they are, do not blame me!”

“Remove me!” Scrooge exclaimed, “I cannot bear it!”

A commotion from the other room and Scrooge turned to see Marley run towards the stairs and the intruder followed yelling for Marley to tell him where he kept the money. They both ran up the stairs and in a flash of light Scrooge and the Spirit stood inside the bedroom. Marley hid behind the bed as the intruder slammed his shoulder into the door over and over. Scrooge could hear the wood beginning to splinter as Marley cried out in terror.

“Spirit, your gun!” Scrooge urged breathlessly as he watched the door. “Fire the moment he breaks in!”

“You wish me to take the law into my own hands?”

“I wish you to save Jacob!”

“I cannot. I warned you that these are but the shadows of what has been.”

Scrooge spun to face the Ghost.

“Make it stop!” he pleaded. “Take me back to my own time, haunt me no longer!”

He began to wrestle with the Spirit, if it can be called wrestling as the Ghost offered up no resistance other than to hold firmly to his ground and seemed undisturbed by Scrooge’s efforts. Scrooge observed that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over him, he seized two corners of the extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down upon its head.

As Scrooge pulled down upon the hat the Spirit seemed to be swallowed up into it until he finally got it to the floor and the light went out taking the sounds with it. Scrooge relaxed his grip and was soon aware of being completely exhausted. Overcome by an irresistible drowsiness, he barely had time to stagger into his bed before sinking into a deep sleep.

Part 1: Marley's Ghost
To be continued in part three tomorrow!