Handgunners need their intercessor, and Chesterton is the man for the job.

Chesterton: Patron Saint of Handgunners

by Patrick Toner


During the journey from the place of his wedding to the place of his honeymoon, G.K. Chesterton made a couple of curious shopping stops.

It is alleged against me, and with perfect truth, that I stopped on the way to drink a glass of milk in one shop and to buy a revolver with cartridges in another. Some have seen these as singular wedding-presents for a bridegroom to give to himself, and if the bride had known less of him, I suppose she might have fancied that he was a suicide or a murderer or, worst of all, a teetotaller. They seemed to me the most natural things in the world. I did not buy the pistol to murder myself—or my wife; I never was really modern. I bought it because it was the great adventure of my youth, with a general notion of protecting her from the pirates doubtless infesting the Norfolk Broads, to which we were bound; where, after all, there are still a suspiciously large number of families with Danish names. I shall not be annoyed if it is called childish; but obviously it was rather a reminiscence of boyhood, and not of childhood. (Autobiography, 44-45)

We will have to postpone for another day any discussion of the glass of milk. (I did not snip it from the quotation for one simple reason: I could not bring myself to cut out the “or, worst of all, a teetotaller,” which is a first rate Chestertonism.) Today, the revolver will have to suffice.

Stopping to buy the revolver was “the most natural thing in the world.” This will no doubt strike many readers, even here in the US, as a bit surprising. But Chesterton explains it simply—after all, there are liable to be pirates where he’s heading. Yes, buying the revolver was boyish, but he was off on a great adventure, and he needed to be prepared to meet it. This is typical Chesterton: the mixture of youthful exuberance with deadly seriousness. Chesterton, on his wedding day, felt the weight of his new obligation to protect his wife. That is, he felt the weight of his obligation to protect hiswife. This is a task he would no doubt have done badly, but that does not make it a task to hand over to a more competent protector, such as, for example, agents of the state.

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