When I turned eight years old, my parents gave me this very gun for my birthday. Well, a version of it. I got the military edition, with camouflage on it. It remains the single greatest day of my life.

No, I’m not exaggerating. I’ve been plenty of places and done lots of stuff. An interesting life. But I remember that day like it was yesterday. There are pictures of me taken that day to commemorate it. They’re not that useful, really. I wouldn’t put the gun down, and crouched over the stock every time someone pointed a camera at me, hiding my face every time. I was in tommy gun heaven.

Despite my affection for that toy, it rankled every time I saw them shoot Otis the Drunk with one. If coming in late, drunk but harmless, is a crime, who among us isn’t Dillinger? Otis bothered no one but the biddies, the kind of old crones that wouldn’t let their nephews have a cool tommy gun like that one.

But that Floyd the Barber. There was a bad dude. A loner. Doing god knows what in that shop filled with straight razors. There was a guy who could have a human head in his Frigidaire, or a pit and a pendulum in his basement. There was a guy that needed killin’.