“All guns are cursed”

“All guns are cursed” names Ben Givens’s rejection of the family shotgun and the history of killing attached to it. The expression comes at the end of a conflict with William C. Harden: after Harden takes Ben’s Winchester shotgun, Ben first says he has come to retrieve it, then changes his mind. He leaves the weapon with Harden instead. The movement from “That gun is cursed” to “All guns are cursed” turns a judgment about one inherited object into a broader repudiation of guns, while the act of giving it away makes the words consequential rather than merely rhetorical.

The Family Gun and Its History

Ben identifies the shotgun as a family possession of sixty years. His father used it before him to hunt birds, and Ben says that his father killed many birds with it; Ben, too, killed his share. The weapon therefore carries a history that is both inherited and repeated. Its meaning is not confined to the immediate dispute with Harden: Ben’s account places his own use within a pattern begun by his father.

When Ben calls the gun a bad thing, he does not describe it as an unfamiliar object suddenly made dangerous by someone else. He places himself inside its history. The statement that his father hunted with it, followed by his admission that he did the same, makes his condemnation self-implicating. He is not simply accusing Harden of possessing or misusing a weapon; he is refusing to continue a family practice in which he himself participated.

From the Hounds to the Stolen Shotgun

The dispute began with Harden sending his hounds after moving animals. Ben tells Bea Harden that the hounds killed one of his Brittany dogs and injured the other, and that he killed the hound that went after his dogs. When Bea asks whether he killed one of Harden’s hounds, Ben confirms it and says that this is why Harden took his gun. The exchange gives the weapon’s disappearance a specific cause: it follows a retaliatory killing within an already hostile conflict between the men.

Bea regrets that Harden has not found another hobby and says she will speak to him. Ben asks her not to raise the matter, adding that Harden can keep the gun because Ben does not want it back. That refusal appears before Ben goes to Harden in person. It establishes that reclaiming the shotgun is already in doubt, even though Ben later opens the encounter by saying he has come for it. The difference between his announced purpose and his final decision gives the expression its place in a change of course, not a settled slogan detached from events.

The Phrase as Decision

At Harden’s home, Ben says he came to get his gun back, then immediately says he has changed his mind. Harden rejects the description of the earlier taking as theft and tells Ben to leave. Ben nevertheless approaches, limping, and explains what the gun represents: it had been in his family for sixty years, his father hunted birds with it, and he did too. He calls it bad before naming it cursed. The sequence matters: the universal judgment comes after an account of the object’s history and Ben’s part in it.

The wording intensifies in two steps. “That gun is cursed” fixes the condemnation on the inherited Winchester; “All guns are cursed” extends it beyond this particular family possession. The shift does not establish that the weapon has supernatural power, nor does Ben offer a separate account of a literal curse. In context, the sentence reads as an absolute moral judgment, grounded in his history with the gun and in the violence surrounding its transfer. Its force comes from the breadth of the declaration and the concrete choice that follows it.

Renunciation and Aftermath

The encounter gives the phrase an immediate practical consequence. Harden holds a power drill as though it could be used as a weapon, while Ben moves closer and takes off his glasses. Ben tells Harden to take the shotgun and says he will pass it on to him and wash his hands of it. Rather than trying to overpower Harden or recover the family object, he makes relinquishment his decision. The gun that had linked father and son through hunting is now deliberately placed in the hands of the man with whom Ben has fought.

The gesture does not erase what the weapon has meant or undo the harm in the conflict. It does, however, end Ben’s claim on the shotgun. His choice follows his earlier instruction to Bea not to intervene and his stated lack of desire to have the gun returned. The phrase is thus both an appraisal of the weapon and a boundary: Ben will not take it back, and he will not keep carrying forward its inherited use. The declaration expands from one gun to all guns, while the act itself remains particular—this shotgun, this adversary, this final handover.