Dan Rodricks: Frederick’s Sheriff Jenkins and the adolescent obsession with high-powered guns

Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning film, “Born on the Fourth of July,” about Vietnam veteran-turned-war-protestor Ron Kovic, appeared on Netflix last week. I hadn’t seen it since its release in 1989, when its star, Tom Cruise, was 27 years old, so I gave it another look. It’s a hard film to watch, but opens innocently enough: The 10-year-old Kovic and his buddies playing soldiers, armed with toy machine guns, in a wooded area of small-town Long Island in 1956.