Why I gave up my guns (NY bred metrosexual loses his nerve, throws in the towel on gun ownership)

1918 Bolshevik Poster - Citizens, hand over your weapons!

(1918 Bolshevik Poster by Alexander Apsit reads "Citizens, hand over your weapons!")

Late one night in the spring of 2008, I was jolted awake by the sound of yet another a burglar trying to break into my Atlanta home. We’d already had a series of scary close calls, but this time I was ready: I had staged my shotgun and a box of shells in a broom closet right by the back door, next to the umbrellas.

While my girlfriend called the police, I ran into the kitchen and looked out the window just in time to see a human form rush to hide in the shadows behind my car. I grabbed the gun and fumbled for the ammunition in the half-light, spilling most on the ground, but finally found one cartridge I was able to slide into the chamber.

I worked the action furiously, once, twice, and again, realizing dimly as I did that in doing so I was actually ejecting the shells, unspent, and basically unloading the weapon. But the unmistakable sound of the pump carried to the backyard, and, in a flash, the prowler was gone — a blur of raggedy jeans and tattered flannel sliding across the hood of my car and vaulting over the picket fence into the night.

I couldn’t make out his face or tell if he was armed. The next moment I was in the bathroom, vomiting hot puke all over the floor and toilet, water from the bowl splashing my face and eyes. Later, my girlfriend told me I had made her feel safe, protected. I just felt ill.

I’m a New Yorker born-and-bred, and unlike the just under half of all Americans who keep guns in their homes, I didn’t grow up with firearms. But when I moved first out West, and then to the South, I got into guns big-time. I’ve owned a dozen guns over the years, including a Bushmaster AR-15, and have fired scores more. I’ve put in countless hours at the range, in the woods, and at gun shows.

I’ve made good friends on the range, love shooting skeet, and appreciate how integrally guns figure into the rural professions and outdoor pastimes of many Americans. I understand, also, why so many Americans don’t just like their guns but love them. From the robust kick of firing a revolver to the emphatic, mechanical bursts of shouldering an assault rifle on full auto, I have come to know the rhythm of guns, have felt the addictive thrill of their multi-sensory intensity.

But on that night in 2008, I learned something else. I learned how guns relate to fear, and not just the fear my gun inspired in the would-be-burglar. Owning guns had given me a sense of security, but all that was a fantasy that imploded in a few terrifying seconds.

Sure, I had frightened away an intruder, defended my castle. But I could have just as easily been killed by him or accidentally shot myself or my partner. Hundreds of hours of range time didn’t mean anything in the confusion of the moment.

The ease with which I had bought my guns, fired them recreationally, and even stoically contemplated the possibility of defending me and mine with lethal force suddenly seemed foolish.

In fact, it was almost as if my very closeness to guns had blinded me to the real possibility that they might lead me to actually killing another human being.

Whether we like it or not, in today’s America, we are all close to guns. In a nation with nearly 300 million privately owned firearms, it would be hard not be. But just because we are saturated with weapons does not make our relationship with them mature or reality-based.

Instead, just the opposite is the case: The American vision of gun ownership is dominated by fantasy, and the public discourse around guns is frequently hijacked by a kind of fantasy logic.

Only in fantasy does keeping a gun in the home make you safer; the statistical reality is just the opposite. Only in fantasy is the possibility of even minimal gun regulation a threat “to take away all the guns.” And only in fantasy can arming teachers and abolishing gun-free zones be seen as a reasonable response to gun violence — for only in fantasy does throwing more of a problem at a problem equal a solution.

After Newtown, the predictable chorus of “if-only-I-had-been-there-with-my-gun” included an Oregon state representative, Dennis Richardson, who wrote to some of his constituents that, “If I had been a teacher or the principal at the Sandy Hook Elementary School and if the school district did not preclude me from having access to a firearm . . . most of the murdered children would still be alive, and the gunman would still be dead, and not by suicide.”

Perhaps. Or perhaps the good representative would have been shot dead without having a chance to draw his weapon. Or perhaps he would have been gunned down by confused first responders. Or perhaps Richardson would have taken the best aim he could while under stress, missed, and killed a child or two himself.

If trained NYPD cops can only manage to take down a single gunman by wounding nine bystanders in the process, as recently happened outside the Empire State Building, it seems unlikely to expect much better from the 63-year-old Richardson.

All of these scenarios are equally hypothetical, but that Richardson should offer macho posturing in lieu of constructive reflection speaks as much to what Gov. Cuomo has rightly termed a national “madness” as it does to that madness’ allure. If only the minimal difference between the life and death of 20 children, the only bulwark needed against tragedy, was some decrepit politician playing Dirty Harry.

I had thought I’d be ready to play that role, too. I had my shotgun at the ready that spring night because there had been three break-in attempts on our house in as many months, the last in the early afternoon while my girlfriend was home. I don’t think they realized she was there — the car wasn’t in the driveway — and when they tried to kick down the door, already damaged by someone with a crowbar a couple weeks prior, she called the cops, then me.

I got there before they did and found her hiding in the bathtub, the front door in splinters around the hinges and a couple of shotgun shells lying on the porch. Presumably, whoever tried to break in had dropped the ammo while attempting to get inside.

I called my landlords to give notice and took my gun out of its case, removed the trigger lock and put it in that closet. The feeling of safety this gesture gave me was quite real.

The desire to feel secure is understandable, but our fantasies are killing us. America averages 34 gun homicides a day.

For an organization that blames America’s gun crisis on violent movies, the NRA in particular seems deeply committed to cultivating the notion that we can all be the stars of our own personal action flicks.

I got my opportunity to play hero. Not in fantasy, but in real life, the chance to flex my finger with three pounds of pressure and shoot another human being dead in my driveway because he wanted to steal my TV. Right after we moved, I sold all my guns. I never wanted to put myself in that position again.

Enough is enough. In 2008, Japan, which maintains strict gun regulations, saw 11 gun homicides; in that same year, America had over 12,000. This is the world in which we live, which we have made for ourselves, and which understandably inspires fear.

The choice before us now is either to double down on that fear and make the situation worse by arming ourselves further, or to break the chains of fantasy altogether. Blithely wielding the power to kill does not make you heroic, and it will not make you safe. We are not free if we choose to continue living in fantasy, and we are not brave if we choose to continue living in fear.

Blanchfield is a Ph.D. candidate and Woodruff Scholar in comparative literature at Emory University in Atlanta.

Patrick,

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As we
say in Texas, you couldn’t pour water out of a boot with instructions
printed on the heel. You are a canker, an open wound. I would rather
kiss a lawyer than be seen with you. You took your last vacation in
the Isles of Langerhan.

You’re a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little
worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk,
a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a
stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared
richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth
into a hostile world. You are an insensate, blinking calf,
meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling
beasts who sired you and then died of shame in recognition of what
they had done. They were a bit late.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same
species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf
at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut.
Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You
are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention
that you smell?

Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting
to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a
nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be
able to access it ever so much more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up,
drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set
you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the
frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the
queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid,
nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You’re a fool, an
ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won’t have sex with
you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost
in a land that reality forgot. You are not ANSI compliant. You
have a couple of address lines shorted together. You should be
promoted to Engineering Manager.

And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important
statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us?
What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your
tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous
desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of
the snake?

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and
obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living
emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a
loathsome disease, a puerile slack-jawed drooling meatslapper. You
make Quakers shout and strike Pentecostals silent. You are the kind
of person who would remove this reference to Version 5.32 and to
http://www.guymacon.com/insult.txt so people will think that
you wrote this. Your mother had to tie a pork chop around your neck
just to get your dog to play with you. You think P.D.Q. Bach is
the greatest composer who ever lived. You prefer L. Ron Hubbard to
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Hee-Haw is too deep for you. You
would watch test patterns all day if the other inmates would let you.

On a good day you’re a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are
deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality
of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted.
You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and
sorrow wherever you go.

You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off,
pillock. You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john.
You clouted boggish foot-licking half-twit. You dankish clack-dish
plonker. You gormless crook-pated tosser. You bloody churlish
boil-brained clotpole ponce. You craven dewberry pisshead cockup
pratting naff. You cockered bum-bailey poofter. You gob-kissing
gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted
clapper-clawed flirt-gill.

You are so clueless that if we stripped you naked, soaked you in
clue musk, and dropped you into a field full of horny clues, You
still would not have a clue.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are
degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing
you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go
away.

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard
stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it
goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension
of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid
collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed.
Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity
stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more
stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year.
Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our
universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial
fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence
of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the
laws of physics that we know. I’m sorry. I can’t go on. This is an
epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me
again for a while. I don’t have enough strength left to deride
your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant
trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh.

The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have
snipped away most of your of what you wrote, because, well...
it didn’t really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a
creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together
a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective...
Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell,
and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary
skills that many of us “normal” people take for granted that
everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget
that there are “challenged” persons in this world who find these
things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then
I would have never read your post. It just wouldn’t have been
“right”. Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the
best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be
placing such a demand on you.

/johnny

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