(1918 Bolshevik Poster by Alexander Apsit reads "Citizens, hand over your weapons!") Posted on 01/12/2013 2:06:42 PM PST by DogByte6RER
(1918 Bolshevik Poster by Alexander Apsit reads "Citizens, hand over your weapons!")
Why I gave up my guns
• A former firearm enthusiast explains his personal epiphany
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.
Until 2005, Blanchfield was at Harvard, probably living in Cambridge MA.
It looks like Blanchfield spent some part of 2005, probably the summer, overseas in Europe.
From September 2005 until May 2006 his resume says he was " Director of Communications for the International Debate Education Association (IDEA) at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon." So that's presumably when he was "out West."
By Fall 2008 Blanchfield was apparently living in Georgia, which is when and where he had his supposed epiphany.
So objectively, the period of time from when he went "out West" to his epiphany was about 3 years. He describes in his article as:
"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."
Just the kind of spinning of the facts that probably makes one highly valuable in the world of for hire resume and essay "editing".
My house has no doorbell but once my wife bought a battery powered one that mounted with adhesive and put it next to the front door. It was a very loud buzzer, not a ringer. One night it rained hard and moisture got into the doorbell. I was awakened from a pleasant dream at around three AM and grabbed a revolver from the nightstand and went straight to the door yelling that I was going to shoot the SOB who was holding my doorbell down in the middle of the night. My wife was yelling at me to stop, she had already figured out that it was moisture in the switch causing the bell to go off. Her yelling woke me up enough to realize I didn’t need to kill anybody. I don’t do very well sometimes when I am awakened from a dream!
Needless to say I got rid of the damned doorbell.
I concur. I’ve been in tougher situations with less training than he claims he has had and kept my head just fine, and I’m no hero.
The lefties often claim that those of us who own guns do so to feel manly. I think that may be the exact reason this guy purchased the gun, because he felt he was an unmanly little schlub.
And lastly, he clearly didn’t rehearse what he would do in a home invasion, left the gun unloaded (why in the world would you leave a home defense weapon unloaded in a home with no kids?) and didn’t include fast reloading in his range training. in other words, he didn’t know the first thing about using the weapon in the situation he found himself in, but now claims that the weapon is useless.
Moron. You think the kind of guy who (as another burglar did earlier in the story) shows up at your door with a shotgun would have just said, "Sorry ma'am, we're just here for the TV if they had come across your girlfriend while they were in the house? How about that home invasion the other day where the perp chased the mom and kids all the way to the attic crawlspace and she had to put five rounds in him? You think he thought her TV was in the attic crawlspace?
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.
First, he's an arrogant twit for assuming that because he was "living in fear" the rest of us are. And good grief, your girlfriend calls the police during an armed break-in, then calls you and you beat the police to your apartment and you still think that depending on the police is not only the smart play, but the only play? Future Darwin Award winner, right there.
Great story. Glad you never did end up doing any damage to your front door. In my case, I heard what sounded like splintering wood so it wasn't a false alarm. My landlord replaced the door - which appeared to have been worked over with a crowbar - with a more sturdy one and (obviously) put in a new lock.
The way you train makes a vast difference in how you act in an emergency. For years, police and other shooters have heard that these CHP officers died because they were policing up their brass during the firefight, just as they had done on the range. It turns out that may not be true, but the fact that people with hundreds of hours of range time and maybe even a firefight or two under their belt saw how that could have happened and changed their training methods tells us something about range vs. real life. That something is apparently beyond the now-defenseless PhD candidate who thinks he's heroically brave because he is leaving the woman who depends on him defenseless and announcing it to the world.
Yeah, I hadn’t caught the release thing, and never believed the racking story because the suspect was already out of the place and disposed to leave.
I think he is lying, but...
Consider the difference between loading the shells at the range, on a sunny day, having a good time with your buddies, no stress, no time limit, no enemy vs. having to do it in the dark, under stress, adrenaline flowing and a guy who might want to kill you lurking nearby.
That’s why people who get a weapon for home defense need to train for home defense, not just go to the range.
Sooooo, because this guy soiled his panties when it came time to be a protector, he doesn’t think anyone should be trusted with guns?
Dude, read that crap just a little closer.
Hell, shooting at a “gun show” is completely off limits. Pull a dry fire at a retail shop on watch your ass being escorted out the door.
This story is 100% bullshit lib left from the get go.
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.”
I would never kill anyone over property...life is to be valued more than property. I would NEVER shoot someone in my “driveway” and I don’t think most responsible persons would. However, if I (especially with wife and children present) am inside the home while someone is attempting to enter my home...I must assume they pose a credible treat to my lives of my family. That being the case, I would shoot without hesistation if necessary. IF the person violating my families safety is wounded or killed I would not take any joy in that, would probably be sick, but I would NOT regret it.
Several years ago I made the conscience decision that I would no longer carry a concealed weapon in public unless it was a very high risk situation. I personnally did not want the responsibility that being armed in public carried (it had nothing to do with being liberal and a wuss). However, that was my choice, and NOT one I would EVER want to impose on another....plus the times could cause me to change my mind.
BTW - After reading this weenie’s account, I realized he was blowing bull about having gotten into the gun culture. I have had handgun training by law enforcement professionals back in the late 90s when I needed an armed P.I. license. The reflex actions of loading, etc. are automatic...that is what training and practice does. Recently I got to participate in a “cold” (no prior practice or warning) session on a military M9 simulation pistol range. I hadn’t fired such a firearm is 7 years but the relexes were still there....which I was surprized by. I did better than an actively serving full time police officer from a major city. Training doesn’t ever completly go away. I put down 29 of 30 pop-up targets while having to drop empty clips, insert a new one...release the slide and continue firing....it was shockingly smooth after such a long lapse.
So, he sounds like a plain fool to me...and probably shouldn’t have been handling firearms because he was not properly trained or mentally conditioned to use them.
It’s a made up story. People don’t get a single shell loaded and then start dispersing numerous shells intact on the floor.
Bravo!
You’re more creative than I ever imagined.
This wuss should give up guns. He is one of many that will always need protected by real men and real women as he is obviously incapable of doing it for himself or his loved ones...
I'm stealing this, it's epic.
I'm stealing this, it's epic.
You can see clearly behind his little Guy Fawkes mask.
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