Guns 24/7

Here’s my imagined Dr. Suess ode to the ubiquitous gun:

One gun is fun to carry ‘round

to shoot at this and plink at that,

A cowboy holster and my cowboy hat.

I’ll walk as tall as a Borgonzat!

If one is fun then give me two,

To keep me safe from you…and YOU!

To keep away the wild Mock Turtle [ok a bit of Alice in Wonderland thrown in)

The Grizzly Gnarth, the Big Tooth Pnurdl.

If two is safe then three is safer, don’t tell me “no!” I will not waver

Go get me three guns…HURRY, three…

I need four now, THEY are after me!!!

Who, you ask?  I do not know, but when they come

My five guns will go

BOOM BOOM SHRING CRACKLE

WHIZZ WHOOZ BANG BANG

I’ll win the day, what’s that you say?

No monster here has died today?

Little Amber, baby Jed

They got my gun, bang bang they’re dead?

No, no, can’t be, oh my…oh me.

My guns were here to protect our home;

I brought them here, what have I done?!

Take one gun away please, two and three

Don’t leave me four guns, nosiree

I will not shoot everyone who scares me

Instead let’s build a world of peace.

Ever since the 1990s school shooting epidemic, followed by the Million Mom March and the Second Amendment sisters 2000 gun rallies, I’ve tried to wrap my brain around how a gun could really keep me safe.  I’ve never found an answer.

I recall living in San Diego when someone broke into my North Park apartment in the middle of the night to do me harm.  I didn’t hear him slice away the bathroom window screen, or walk into my room next to my bed.  I was conscious enough to feel his hand run over my body over the covers…I was asleep enough to think it was a blanket falling off the bed.  Before I knew it he was on top of me, trying to get his hand over my screaming mouth…he didn’t…I kept screaming…he ran.   I was fortunate.

I’ve since imagined a gun into that scene. Had I, in that brief chaos, tried to reach into a nightstand for a gun, my intruder could easily have found it before me.  Perhaps being trained in gun use would’ve changed the way I slept; I would’ve awakened immediately alert, ready to shoot to kill without shooting myself in the process or giving him easy access to my gun.  I picture myself in my kitchen, hearing someone break into my bathroom window, my gun in my nightstand, useless to me.  Today, a lifetime later, I imagine myself in two-story town house, a gun for safety in my nightstand upstairs, me in my kitchen, an intruder breaking in my front door, right near the stairs.  Or I’m getting out of the shower and hear footsteps up the stairs…no way to reach my gun. 

Really, to be wholly safe from threat just in my own home, I’d either need at least 1 gun for every room, or a holster or two in which to carry a gun around the house with me at all times.  And I haven’t even considered yet what “security” would require once I opened my door and stepped out into the ever-threatening world.

I see the logic; it’s that logic keeping the U.S. in the nuclear arms race—ICBMs launch ready at all times, just in case, for every threat.  I understand the dangers out there in the world, even here in rural, northwest Tennessee.  There are in fact evil people—willing to harm others for their own purposes, to exploit the moment with violence, to carry out deliberate, deadly acts against others, even children.  I get it. I’m a 60-year old woman, living alone, a good target for someone with sinister intentions. 

But living a life in which I must at ALL times be armed to be safe seems like no real life at all.  The scene in the 1980s kid-flick War Games, where the computer seemed to set off a global, all-out nuclear war, the NORAD monitor lit up like klieg lights from weapons exploding around the world was stunning artistry, but a frightening concept.  And in some ways, living w/ a gun at the ready 24/7 is the same as participating in “mutually assured destruction” in the name of national security.  It’s a shoot-to-kill way of life that brings the potential for deadly conflict into every moment of the present, into every encounter, every plan, every possibility for spontaneity.  It’s a fear-based insanity.  And I genuinely cannot understand why anyone would choose to participate actively in such a gun-centered lifestyle.

I have no easy answers for truly peaceful co-existence, which may not even be possible. If it is possible, it’ll be hard work, especially adding the need to work against those insisting that arming up is the only way to create a safe, peaceful world.   

Did I ever purchase a gun?  Do I own a gun now?  That’s my business, and I’d hope you wouldn’t be inclined to hunt me down to find out…as a peace advocate, I’d be scarred for life shooting you just to satisfy your curiosity.  But I will say that I never want to feel so threatened by those around me that I have to build an arsenal to feel secure or be armed at every moment even at home.  You being armed at all times, no matter how law-abiding you are, doesn’t ease my mind either.

IF guns 24/7 ensure security, and I’m not convinced they do—any more than I think having enough nuclear missiles to destroy the planet several times over makes me feel safe against all possible threat to America (North Korea, Iran, ????)—security is not the same as real, lasting peace.  It’s that truly peaceful co-existence we all need to be working toward—together—regardless of whether or not we’re packin’ heat.