I have a newfound love of all that is different and new, not
because what I already know isn’t good enough, but because not knowing as much
as possible is not good enough. I know all about the beliefs I have
now. I am very familiar with what I have thought and how I have
interacted with the world up until today. Now it is time to learn what it
is like not to be the me that I have been for all these years.
To understand things anew, I need to try new things. To make
the impact significant, I have to choose areas with significance. This is
more than just switching to a new brand of cereal or buying into a different
fashion statement. I have to go straight to my core beliefs and challenge
them seriously; really test my assumptions.
Impact also depends on emotion, so I have picked
something that scares me to death: guns.
Before today, the old me held the belief that guns are bad,
no matter who carries them or how they are used or protected or stored.
Handguns are made to kill people, and that is bad. Handguns are a threat to me
and my family, and that is bad. I have gone so far as to cross the street
when I see a police officer with a weapon on her hip. Like leprosy, their mere
proximity made me feel unsafe.
But today, I am discarding all prior judgments and
conclusions. Today, guns are neither good nor bad; their existence
neither increases nor decreases my safety; killing people is neither a sin nor
a blessing. Today, handguns no longer embody derogatory, aggressive
insecurity. They are simply another device I pass by in my daily life –
coffee maker, bicycle pump, Smith and Wesson. I am opening my mind
to the possibility of changing a strongly held belief that may or may not need
changing. It’s a check-in, a re-evaluation to find out if 44 years of
life can alter my perspective, soften my hard stances, allow me to get outside
myself and maybe even be someone else.
So, with some trepidation, I asked
my gun-owning friend to introduce me to a handgun and be my teacher.
My fear of handguns is not irrational. Chances of
death by handgun go up dramatically when there is a handgun in the house.
Any other tool, if mishandled, doesn’t have quite the potential for unintended
harm. It isn’t the armed criminal that puts me on edge; it’s the
careless, overconfident or forgetful friend that gets my heart to
palpitating. Numerous tragedies occur because of unsafe handling, or
storage, or a lack of vigilance, or just plain ignorance. Consequently,
this endeavor – my education in guns – may serve a second purpose. I will
no longer be completely ignorant. Perhaps in some small way, I can
contribute to the collective wisdom on gun handling, and just maybe decrease
the chances of a senseless gun accident.
That is, if I ever get past my visceral aversion of picking
one up.
The lesson began. My teacher brought to the coffee
table a black, neoprene mat covered in diagrams of weapon components and safety
messages. He placed a heavy black Glock 19 on the mat, slide open and
magazine removed. The sight of it sent a wave of apprehension through my
body, but I didn’t blink or look away. I watched it from where I was on
the couch, getting used to its presence from afar. It didn’t jump up and
bite me.
My teacher named all the parts and opened and closed the
slide to show me the mechanisms involved. The fact that it had plastic
parts was disconcerting. How could something so serious be made from the
same material as most toys? He showed me how to check that a gun is
unloaded, by sticking your finger in the chamber to see if a round was loaded,
in through the ejection port to feel if there were any rounds in the upper
magazine well, and in the bottom of the magazine well to see if a magazine was
inserted; then visually checking the chamber.
As he finished his guided tour of the piece, I started to
feel more comfortable. I was 90% convinced that his repeated testing
proved that there were no rounds inside.
Then, he showed me a single round from the gun that he wears
on his hip every day and explained how a jacketed hollow point cartridge is
built. At the front is the bullet, a lead projectile with a hollow tip
designed for maximum damage upon impact. The bullet is seated in a brass
casing, which also holds the gunpowder and detonator, called a primer.
When hit by the firing mechanism, the primer ignites, which in turn lights the
gunpowder afire, sending the bullet whizzing down the barrel of the pistol.
After this description, my teacher immediately left the room
and took the live ammo away. Best practice says all live ammo needs to be
in another room entirely when you are working with the handgun. When he
returned to the room, he carried a small handful of practice rounds and dumped
them onto the neoprene mat in front of me. He assured me that these were inert
and couldn't be fired.
Nevertheless, I had the impulse to count them and line them
up on end, neat and under my control. I
did not want to let them out of my sight. Some had an orange, plastic
top. Others were completely maroon from tip to base. These were practice
rounds, he explained, designed not to do anything when struck by the
hammer. They didn’t have gunpowder inside. They don’t even exit the
chamber when the gun is fired. That didn’t stop me from wincing as they
rolled around on the mat like a haphazard collection of pocket change.
As he loaded the plastic practice rounds into the magazine,
I shrunk back, hiding behind his shoulder for protection. Crazy freak
accidents, caused by implausible scenarios, flooded my mind. What if the
manufacturer put powder in one cartridge by accident? What if my teacher
was color blind and the designated color for fakes was supposed to be blue?
What if there was a live round hiding somewhere inside the gun that we hadn’t
found? As ridiculous as the possibilities appeared - even to the crazy
one who thought them up – the consequences could be dire.
My teacher inserted the full magazine into the grip with a
thump and drew back the slide, loading a shell into the chamber. At this point,
I was cowering and near tears with anxiety. There was a round in the
chamber of a gun within 2 feet of me. It was the closest I had ever been
to a weapon designed and ready to kill humans – to kill me. The gun was
loaded: loaded with immobile, plastic rounds, but nonetheless, I was working
myself into an emotional frenzy.
And then, he pointed the gun at the densest part of the
apartment wall, and he pulled the trigger.
It made a mechanical click, like any tool or toy might
make. Nothing flew out of the muzzle. No white smoke drifted from
his hand. No big bang reverberated in my ears. The round had done
exactly what he said it would do: nothing.
After my heart rate returned to normal, the lesson sunk
in. I realized that it was not guns I was afraid of, although the heavy
menacing look of a compact killing machine was daunting in its own right.
It was not people with guns that scare me – I could have been afraid of my
friend turning crazy at that very instant and pointing the gun at me, but that
thought never crossed my mind. It was bullets that scare me. Once that
totally benign piece of plastic and metal met its receptacle, I felt fear.
My irrational, persistent urge to count those little plastic
containers clued me in. I wanted assurance, certainty; a perfect 100%
guarantee that a stray shell wasn’t hiding in the gun. I feared,
regardless of my intense precautions, that I would send one flying, burrowing
and exploding into a fellow human being.
I think I will be able to pick up the gun during my next
lesson. But inserting real cartridges - holding in my hands the power to
take a life – that won’t be easy.
No comments:
Post a Comment