Bearing Arms

I lived in the South Bronx for a bit straight after moving to New York from Colorado. It was a very rough neighborhood, so, being both scared and raised on action films, I carried a knife in my pocket for self defense when I first got there. I don’t really think it would have helped in most serious emergencies, and I suspect it would have made more worse than it helped, but who knows? Maybe I would have avoided a tragic outcome somehow, like in those rare cases the NRA loves to broadcast widely. In any case, having it in my pocket, I couldn’t stop imagining needing it, having action hero fantasies, imagining killing bad guys in self defense. It was poison for me, personally. I didn’t like how it made me think about others and how it made me feel as a human being, and I think the effect of a gun would have been ten times worse. The other people on the subway became potential threats far too easily in my mind when I was ready and able to inflict violence and damage.

The thing about weapons is not that they make you feel safe. It's that they make you feel dangerous.

I gave up the knife after a few days. Funny enough, the second I stopped carrying it, I lost that "predator mentality" that had been developing in me. It just melted away as I embraced the uneasy trust I was putting in my fellow people. And sooner or later, my fear began to melt away, too, as I stopped obsessing about potential threats. It also forced me to more creatively address tricky or scary situations. When you can't lean on the possibility of force, you must elevate your thinking and tactics in life. Now, I've become much better at sincerely seeing, appreciating, and speaking with people in rough neighborhoods, or in any neighborhoods for that matter. I don't think that would be as true if I carried a gun.

I would never want to carry a gun, even in the inner city you refer to. And if some gang members roll up with a gun, sure, they’re getting my wallet, or whatever they want, really. They might even hurt me, maybe badly. Maybe even kill me. Man, that sure would suck. I don’t want to die. In fact, I really really want to not die, ever. I’m not naive, either; I’ve seen people with razor blade slash scars on their cheeks from gang initiations and I know that drive bys and innocent bystanders exist. I don’t think that I could stop them with a gun anyway, but that’s not the point. And, by the way, even if you actually manage to successfully murder some bad guy in the ideal scenario I imagine that you are imagining, you’ve become an immediate target of the rest of the gang, but that’s also not the main point. I really don’t believe in the efficacy or logic of "good guys with guns," and I even moreso feel that guns are psychologically corrosive to human beings, and I’m someone who has been held up at gunpoint in my home, tied up, threatened with death repeatedly, and robbed of my belongings. Sure, after that happened I was pretty damn shook up, violated really, and I fantasized about vigilante punisher-type scenarios for a little while, but then I got over it and moved on, and I’m pretty confident that my life is better for having gotten over it and not continued obsessing.

I was also in Charlottesville all day the day of the white supremacist rally, too, and that was chock full of guns. "Good guys" with guns, "bad guys" with guns, cops with guns. None of it made me feel anything but less safe. I almost got hit by the damn Nazi car attack that killed Heather, too. Do I wish I had had a gun to protect myself at the rally? Hell no. My camera and my feet were the tools that felt most useful that morning. Do I wish I had had a gun to shoot James Fields Jr. after he plowed his car into all the people I was standing with? Hell no. I was so shocked and panicked, who the hell knows who I might have shot? And then what would have been the response from the other few hundred panicked individuals there, some of them carrying weapons? Even if I had hit James in the driver seat where he sat, would they have recognized me as a good guy with a gun in the confusion and blood and screams, or an angry looking white man of German descent firing a gun at a Nazi rally and counter protest? How would the police have reacted? Even if it all would have somehow worked out ideally, and I became this Die Hard heroic figure or something, I’d still have to live with having ended a human life, which is about the last thing I want to have on my conscience. I sure hope James is truly feeling the heavy weight of what he’s done now.

So yes, I am more than willing to give up my hypothetical gun. In fact, I insist. I don't want the damn thing. Get it away from me. Better yet, please tell me where I can get it melted down and turned into something actually useful for somebody in need.

The weapons I carry will remain my brain and my heart, my language and my love, my humility and my empathy. And I will wield them as best I can in every situation. I truly feel that this type of defense will give me the best odds not only of survival in this sometimes scary world, but also of living a happier, healthier, more productive life while I’m alive as well.