(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.
The thought crossed my mind, that all this drivel spewed out of his mouth because he's afraid he can kiss his Ph.D. goodbye if he actually kills a guy who's in his house.
Lifestyle, not a "sudden awakening". He realized that if he shot a burglar, he'd be a pariah in the faculty lounge -- and in fact would be excluded from that club.
Which one is Blanchfield?
Rather, which weasel is Blanchfield?
Then he ejects multiple shells on the floor ...
He is a liberal idiot with a degree in literature ... writing fiction ...
“I CALL FICTION ON THIS!”
Then call or email the fiction writer:
Patrick Blanchfield
Phone: (917) 409-8461
pblanch@emory.edu
Liar.
He doesn’t like destroying a criminals life. He’d rather destroy the working mans life by joining the Occupy Wall street terrorists and disrupting the working mans ability to commute to and from work for a whole full year. I heard commuting from Brooklyn to Manhattan was made impossibly by these subhuman trust fund bugs.
That’s something the communist propaganda machine posing as our MSM never mentions: The amount of people who lost their jobs because the Occupy Wall street terrorists made it impossible for them to get to work (which was all sanctioned by the way by the unconstitutionally elected thrice admitted foreign born President, Nancy Pelosi and Despot, I mean Mayor Mike Bloomberg. 32 oz sodas are banned but not terrorists)
I'm been on the receiving end of an attempted home invasion. I shouted at him and prepared to fillet him with a chef's knife if he got through the door. I felt zero nausea before, during or after the incident. The guy had a loaded shotgun in hand. He's either a drama queen or has the nerves of a mouse.
Venezuela (see other FR thread) has strict gun control, and they have a very high rate of murders; Mexico ditto, and look at them!
Japan is a stratified society in which the peasants were beaten down so hard, so long, that they've never formed a conception of "up".
What he doesn’t say is that most of the homicides are by criminals and they aren’t accidental
“From the robust kick of firing a revolver to the emphatic, mechanical bursts of shouldering an assault rifle on full auto,”
Complete BS. He (she) is a fraud.
Hmmm...I’ve pulled a gun with the possibility of shooting a human once in my life, over 30 years ago. It was a 6 shot 22, and there were 8 of them. Oddly enough, I didn’t fumble to load the gun. Oh, that’s right - it was already loaded during my hike. And when I returned and 8 guys moved to surround me, I actually felt quite calm as I pulled it out of the holster.
The 8 guys stopped trying to surround me. I went past them, got my keys out with my left hand, opened the car and drove off without ever putting my revolver down.
And no, I didn’t stop anywhere and puke.
Guess you can’t cure stupid, and you can’t cure a pathetic pansy wimp of wimpiness. I agree - that pathetic excuse for a man needed to get rid of guns. He isn’t worthy of owning a gun. He needs to get his purse and practice squealing “Rape me first!”
Japan might have only had 11 gun murders in 2008, but the total murder rate was 100x as large, if the 2009 murder rate of 1097 is any indication.
You can take the boy out of New York, but you can't flush the New York out of the boy. Bet you anything he still eats bagels and runs his mouth on Sarah Palin and Allen West over lunch.
Why is it people from out West don't have your problem, son?
No cultural acclimation, no tradition, reared in a gutless society of loudmouths and corner-office Napoleons. Some training would have helped, better still, military service in some Armpit. But he had nothing to fall back on when he saw the guy.
Lack of conviction, lack of preparation. People like him should wear dog collars and be denied the vote for basic incompetence.
I have an old 16 gauge pump and that's the only way to cycle it empty by pressing the side button.
If this crap story were true, it would be funny as heck watching the clown pumping away, emptying the shotgun.
You'd think he would stop at some point seeing a shell or two flying out, LOL.
This whole story seems humorous to me, but there are idiots who would take it seriously.
PLEASE tell us where we can get that Bolshevik poster!!!
Excellent
Check Oleg’s post “Historical mind-benders: Pravda, Guns, Red Terror & America” at:
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.