Why I gave up my guns (NY bred metrosexual loses his nerve, throws in the towel on gun ownership)

1918 Bolshevik Poster - Citizens, hand over your weapons!

(1918 Bolshevik Poster by Alexander Apsit reads "Citizens, hand over your weapons!")

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.

Why I Gave Up My Guns: The Real Story by Gaylord Poofter.

I grew up in New York City, but when I moved into redneck country I decided I'd better pretend I was into the whole culture. I ran the entire gauntlet: I printed NRA stickers from the web and pasted them to the front door and back window of my apartment. I looked at numerous pictures of Bushmasters, Howitzers and even nuclear weapons. I even watched a few minutes of the streaming version of The Expendables on Netflix, despite the very real risk that it might queer my Indie and GLBT preferences for several weeks.

But my pretenses all came crashing down in just a few moments one fateful night.

After the nineteenth break-in at our upscale apartment in Midtown Atlanta, I decided to take action. Gathering all my courage, I asked the clerk at Bed, Bath, and Beyond where I might be able to obtain an AirSoft Pistol. [Full disclosure: I had originally planned on buying a CO2 BB Gun, but Mother's admonition that I would "shoot my eye out," persuaded me to invest in something a little less "Butch."]

He informed me that the Wal-Mart across the parking lot would probably carry them. I was apprehensive; I admit it. I had never been inside a Wal-Mart before, and the background check was a little intimidating. I had several tiny issues in my file as a result of a brief teaching assignment in Akron Ohio during the 'Nineties. Yes, they voted for 0bama twice. But their attitude toward the distribution of NAMBLA materials and so forth was nowhere near as enlightened as it is in "The City" where I grew up.

Anyway, Bruce and I were lying there in the heat of the Atlanta evening when I heard the door shudder. I knew we were about to be robbed again.

It's fine to be heroic when you're rehearsing all this in your mind, but it's something altogether different when your "girl"friend is lying next to you in the dark and you're contemplating doing bodily harm to another human being -- especially someone who is almost certainly a member of an oppressed minority, who is only lashing out an an unjust system.

Then I remembered! "My Purth!" I whispered. "I left it in the living room, and itth a Vethathee!"

That did it.

I reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the AirSoft gun, digging deeply in to the jarful of plastic pellets a moment later. Gosh, it was hard loading those pesky little balls into the bottom of the gun! After spilling what seemed like a hundred on our fresh muslin sheets I was feeling ready when Bruce asked, "Did you pump the Green Gas into the bottom?" Green Gas? What the heck was Green Gas? "The gun won't work without the gas." Bruce said, matter-of-factly. "My straight brother used to have one of those."

But I was fed up with people constantly stealing my designer outfits, expensive electronics, and objets d'art. I pushed off the safety, and loudly pulled back the facsimile action slide, spraying pellets everywhere as I did so. Why do they make it so impossible for anyone but an expert to load those things? But in any event, the exaggerated sound of the slide had its desired effect. The rummaging stopped short: the burglar was aware of me now. I could picture him scooping up the last of my laundry money from the coffee table as he prepared to take off. Yes! One for the good guys! But moments later, cold hard reality shattered my illusions of manhood.

"Yo. Better lie yo b!tch @ss back down that bed, you don't wan' me in there slap yo f@ggoty @ss aroun' som."

That was enough for me. I began throwing up uncontrollably, and couldn't stop until the doctor arrived to administer a sedative several hours later. Thank goodness Bruce's health plan includes domestic partners.

Being a hero isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Gaylord Poofter is an unemployed writer on his way back to graduate school.

And that FRiends, is the real story.

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