Still Trying to Understand

On guns, grief, and breaking this cycle of destruction

Sometimes I feel like I’m the last person in America without a gun.

I’m a veteran and not vehemently anti-gun but I don’t have any desire to own a gun. I live with a little dog in a city and I’m not particularly frightened. Why would I need a gun?

Gun In the House

I grew up in a house with a gun. A broken gun.

My dad had served in WWII and came home from the war with a German service pistol. My dad never talked about the war and we knew not to ask about it … but we knew where that gun was.

We’d sneak into my parents’ bedroom and head for Dad’s sock drawer. The gun was always there, in a brown leather holster. Dad had broken off the firing pin so it couldn’t be used. There was no ammo.

But we’d take that pistol out of the leather holster and marvel at it: the smooth metal, the way the clip dropped out. I can still remember how that gun smelled. We all thought it was really cool. But we never played with it or pointed it at anyone. We held it and we put it back.

But our culture was not as violent back then.

In the Military

In the USAF, as an officer, I had to qualify with a handgun. The first time at the range with a 9mm, I failed miserably. Couldn’t hit the target minimums.

Got shipped off to my first base, where they sent me to qualify with a .38.

Failed again.

My commanding officer was not happy. “How can you fail with a handgun? It’s super easy!” he said. And then he sent me for private instruction.

This time, I shot expert.

(30 years later, I would be diagnosed with an essential tremor — which I’ve had since the age of 16. It makes my hands shake a little, and when I’m nervous they shake even more. No wonder I had trouble qualifying with a handgun!)

But even in the military, I had no desire to buy a handgun. I still couldn’t understand why I needed one.

The Handgun Birthday Gift

The closest I ever came to owning a gun was in 2012, when I worked for a company that wanted to give me a handgun as a birthday present. That was our designated gift that year. One year, it was a bicycle, this year it was a gun.

I thought about taking the gift, mostly because I knew the blowback I would get from the company owner for not selecting the gun. I thought, “Well, maybe it’s time I get a gun.” But I couldn’t decide, so I waited.

And then the Sandy Hook child massacre happened a few weeks after my birthday.

I had no more heart for a gun. And I still didn’t need one. I turned down the gun (and took the blowback) and selected an electronics gift card instead.

And Now

As we sit here, not even a week after the Uvalde child massacre and only two weeks since the Buffalo massacre, I look around at America and think, “Where do we go from here? And why do so many people think they need guns?”

Maybe I’m missing something. But it seems like we are better than this. And that we don’t have to live this way, in an ever-increasing cycle of more guns and more “hardening” of our schools, our churches, our supermarkets, our houses, and everywhere we gather. More slaughters, more mourning, more grief.

I don’t know about y’all but I’m worn the fuck out.

I’m not looking to round up anybody’s guns (although I am for legislation concerning future gun purchases, particularly for AR-15s and the like). I’m just trying to understand. I don’t give a damn about Red or Blue or any of this ridiculous polarization that we keep buying into in this nation. I’m interested in helping us improve as a society and to do that, we all need to start talking.

America used to be better than this. All I know is that on this Memorial Day weekend, shame on us if we do nothing to stop these massacres.

Some gave all shouldn’t apply to our children. Or Black people shopping for groceries. Or or or or or …

We need to change.