Guns

          Late last year, for Christmas, I purchased the first gun I've owned since my father smashed my Daisy BB rifle to smithereens on our front porch. He was furious because I'd accidentally broken a neighbor's picture window. As he slammed the rifle on the concrete, the gun went off and he took a BB to the thumb, fueling his rage and provoking my laughter, which further inflamed his rage. He didn't shoot me, but I'll bet the impulse passed through his synapses. He hated guns and had never owned one. He hadn't bought me the Daisy; I'd bought it off a friend. I eventually took after my father, who used to say, "I'm a lover, not a fighter," even though he'd been a fighter, the captain of a sub-chaser in WWII. Maybe he'd become a "lover" because he'd been the captain of that ship and seen things he didn't care to remember.     
         After a lifetime as a male Venus de Milo (unarmed lover) myself, I purchased an assault rifle, largely due to a mental breakdown, an episode of insanity and paranoia, which I'll explain later. I'd heard something about the Bushmaster AR-15 being a particularly popular, efficient, and effective weapon. Why buy a weapon that's anything but efficient and effective? I headed over to our local arsenal, the Santa Fe Walmart, and asked to see the Bushmaster. The salesman told me they had stopped carrying that particular assault rifle because of some incident back East. I was crestfallen, but then greatly impressed when he pulled down another assault rifle, a DPMS Sportical, 5.56/.223. My sick heart started throbbing wildly at the sight of it, so dark and beautiful it was. I broke out in a sweat. I was overtaken by a feeling of . . . potentiality . . . potency . . . power. All I could think was, and I'm embarrassed to share this now because it's not the kind of thought I'd ever had before, "Wow, what a hot goddamn-fucking-awesome killing machine!" This beauty was both cheaper and more efficient than that popgun they call the Bushmaster. I turned around as if in a trance and shouted to everyone within earshot, "We need guns, people, all of us." I then filled out the computerized form for the background check. Fortunately, up to my recent breakdown, I had been a model citizen, not a single blemish on my record. I was approved for the sale. Within thirty minutes of appearing at the gun counter, I was the trembling owner of a DPMS Sportical.
          "Is this gun going to kill people?" I now wondered. And if it does, who will be responsible? Walmart? The salesman? The manufacturer? My useless background check? Violent movies and video games? The bullets? Me? Surely not. I figured out the answer rather quickly, surprised I'd never heard the obvious truth expressed before. The responsibility for gun violence lies with unarmed people, and the people who are shot; their sheer vulnerability, their careless refusal to buy, keep and bear arms. The other cause is where these unarmed people happen to be standing, in some random line of fire, or what movie they chose to see on a particular night, or what school they chose to get up and go to on a particular morning. If these people had made better choices, they'd still be alive. This is irrefutable. The main thing these deaths have in common is people going to the wrong places at the wrong times and without guns. It's time people stopped doing this. It's also time, I reasoned, gun owners like me were no longer blamed for the random direction of their bullets when people are carelessly standing or sitting about in the wrong places.
           So, why did I buy my rifle? What, beside my breakdown, was the precipitating event? Perhaps, I reasoned, it would make me less likely to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps it would increase the odds of other people being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and therefore decrease mine. People, like my next door neighbor, Phil, an octogenarian gun owner who had recently been shooting me dirty looks and behaving in an increasingly hostile manner; Phil, who is himself a hunter. Phil, who is known to have killed a number of deer, antelope, and even elk during hunting season. Phil, the threat of whose blood-thirsty, mammal-killing wrath filled me with fear and caused me to wonder how soon I'd be in season. I bought the gun to protect myself from Phil and, I'll admit, the increasing number of threatening strangers I'd been noticing in malls and other public places. So I thought up a few strategies, little contingency plans for when Phil inevitably aimed his Winchester at me. Phil grew increasingly threatening, now complaining about my target practice in our shared driveway. His blood lust was so thick I could actually smell it.
           Eventually it occurred to me that it was foolhardy and weak to await Phil's attack. What if he misplaced his walker and died from a fall or a stroke before he came for me, before I had a chance to randomly send a flurry of bullets in his general direction while he was standing or sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time? So I planned a preemptive strike. My bullets would somehow randomly find Phil, and soon.
          And I'm sure they would have had my DPMS Sportical not been confiscated by the Santa Fe Police SWAT team one afternoon during target practice. They pinned me to the ground before I could get off a single shot. As they pulled the gun from my hot, alive fingers, I saw Phil smirking at me from his porch. He'd won. I was a dead man. Happily, as the SWAT officers ground my torso into the gravel of our driveway, I had an epiphany. My father, as usual, had been right: far better to banish guns altogether than have them randomly scattering bullets among people who are in the wrong places at the wrong times, even if those people seem like hostiles, for then the hostiles wouldn't have guns either. In the absence of guns, you wouldn't have to worry about accidents with guns, much less sociopaths with guns. You can't use what you don't have--and neither can your seething, alienated, mentally ill offspring.
           This being my first offense, and because of my deep remorse, I am on probation, serving a suspended sentence for the reckless use of a semi-automatic firearm in public. My bad, of course, as was my plot to eliminate Phil, which, thankfully, was never discovered. Phil, if you're reading this I'm really sorry. I'm in therapy and on the mend. I am committed to becoming a lover once again rather than a fighter. And, even better, I'm working on a sure-fire formula to end gun violence: not being in the wrong place at the wrong time; and I intend to share it with the world when I work it out. I now see it as the only possible solution to our gun problem; the only way to avoid being randomly shot by psychotics with guns, at least in America.