The idea that gun regulations should be regarded as a threat to constitutional freedom is a treacherous hoax. And yet, it's patently unfair to paint all gun owners (roughly one-third of Americans) as crazy rubes tooling up for the day the revenuers show up to raid their compound.
Some people just like guns, and it doesn't make them crazy and it doesn't make them dangerous. It makes them gun enthusiasts, the same way some people like cars or guitars or cats.
That may be obvious to you. It wasn't to me. I've lived in cities my entire life, including a few (LA, NY, DC) with notorious criminal reputations, and I currently reside in the downtown Seattle neighborhood Pioneer Square, where I hear gunfire out my bedroom window on a regular basis. And still I found I had no idea what would motivate a rational civilian in a city like Seattle to want to own, and carry, a weapon designed to intimidate and kill other humans.
So I decided to buy one and find out.
Right on Target
My project was simple: Buy a handgun and carry it, loaded, on my person, for some period of time. My goal was even simpler: See how it felt. Prior to this experiment, I had never even held a handgun. The only one I ever saw up close belonged to my father, a Walther PPK; he showed it to me once when I was 18. I didn't pick it up because I was worried it might go off.
I didn't know the difference between one brand and another, I didn't understand that "caliber" referred to size of ammunition, and until I actually thought about it, I didn't realize why some guns were called pistols and others revolvers. I was a neophyte, verging on phobic. I thought of guns as dark magic, unpredictable talismans, better left alone.
I had no illusion that learning to hold, shoot, own, care for, and carry one would make me an expert in anything, only that it would bring me one step closer to being able to participate in the gun-control debate without having to say, "I mean, I've never even held a gun before, but..."
The first step was to apply for a concealed carry permit.
I walked two blocks from my apartment to the county courthouse, went through the metal detector, turned left, and entered the small, plain King County Sheriff's Office. There was one other person waiting. The clerk asked how he could help me. Making an effort neither to wince nor apologize, I said, "I'd like to apply for a concealed carry permit?"
I expected heads to turn, brows to furrow, needles to scratch off records. Instead, he handed me a clipboard with the application on it and a pen and gestured to an empty counter where I could fill it out. I filled it out. (...)
Some people just like guns, and it doesn't make them crazy and it doesn't make them dangerous. It makes them gun enthusiasts, the same way some people like cars or guitars or cats.
That may be obvious to you. It wasn't to me. I've lived in cities my entire life, including a few (LA, NY, DC) with notorious criminal reputations, and I currently reside in the downtown Seattle neighborhood Pioneer Square, where I hear gunfire out my bedroom window on a regular basis. And still I found I had no idea what would motivate a rational civilian in a city like Seattle to want to own, and carry, a weapon designed to intimidate and kill other humans.So I decided to buy one and find out.
Right on Target
My project was simple: Buy a handgun and carry it, loaded, on my person, for some period of time. My goal was even simpler: See how it felt. Prior to this experiment, I had never even held a handgun. The only one I ever saw up close belonged to my father, a Walther PPK; he showed it to me once when I was 18. I didn't pick it up because I was worried it might go off.
I didn't know the difference between one brand and another, I didn't understand that "caliber" referred to size of ammunition, and until I actually thought about it, I didn't realize why some guns were called pistols and others revolvers. I was a neophyte, verging on phobic. I thought of guns as dark magic, unpredictable talismans, better left alone.
I had no illusion that learning to hold, shoot, own, care for, and carry one would make me an expert in anything, only that it would bring me one step closer to being able to participate in the gun-control debate without having to say, "I mean, I've never even held a gun before, but..."
The first step was to apply for a concealed carry permit.
I walked two blocks from my apartment to the county courthouse, went through the metal detector, turned left, and entered the small, plain King County Sheriff's Office. There was one other person waiting. The clerk asked how he could help me. Making an effort neither to wince nor apologize, I said, "I'd like to apply for a concealed carry permit?"
I expected heads to turn, brows to furrow, needles to scratch off records. Instead, he handed me a clipboard with the application on it and a pen and gestured to an empty counter where I could fill it out. I filled it out. (...)
I spent a long time walking around that small store, pretending I had any idea what I was looking at or for. When the sales staff asked if I needed help, I said no, no, thanks, just looking. The truth was that I was scared to state my business, lest it be made clear how little I knew about what I was there to buy.
But by my third circuit around the accessories, I was afraid of coming off like a deranged person, so I finally caved and asked about the difference between the Glock series 19 Gen 4, retailing at $550, and the Gen 5, which went for $599. The salesman listed a bunch of features that I forgot at the precise instant I heard them, but I said, "I'll take it."
Next came a predictable barrage of accessory upselling: a holster, a case, a cleaning kit, ammunition, etc. I pretty much acquiesced to everything he recommended, but I drew the line at a gun safe, reasoning that there are no children anywhere near my life, and my dogs were unlikely to go snooping around the locking hard-shell briefcase in which I was planning to store the weapon.
I had to show my ID and concealed carry permit, and fill out a form very similar to the one I'd filled out at the sheriff's office. Then he entered me into the background check database. People always lament how easy it is to buy a gun, suggesting that the background check process is too lenient, so the moment he pressed send, for journalistic purposes, I started the timer on my phone. He apologized that it seemed to be running a little slow. Then he said, "Okay, you're good to go!" and began to ring me up. Elapsed time: four minutes, 58 seconds. It had taken me longer to pick out a holster. Total cost: $892.05.
Gun, Gun, Gun, Gun, Gun, Gun, Gun
When I got the gun home, I stared at it, held it, pondered it, and tried hard to think of it as mine. There it was, undeniably owned by me, in all its clunky, boxy, Glocky glory.
Sitting there on my kitchen table, unloaded but next to a box of bullets, it was almost as though the gun was pulsating. The center of gravity in the room changed unmistakably. It was now a room with a gun in it.
As I loaded the magazine with bullets (a bit of a squeeze, PS), I literally flinched as I imagined misfiring. What if one of these little brass and lead numbers went out the window and hit someone waiting for the bus across the street, or went through the wall and hit one of my neighbors, or went across the room and hit one of my dogs? How many lives could be ended, and how many more ruined, all because of this ugly L-shaped tool?
The design genius of a firearm is that everything about it bends toward functionality. You have to work to keep your finger off that trigger. Once the bullets are in the magazine, and the magazine is in the gun, a tense coil stands poised to push the first bullet into the chamber, and once it's there, the potential energy waiting behind it is massive. Once triggered, that energy has started wars, destroyed families, cut short the lives of artists, leaders, and ordinary people who did nothing to deserve it. It's a lot of destructive capability to be holding in your hand or wearing on your hip.
You could almost say that a gun wants to be shot. I know that sounds like a magic busload of hippie nonsense, and I have no doubt that experienced gun collectors would scoff at the idea, but I swear I felt it. Not like it was calling out to me or anything, but as soon as it was in the room, it was the main thing about that room, a temperature raiser, an undeniable source of power.
That became true everywhere I took it for the next several weeks, even though I almost never disclosed its presence to the people I was with. I took it off when I got to work and when I went places where they serve alcohol, but I wore it pretty much everywhere else, in a Eidolon graphite holster inside the waistband of my pants (the holster model I bought was designed as an "appendix carry"). Though the Glock is easy to shoot, it is extraordinarily impractical to carry if you don't want anyone to know you're carrying it.
It's also physically uncomfortable. Sitting down involves a good deal of futzing to keep it from pushing up into your kidneys. And wherever you go, there's a bunch of plastic and metal digging into your stomach, pelvis, and thigh. But you can get used to it if you're determined to.
The thing I found harder to get used to was this feeling: I'm carrying a gun. Holy shit. There's a gun in my pants. I wonder if anyone can see it poking through my shirt. Why would anyone be looking at my shirt? Because there's a gun underneath it! Because, as previously mentioned, I have a gun. Gun, gun, gun, gun, gun, gun, gun, gun, gun. (The inside of my head was starting to sound like the bumper on Law and Order: GUN-GUN!) The sensation of gun at the center of everything, the existence of which was known only to me, never subsided.
I could imagine how some people might feel emboldened or vindicated by the existence of this secret power. But to me, it never felt like that. I never felt glamorous, like a secret agent in a movie. I just felt furtive and untrustworthy, afraid of being found out. The few times I went out without carrying, having forgotten or just chosen not to bother, I didn't feel unsafe. I felt unburdened. (...)
I believe the NRA's rhetoric about "good guys with guns" is largely bullshit, the same as all marketing that tells you one thing in order to sell you another. Nonetheless, I thought that if my experiment was going to be fair, I should try a little harder to put myself in situations where I might have reason to feel, if not actually imperiled, then at least uneasy. Fortunately, I live right around the corner from what KIRO once called "the most dangerous block in Seattle."
The stretch of Third Avenue between Yesler and James has a vastly higher incidence of reported violent crime—including drive-by shootings, robberies, and homicides—than any other comparable block in the city. Though KIRO's reporting on the street was predictably hysterical, there's no denying the air of desperation and illness that pervades the area. I have walked down it countless times coming to or from home. It is, in fact, where I went to apply for my concealed carry permit. I now made a point of walking down the block, at several times of day, while exercising the right granted me by that permit. It felt ghoulish, like I was looking for trouble where trouble already abounds. (...)
It's one thing for an active-duty soldier to live in a state of being mentally prepared to kill at any time. It's something else for an accountant, or a programmer, or a bus driver. I believe living in a state of constant readiness for disaster invites disaster. I believe the presence of a gun invites problems for which a gun seems like a solution.
I knew there was an element of this experiment that was playing with fire. I knew I was carrying around the power to kill anyone I saw.
But by my third circuit around the accessories, I was afraid of coming off like a deranged person, so I finally caved and asked about the difference between the Glock series 19 Gen 4, retailing at $550, and the Gen 5, which went for $599. The salesman listed a bunch of features that I forgot at the precise instant I heard them, but I said, "I'll take it."
Next came a predictable barrage of accessory upselling: a holster, a case, a cleaning kit, ammunition, etc. I pretty much acquiesced to everything he recommended, but I drew the line at a gun safe, reasoning that there are no children anywhere near my life, and my dogs were unlikely to go snooping around the locking hard-shell briefcase in which I was planning to store the weapon.
I had to show my ID and concealed carry permit, and fill out a form very similar to the one I'd filled out at the sheriff's office. Then he entered me into the background check database. People always lament how easy it is to buy a gun, suggesting that the background check process is too lenient, so the moment he pressed send, for journalistic purposes, I started the timer on my phone. He apologized that it seemed to be running a little slow. Then he said, "Okay, you're good to go!" and began to ring me up. Elapsed time: four minutes, 58 seconds. It had taken me longer to pick out a holster. Total cost: $892.05.
Gun, Gun, Gun, Gun, Gun, Gun, Gun
When I got the gun home, I stared at it, held it, pondered it, and tried hard to think of it as mine. There it was, undeniably owned by me, in all its clunky, boxy, Glocky glory.
Sitting there on my kitchen table, unloaded but next to a box of bullets, it was almost as though the gun was pulsating. The center of gravity in the room changed unmistakably. It was now a room with a gun in it.
As I loaded the magazine with bullets (a bit of a squeeze, PS), I literally flinched as I imagined misfiring. What if one of these little brass and lead numbers went out the window and hit someone waiting for the bus across the street, or went through the wall and hit one of my neighbors, or went across the room and hit one of my dogs? How many lives could be ended, and how many more ruined, all because of this ugly L-shaped tool?
The design genius of a firearm is that everything about it bends toward functionality. You have to work to keep your finger off that trigger. Once the bullets are in the magazine, and the magazine is in the gun, a tense coil stands poised to push the first bullet into the chamber, and once it's there, the potential energy waiting behind it is massive. Once triggered, that energy has started wars, destroyed families, cut short the lives of artists, leaders, and ordinary people who did nothing to deserve it. It's a lot of destructive capability to be holding in your hand or wearing on your hip.
You could almost say that a gun wants to be shot. I know that sounds like a magic busload of hippie nonsense, and I have no doubt that experienced gun collectors would scoff at the idea, but I swear I felt it. Not like it was calling out to me or anything, but as soon as it was in the room, it was the main thing about that room, a temperature raiser, an undeniable source of power.
That became true everywhere I took it for the next several weeks, even though I almost never disclosed its presence to the people I was with. I took it off when I got to work and when I went places where they serve alcohol, but I wore it pretty much everywhere else, in a Eidolon graphite holster inside the waistband of my pants (the holster model I bought was designed as an "appendix carry"). Though the Glock is easy to shoot, it is extraordinarily impractical to carry if you don't want anyone to know you're carrying it.
It's also physically uncomfortable. Sitting down involves a good deal of futzing to keep it from pushing up into your kidneys. And wherever you go, there's a bunch of plastic and metal digging into your stomach, pelvis, and thigh. But you can get used to it if you're determined to.
The thing I found harder to get used to was this feeling: I'm carrying a gun. Holy shit. There's a gun in my pants. I wonder if anyone can see it poking through my shirt. Why would anyone be looking at my shirt? Because there's a gun underneath it! Because, as previously mentioned, I have a gun. Gun, gun, gun, gun, gun, gun, gun, gun, gun. (The inside of my head was starting to sound like the bumper on Law and Order: GUN-GUN!) The sensation of gun at the center of everything, the existence of which was known only to me, never subsided.
I could imagine how some people might feel emboldened or vindicated by the existence of this secret power. But to me, it never felt like that. I never felt glamorous, like a secret agent in a movie. I just felt furtive and untrustworthy, afraid of being found out. The few times I went out without carrying, having forgotten or just chosen not to bother, I didn't feel unsafe. I felt unburdened. (...)
I believe the NRA's rhetoric about "good guys with guns" is largely bullshit, the same as all marketing that tells you one thing in order to sell you another. Nonetheless, I thought that if my experiment was going to be fair, I should try a little harder to put myself in situations where I might have reason to feel, if not actually imperiled, then at least uneasy. Fortunately, I live right around the corner from what KIRO once called "the most dangerous block in Seattle."
The stretch of Third Avenue between Yesler and James has a vastly higher incidence of reported violent crime—including drive-by shootings, robberies, and homicides—than any other comparable block in the city. Though KIRO's reporting on the street was predictably hysterical, there's no denying the air of desperation and illness that pervades the area. I have walked down it countless times coming to or from home. It is, in fact, where I went to apply for my concealed carry permit. I now made a point of walking down the block, at several times of day, while exercising the right granted me by that permit. It felt ghoulish, like I was looking for trouble where trouble already abounds. (...)
It's one thing for an active-duty soldier to live in a state of being mentally prepared to kill at any time. It's something else for an accountant, or a programmer, or a bus driver. I believe living in a state of constant readiness for disaster invites disaster. I believe the presence of a gun invites problems for which a gun seems like a solution.
I knew there was an element of this experiment that was playing with fire. I knew I was carrying around the power to kill anyone I saw.
by Sean Nelson, The Stranger | Read more:
Image: Rob Dobi
