Cirque du Grotesque

If you had asked me before yesterday why I own guns, I would have fed you the same line I had fed my liberal friends and my wife—and, above all, myself—for years. I would have told you that I own guns for hunting, for protection, for blasting clay pigeons out of cloudless October skies. I would have told you that I own guns because I come from a gun family and guns are some of the only things I have left from people I have loved. I would have told you about the rifle that my holler-born, Great Depression–surviving grandmother kept under the bed, the 20-gauge my grandfather used to bring home Thanksgiving turkeys, the 30-06 that took my father’s first deer. I would have told you I own guns because I am a hunter and I own guns because I write things that sometimes make people angry.

But it is only now that gun violence has visited my little corner of the world that I have been forced to confront reality, a truth that has been there all along but that I have refused to admit: I own guns because I like them and because I am an American and I’m allowed to and no one stops me. I own guns because—until this moment—gun violence was something that happened Anywhere else and not Somewhere close to me. I own guns because I have never been forced to question—to really question—why I do or what they’re for or what would happen if I had to work a little harder for the right to own them. You might find this confession myopic or selfish, but it’s also the truth. And I’m admitting it because I think the root of our country’s gun problem is that we refuse—gun owners and gun critics alike—to say this truth out loud.

We have made the gun debate a conflict over facts and motivations and laws and amendments. Gun-control advocates rightly point out that guns do not in fact make anyone safer. That the majority of mass shootings are not ended by the mythical “good guy with a gun” but by law-enforcement or suicide. That buying a gun makes you more likely to die of a gunshot wound, not less. The Second Amendment crowd argues that self-protection is a right, granted by God and the Constitution, and that a degree of risk is the price to pay for living in a free society. I have neither the patience nor the energy to rehash these debates. And I don’t think there’s any point in arguing about policy right now. There is zero reason to expect that meaningful laws will be passed as a result of the events that transpired in Lewiston.

So rather than rattle off a list of warmed-over ideas such as “assault-weapons ban” or “mandatory background checks” or “red-flag laws” or “commonsense gun reform” that are probably not going to come to fruition tomorrow or the day after or next year or the year after, I’ll just resort to being honest. The inescapable fact is that the only people capable of shifting the gun conversation in this country are the people who buy them.

I am, like most Americans who own guns, responsible. Yesterday’s events haven’t made me change my mind about being a gun owner. The reasons that motivated me to own guns in the first place are no different today than yesterday. The shooting in Lewiston changed my mind about being a quiet gun owner. I have spent years of my life making apologies on behalf of my gun-nut acquaintances. Staying silent when friends bring up the National Rifle Association despite my fierce opposition to that organization. Not pushing back when they call minor reforms such as mandatory waiting periods “totalitarian.” Changing the subject rather than asking Why do you need a military-style rifle?

As a gun owner from gun country, I’ll let you in on the dirty secret that everyone knows in their heart of hearts: The AR-15 is America’s best-selling rifle not because people need them for protection or because our country is full of aspiring militiamen or paranoid whack jobs waiting for civil war. People own AR-15s because they think they’re sexy and cool and manly. Because they have barely any recoil and Army surplus ammo is cheap. Because their buddies have them, so why shouldn’t they? Because they are toys—the most dangerous toys in America, but toys nonetheless. Mothers must ask their sons for pictures of open windows because Americans own AR-15s, and they own them because they are fun.