My mom didn’t allow me and my brother to play with NERF guns or water guns. If we got into a cops-and-robbers beef — sticking up our thumbs and stretching out our index fingers in the shape of a gun — and we got caught, Mama, I’m sorry couldn’t cushion the blow of what was coming.
For most of my childhood, my dad was a cop. I knew he had an issued weapon in the house, but had no clue where. He kept his badge with his wallet and keys in a basket by the front door. I imagined the gun was in a box at the top of a closet. That’s always where the gun was in the ABC Afterschool Special where a kid accidentally shot another kid. I never checked any of the closets.
My dad almost always worked nights, so we didn’t do a lot of talking, and never talked about his gun. And maybe, too, because my mom was extra-sensitive about guns. When she was a teenager, her best friend was shot down by her boyfriend who was high on crack. When I was 11, Mom became even more sensitive after her father shot himself in the face. We talked about his death when it happened, of course. In the car on the way to the funeral, she told us he’d committed suicide. But it wasn’t until I saw Mom jump out of her skin during the funeral’s gun salute that I thought maybe he’d shot himself. I lost the thought as quickly as it came. My stomach was sweating. I imagined my grandfather cleaning his gun on a hot day; he got a heat cramp and accidentally pulled the trigger when the muscles in his hand seized.
In some sense, guns were presently absent in my life — they existed, but the way a myth exists. Someone told a story that someone previously told them. It’s a thing and you think it’s real, but you’ve never seen it.
To this day, I’ve never seen a real gun in person.
When I saw the horrifying images of Saturday night’s massacre in Orlando, I started thinking about all of the people in Pulse Nightclub who had never seen a gun, let alone an AR-15 rifle. It breaks my heart to think about people who are probably about to die and know they’re probably about to die — people spending their final seconds, even minutes, in complete terror.
In a horrifying, but oh-so-American, turn of events, according to the New York Daily News, gun stocks have spiked, most likely because investors are planning on consumers buying even more guns just in case the government actually does something about gun control.
I’m not holding my breath.
I looked up several images of various kinds of guns yesterday. I wish Omar Mateen was still alive so I could ask him a few things.
Did it feel heavy in your hand?
How does it feel to hold that much hate?
This article appears in Jun 16-23, 2016.