I grew up with toy guns. They were cap pistols. When you pulled the trigger, they made a loud “BANG!” and your friend would clutch her chest and fall over onto the grass. Then she would get up and the two of you would go into the house to see if you could find any cookies and milk. It was great fun!
Of course, we knew it was pretend, and we knew that real guns could kill, but I had never seen a real gun in person.
Years later, when I was in college, I worked for my father as a secretary, full time at minimum wage, a job that let me work my hours around my class schedule. He was a church rector, and he also ran a small counseling center, which was housed in a building next to the church. It had a staff of clergy trained in pastoral counseling and one other secretary. We looked after people with all kinds of problems, and I often found myself with a waiting room full of distraught people. (Pastoral counseling isn’t proselytizing; it’s investigating clients' problems and helping them find solutions to them.)
One day one of his parishioners called, clearly distraught. Her daughter had shot herself and was in the hospital. My father didn’t have his car so he asked me to take him to her. The girl was someone I was acquainted with. She had been a year behind me in school. (I still remember her name, but let's just call her Jane.)
When we got to the hospital, we found Jane’s mother in the hallway in the intensive care unit. Jane was in surgery.
Jane's mother told us what happened:
She and Jane had been arguing about the girl’s boyfriend. Jane’s mother didn’t approve of him. (I knew him, too; he had been in my English class our senior year, and we graduated at the same time.) Jane looked to her stepfather, a professional fisherman, for support. He was about to leave to go out to sea and didn’t really have time to deal with the conflict between his wife and his stepdaughter, so he encouraged her to just listen to her mother and told her, “Just show me you’ve got guts.” Then he left.
After he was gone, Jane went to where he kept the keys to the gun safe. She unlocked the cabinet and removed her stepfather’s shotgun. Then she went into the bathroom and locked the door. She put the barrel of the gun to her stomach and pulled the trigger.
This was the only part of the story Jane's mother told us. I can only imagine what she went through getting the door to the bathroom unlocked, getting medical help. (This was before the 911 system was established.)
As the mother was telling us what happened, she kept blaming the boyfriend, which I guessed was her way of dealing with the stress.
Shortly after the mother finished telling her story, hospital staff members brought the Jane out of surgery, and the mother went in to be with her.
The surgeon came to speak with us. He told us that he had done his best to put her back together.
Unfortunately, the damage was too great. She could not survive. All they could do was try to keep her comfortable.
When the mother left the girl’s room to talk with the surgeon, we went in to see her. Jane was awake and able to talk. She kept saying she couldn’t feel her legs. She said she was afraid she would never dance again.
When I heard what she was saying, the realizations flooded in: I realized that she didn’t know she was dying, that she hadn’t really intended to kill herself; the act had been an impulse, and that she would not have done it if she hadn’t had access to the gun.
This experience made a big impression on me. A few years later, when I married my husband, I learned he had a gun. He got rid of it to please me, because I didn’t like having it in our home. When our children were old enough to visit friends without us, I talked with them about guns. I explained how dangerous they are, that they only should be handled by people who are trained to use them. I explained that people can be killed or injured by accident if someone untrained is handling a gun. I told them that if they learned that the friend they were visiting had a gun in the house, they should come home immediately or bring the friend to our house to play.
Our oldest actually did that one day. He went to hang out with a friend but came right back. When I asked him why he had come back so soon, he explained that he had found out that the family had a gun under the bed.
I understand that many people feel the need to have a gun for protection, and that’s a decision everyone has to make on their own. We have always had at least one family dog. The only time we had a break-in, our dog scared the two thieves away. A policeman talking to our Neighborhood Watch group said that a dog is actually better protection than a security system or a gun when it comes to protecting yourself and your property.
A number of studies have shown that people who live in a home with a gun are at greater risk of death, and people are often killed with their own firearm. An article from Psychology Today in 2017 summarized statistics on gun deaths, and another in Time Magazine in 2022 reported on a more recent study of gun ownership. Both articles relate that people who have guns in the home are more likely to die from guns, even if they don’t know their killer, but they are also much more likely to commit suicide or be killed by their partner, on purpose or accidentally.
When a young person takes a gun and uses it to kill others, either random bystanders or people with whom they are angry, they often either shoot themselves or are shot by police. They are also the victims of the shooting. Their families suffer that loss the same as their victims' families. Gone is the opportunity to help them deal with their troubles in a nonviolent way. Gone is the useful future they might have had.
My experience with Jane, many years ago, taught me that shooting yourself or anyone else may be done on impulse, and once it’s done, it can’t be taken back. Young people are often impulsive, which makes them more vulnerable.
It’s difficult to shoot yourself, a family member or a friend if there is no gun available, so I choose to live without one. The choice to keep a gun in your home is yours. Choose wisely.
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