Friday, on my drive to work, I listened to an NPR interview with a high school senior whose sister was shot and killed last year. Asked if the death of his sister had altered his beliefs, he responded that his “support for the 2nd amendment” had not changed.

This led me to wondered about that capacity for changing my own mind. My personal experience with guns suggests that people are foolish to place faith in guns to protect themselves. Everyone’s experience is different. Mine tells me that a lot of entirely untrustworthy people have way too many guns, that hiding a gun in a place no one will ever find it is a doomed fantasy, and that expecting even good people to consistently handle weapons with care and accuracy is a pipe dream. 

I need a license to drive a car. There’s nothing in the Constitution guaranteeing my right to do that. Our founders did not anticipate cars, and they did not anticipate a weapon capable of firing a dozen rounds in seconds. No ordinary citizen needs such a weapon. I am not entirely happy that our military has them.

About once a week an American toddler finds a gun and shoots someone, usually themselves, and about half the time that little boy or girl dies. Forty thousand Americans died last year from guns, usually shooting themselves on purpose. But even more telling is the risk to bystanders. Even highly trained police most often miss their target. This doesn’t happen at a target range, of course, but out in public when faced with an emergency, most police officers miss.

In my adult life, knowing local people who fill their freezers, as a vegetarian, I changed my mind about hunters.

I am continually amazed at how frightened some otherwise reasonable men become if they think they might have to walk around unarmed. 

I have walked around unarmed all my life without injury. I walked in the middle of the night in my suburban neighborhood where I grew up and walked through the University District at all times of the day and night while Ted Bundy was killing young women who looked exactly like me. I have been harassed and taunted and experienced all sorts of visual and verbal abuse, but I never needed a gun to be stay safe. No one hit me or assaulted me or shot or knifed or otherwise attacked me.

And I was unarmed.

Woman up.