The Guns in the Basement

Jonathan and I try to do something fun on Fridays. We go to Zell's for breakfast, or Pok Pok for lunch, or take a walk on the Esplanade, or see a movie. Since we almost never go out at night, the tradition functions as our weekly date. This past Friday we didn't do any of the usual things. We went to Fred Meyer and bought all of our household supplies for the month. Then we drove to Keith's Sporting Goods in Gresham and sold Jonathan's guns.

For the past eight years there has been a shotgun and a pistol in my basement. Unloaded, disassembled, firing mechanisms removed, locked-up and hidden, but there. I am temperamentally and politically disinclined toward guns; my method for dealing with the fact of the ones in my house has been denial. Though they belonged to Jonathan, he has been conflicted enough about them that in eight years he hasn't touched them, either. They were our Tell-Tale Heart, buried under the floorboards yet always audible, beating a slow steady rhythm of danger. Jasper didn't know we had the guns. He's afraid of spiders and never goes in the basement. He could never have put the disparate pieces together even if he found them and somehow managed to cut through all the safety locks and cases with a plasma torch. But those are just excuses.

*

I had never been in a gun store before; it was packed. The reports of mass stockpiling appear to be true. The customers were mostly men, and mostly middle-aged or older. One little girl with a strawberry-blond ponytail and a pink fleece jacket rode in on her father's shoulders. We waited in line for half an hour. One silver-haired guy in hiked up jeans and a windbreaker, the kind of man I could pass on the street or in the grocery and not even see, kept up a steady stream of chatter. “There was no place to park, this place is so crowded! Thanks, Obama!” he said to no one in particular. “I had to drive all the way here from Hood River. Thanks Obama!” I wondered if he blamed Obama when he tripped on a curb or hit his thumb with a hammer.

The Lane County sheriff came in and was ushered to the front of the line. I examined the holsters and gun cleaning kits hanging from the walls, and the tasers in a glass case. I tried not to look at the assault rifles behind the counter, the kind Adam Lanza used. Everyone seemed matter-of-fact, as though the guns were merely objects, like porcelain vases. They did look oddly inert, lined up and pricetagged like that. It was weird and unsettling, to observe firsthand the mass delusion that turns instruments of death into collectibles.

We couldn't get the best price for the guns because they were beginning to rust, a consequence of being ignored in the basement for eight years. Keith suggested to Jonathan that he find another place to store his other guns, because of course he assumed we must have other guns. No one would sell their only guns! He also said we should be thankful to live in Oregon and not in California, where the gun laws were much stricter. I tried to look as if I were thankful, while wondering just how lax Oregon's gun laws really are.

Fifteen minutes later Jonathan had a check in his hand. It's not a morally perfect solution. It won't be my son who gets a hold of those guns, when he's sixteen and we catch him smoking pot, but it could be someone else's. Best case they will sit in someone's drawer or gun rack and never be fired. Really they should have been melted down and turned into whimsical garden sculpture.

*

When you have a stillborn baby you surrender, forever, the illusion of control. If the person you love most and are charged to protect can die like that, you can no longer pretend that terrible things happen for a reason, or only to people who've been negligent in some way. You are forced to give up the idea that you can prepare for everything, that if you are good enough and smart enough and diligent enough you can prevent the worst from happening.

Guns, as far as I can tell, are owned by many people merely to bolster their false notion of control. Jonathan has worried that not having a gun will leave him vulnerable and unable to protect us. He worries that not having one is being unprepared. That he would feel like a fool if something went wrong and he was unarmed. It's tempting, when you realize just how many weapons are out there, to feel like you have to join the arms race. But danger often doesn't come from the direction you expect.

You can prepare for a home invasion and get a child with leukemia. You can build a bomb shelter and be paralyzed by a drunk driver. You will probably never encounter the psychotic gunman; instead your depressed son might encounter your shotgun and turn it on himself.

I'm not against reasonable preparation; I've got bottled water stacked in my basement. And one person's “reasonable” can be another person's “insane paranoia.” But the truth is, we are all vulnerable, all the time. It is the human condition.

*

Ultimately, Jonathan made the decision to sell his guns not because of politics or Newtown, but because of Balthazar. When Balthazar died, he consciously chose the side of love instead of the side of hate and fear. And I guess I have too, though I hadn't thought about it in those terms. It means admitting that we are vulnerable. It means risking looking foolish. It means reaching out to people, accepting help and helping where we can. When you choose the side of love, the guns have to go.

If the apocalypse comes, our best chance for survival will be in cooperation with our friends and neighbors. We will rely on the relationships we've made, not guns.