Guns

I was raised on granola, home-grown zucchini, and Peter, Paul and Mary albums. The only thing in our house that could have been considered a weapon was the kitchen knife, and if my pacifist parents had thought of it as such, they would have thrown it out.

Five years ago I bought a three-acre farm in Hawaii. My partner and I acquired some goats and chickens and a piglet named Maggie. Then my partner brought home a male baby boar. The two pigs began to breed, and before long we had more pigs than goats.

We heard stories about armed men poaching livestock from local farms. The police in our area were notorious for ignoring emergency calls, so my partner became convinced we needed a gun to protect ourselves and our animals. I bought a semiautomatic .223 rifle. I’d never even held a gun before. The first time I shot it, I thought I’d blown out my eardrums.

In the meantime the pigs continued to multiply, and I continued to buy pork chops, bacon, and pork roast for my partner, rather than slaughter one of his beloved pigs. When the pig population reached eighty-seven and I was spending $250 a week on feed, I begged my partner to do something about the animals. But he refused to harm them or sell them as food. I stopped buying meat and told him we were hypocrites if we would eat chops packaged up from a factory farm but not eat livestock we’d raised. He finally agreed to start butchering them.

So we did it: we shot a pig. One bullet between the eyes dropped the animal. We quickly cut its throat and plunged the knife into its heart to release the blood. Then we dragged the several-hundred-pound carcass closer to the house to wash, skin, and gut it. My partner threw up, I cried, and we both called each other terrible names.

Over time, we killed twenty pigs. I tried to rationalize it — I feed them; they feed me — but it never got any easier. My partner blamed me for “forcing” him to kill the pigs; I blamed him for breeding them. Finally we separated. He went on a three-month drunk, and I gave away forty-seven pigs.

Though I got a restraining order against my ex, he still sneaks onto the property to see the remaining pigs. I’m out here in the country all by myself, with an angry, drunk former partner lurking about. I don’t know what to do with the rifle. Whenever I pick it up, my whole body shakes. I don’t want to be a pig farmer. I never want to eat meat again. I just want to eat granola and listen to Peter, Paul and Mary.

Name Withheld

On August 17, 1969, five days after my ninth birthday, I became one of the last casualties of World War I. Here’s how it happened: My father and I were out for a Sunday-morning bicycle ride around the neighborhood. A block from home, we saw our elderly neighbor Mr. Olsen working in his yard. He hailed us, and I followed Dad into Mr. Olsen’s driveway for what I hoped would be a brief exchange.

Mr. Olsen was cantankerous and railed against everything from stray dogs to dirty hippies. He wanted all “long-haired peaceniks” rounded up and shipped to a remote island. “Give them all guns and leave them there,” he said. I was about to tell my father I’d ride home without him when Mr. Olsen said he had something to show me. He disappeared into the house and returned carrying a small French pistol, a souvenir from the Great War, of which he was a veteran.

I don’t remember hearing a sound when Mr. Olsen’s finger inexplicably squeezed the trigger. I do remember seeing a bright orange flash from the muzzle. When the bullet entered my chest, I wrapped my arms around myself and said, “Dad, what happened?”

My father shouted for Mr. Olsen to call an ambulance. Then, not content to wait for help to arrive, he lifted me in his arms and started running home, yelling, “My son’s been shot!”

In our driveway, my father screamed for my mother to call the hospital and tell them we were coming. Then he lifted my shirt to find out where I’d been hit. When he saw the bloody hole at the base of my sternum, he assumed the worst.

Lying in the back seat of the Ford as my father sped off, I reached around to feel my back, searching for an exit wound. I didn’t find a hole, but I did feel a lump, two inches to the right of my spine: the slug lodged underneath my skin.

From the back of the speeding car, I cried over and over, “Dad, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die!” My father kept saying, “Hang on, son! You’re not going to die!”

The bullet had missed my heart by an inch. The only organ the slug had hit was my liver, piercing a neat little hole. Five days later I was discharged from the hospital, and within a few weeks I was riding my bicycle again as though nothing had happened.

Dad told me that all the traffic lights on the way to the hospital had been green, but he subsequently admitted that the lights had been red, and he had run them all without slowing down.

Eric Little
Freeland, Washington

My father owned a gun but kept it in a locked closet. I never even saw it until I was cleaning out the house after both my parents had died.

I’m glad my father’s gun was locked away. My parents’ violent arguments kept our family constantly off balance when I was a child. My father often chased my mother around the house, threatening to kill her if he caught her. My younger siblings and I stayed out of the “racetrack,” as we dubbed the trail they followed through the clutter in our home.

We never doubted that my father — barrelchested with strong biceps from stocking grocery-store shelves — could make good on his threat. My mother, by contrast, was whippet thin, worn down by menopause, agoraphobia, and a three-pot-a-day coffee habit.

Most of the time my father eventually lost interest and stomped upstairs to sulk, but every so often he’d catch her, and then I would intervene. The eldest daughter, I was my mother’s defender. I’d jump in front of my father, stand tall, look into his enraged eyes, and scream, “Stop!” Then I’d belittle his manhood, or scream profanities, or dare him to hit me: anything to give my mother time to escape. My father always backed off. I was proud of the way I’d protected my mother. A warrior maiden by age ten, I’d found that the safest place to be was in the heart of danger. Even today, when I feel threatened, I prefer to stand toe-to-toe with what’s threatening me.

So when my husband became interested in trap shooting, I decided to join him. Guns made me nervous, but I’d be damned if I was going to sit at home and fret.

The first day, I shot a hundred rounds and hit only a single clay target. I also discovered that I loved to shoot. I hadn’t known such elation since my youngest son’s birth more than a decade earlier.

My reaction confused me: how could I enjoy handling an instrument of destruction, especially after the violence that I’d witnessed as a child? My friends were horrified. None of them had firearms in their homes, and they were alarmed to learn that we did, even though our guns were always disassembled, cleaned, and locked away after every outing.

I’ve tried to figure out what I like best about trap shooting: the weight of the heavy steel on my forearms, the warm haze that rises off the barrel, the lazy timelessness of waiting for my turn to shoot. No, what I love best is the complete focus it requires, the sense of being in the moment — something I otherwise find impossible to achieve. (I’m a compulsive multitasker.)

Right before I shoot, I clear my thoughts, lift the shotgun, and let my body take over. After I fire comes a moment of perfect emptiness, as the Heart Sutra describes: “No cognition — no attainment. Nirvana.”

Now this warrior maiden carries a twelve-gauge.

Anne Newkirk Niven
Point Arena, California

Growing up in a working-class family, I learned all about guns. My father spent his leisure time hunting. For my twelfth birthday, he gave me, his daughter, a BB gun. (I am his oldest child, and I’ve always suspected that he wished I’d been a boy.)

My mother expressly forbade me to shoot at animals. She needn’t have worried; as a lover of all vulnerable creatures, I’d never shoot an animal. Instead, when I took my new gun hunting, I shot the windows of our car.

Name Withheld

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