The Reluctant Gunner
I enjoy target shooting.
There. I said it. I’m a pretty liberal person, and I just admitted that I enjoy going to a range, setting up a target, and putting holes in it with a handgun or an assault rifle. I find it satisfying in the same way I find any skill-based activity satisfying. It requires focus and patience and discipline.
I also think a lot of guns are genuinely beautiful objects. The engineering is remarkable when you look at it closely. The tolerances, the mechanics, the way all the parts interact. I can appreciate that without any cognitive dissonance, the same way I can appreciate the engineering of a modern fighter jet without wanting to go to war with a foreign country.
I carry a gun on my person every time I leave the house. Not because I enjoy it. Not because it makes me feel powerful or safe or like some particular version of myself. I carry one because I’ve looked at the world as it currently exists and made a decision about what I’m willing to be prepared for.
Being prepared for something means a lot more than having a gun. I also carry pepper spray and a small but extremely bright flashlight. More importantly, I’ve put real thought into how to de-escalate a bad situation, and how to recognize when the right move is just to leave. The gun is the last resort. There’s a lot of escalation available before you get there, and I’d rather have options than be forced to skip straight to the end.
I hate that I carry a gun. I want to be clear about that. I hate that it feels necessary.
I live in an area with a lot of ultra-right wing people who are extravagantly armed. Some of them have been openly itching for a reason to shoot someone for years. The current political environment has not calmed them down. If anything, it’s handed them a permission structure. The prospect of an unhinged true believer who has decided, possibly with some official encouragement, that people like me are a legitimate target is not an abstraction where I live.
Every time I put the holster on my belt and drop the gun in it, there’s a part of me that wishes the reasoning behind doing so didn’t hold up.
I find this hard to explain to people when the subject comes up. Some of my more liberal friends look at me sideways, as if owning guns is a values inconsistency I need to account for. Some of my friends who are bigger gun enthusiasts than I am would probably say I’m pretty into guns too. I’ve spent a lot of time on research. I genuinely enjoy learning about how things work and why. I would be lying if I said otherwise. I don’t fetishize them, or make them my whole personality.
It’s a weird time to be a gun-owning liberal, and I’m still figuring it out. I respect the ICE protest in Minneapolis where someone showed up open carrying an AR-15. I understand the statement. I think it was about time the right understood that the Second Amendment applies to everyone, not just them. I also think that guy painted a massive target on himself. More importantly, I can walk through a likely chain of events pretty easily: a poorly trained ICE agent claims he felt unsafe and starts shooting, a protester returns fire, a gunfight breaks out, and suddenly every protester there gets labeled a violent extremist.
I’ve also noticed the subreddits and forums devoted to liberal gun ownership. I understand why they exist. But I think self-identifying with anything like that is a mistake. Putting a target on yourself by joining a club called “liberal gun owners” in the current environment seems like exactly the wrong move.
The cognitive dissonance people assume I must be feeling isn’t there. I don’t think guns are good or bad as objects. I think they’re tools, and like most tools, what matters is why you’re using them and whether you’re doing it responsibly.
What I do feel is the weight of taking this seriously. Owning a firearm, especially one you carry, comes with responsibilities that don’t get talked about honestly very often. Getting the appropriate licenses and permits. Understanding local laws. Carrying the right insurance. The legal reality of defensive use. The ethical questions about when force is actually justified. And training. Actual training, followed by actual practice, on a regular basis.
Nobody talks about this part honestly. Owning a gun does not protect you from anything. A gun on your hip that you don’t know how to use under stress is not a safety device. At best it’s a paperweight. At worst it’s a danger to you and every innocent person around you that rivals any threat you thought you were preparing for. If you’re going to carry, you owe it to yourself and everyone near you to be genuinely competent, not just technically armed.
These aren’t fun topics. They’re not the parts of gun ownership that get romanticized in movies or argued about on the internet.
I’m not an expert. I’m not former military or law enforcement. What I am is someone who has done a lot of reading, taken training seriously, and tried to find people who actually know things and then listen to them. I expect to keep doing that indefinitely.
I don’t have a tidy conclusion here. I’m a liberal who enjoys target shooting, thinks a lot of guns are beautifully engineered, and carries one every day because the alternative is being unprepared in a place where that’s a bad idea. Those things are all true at the same time, and I am as at peace with that knowledge as I can be.