PARTING SHOT WHY I DON’T OWN A GUN – YET

It is one of the first fine days of spring, I am in the back yard, clipping some shrubs or poking around in a flower bed, when a fragment of color catches the corner of my eye. Half hidden by the pear tree that overhangs our patio, I stand up to see a man of perhaps 25 enter the garage. He does not see me. By the time I reach the garage, he has already passed through the screen door that leads to our kitchen. Music hums from the living room; my wife will not hear the intruder. I do not know whether he is armed, but I am. Taking the loaded pistol from the shelf above the dryer, I follow him into the kitchen.

I’m not exactly sure what happens next. In one version of this fantasy, the man is unarmed, so we hold him for the police. In another, however, he is carrying a small handgun. He hears me behind him, turns, and my bullet takes him just below the collarbone. He makes a liquid sound like someone clearing his throat, as if he’s starting to explain something, then falls to the floor. Of course there is another possible ending, but I don’t dwell on it.

Before you accuse me of sitting through too many Clint Eastwood film festivals, let me say that as of this writing, I don’t own a gun. And I’m wondering why I don’t. Many’s the day I’ve stopped my work in the yard and stood there pondering, asking myself just what I would do if the scenario above came to pass. Right now, I guess the answer is that I would hope the guy isn’t armed-and further hope that if he is, he’ll have no philosophical objection to leaving a couple of witnesses alive.

But that’s a passive answer to the problem, putting my family’s safety in the hands of someone I don’t know. That’s not satisfactory. Why not get a gun and put the decision in my own hands? Why don’t I own a gun?

1. It’s not because I’m a pacifist. I’m not. People who break into houses or rob people at gunpoint deserve no sympathy if they’re met with violence in return.

2. It’s not because I support gun control. I do, but there is no contradiction between self-defense and reasonable gun control. Only the most paranoid and intellectually dishonest elements of the gun lobby try to scare citizens into thinking that gun control will leave them disarmed and unable to protect themselves. A registered gun, purchased after a speedy background check scarcely more intrusive than we endure when applying for a credit card, will still stop a burglar.

3. It’s not because I didn’t “grow up with guns, as one gun lover guessed in a particularly slimy piece of hate mail a few years back. (He then went on to express his fervent hope that I had a daughter, and that one day she would be raped by “greasy bikers” while I, armed only with liberal clichés, would be helpless to intervene. ) The truth is I didn’t grow up with guns, but I think I could master the complex intellectual challenges of loading and firing one.

4. It’s not because I don’t believe the crime problem is bad and getting worse. I didn’t need to read the stories in D’s “Crime and Fear” issue this month to know that we’re in a crime wave-in fact, “crime wave” is a misnomer, implying a temporary upsurge in lawbreaking, some weird anomaly that will fade away like an April snowfall. The crime situation today, many authorities say, is more like a permanent monsoon or earthquake.

Intellectually I accept the statistical truth: We live in a society crazed by crime. But here, I think, is one of the reasons I don’t yet own a gun. I’ve never (knock on wood) been the victim of any crime, large or small. Never been mugged, burglarized, vandalized, fired at. Never even had a car stolen or stripped of its radio. Neither has my wife, who lived by herself, unarmed, before we married and never suffered any of the terrors many single women report.

Sometimes we feel awkward (and a bit superstitious) about admitting that we’ve never experienced this central fect of modern America. Like naive foreigners, we know the words but not the tune. Of course we know crime is out there. We’ve had two burglaries on our street this year. We got an alarm system a few months back, with motion detectors and electronic ears to listen for the sound of breaking glass. Around Christmas an elderly neighbor called to say she’d seen a mysterious man creeping into our back yard (the gate was open, but we never saw him). And I was shocked to learn that Danny Rodriguez, the son of the remarkable youth worker Cookie Rodriguez, was shot and killed just a block from our house.

So it can happen, I know. Why not be prepared for the inevitable?

For one thing, maybe it isn’t inevitable. Maybe we’ll keep our lucky streak going and defy the odds. Without the impetus of violence, I just can’t see taking on the Israeli mentality, a life of eternal, armed vigilance. Anyway, being armed at home might not be enough. I’m more worried when driving to work through some of the inner-city drug fiefdoms. Stopping at red lights, I wonder who might walk up to my window in search of fast money. A gun at home will do me no good there.

Granted, my way to work leads through some “bad” areas near downtown. But tonight we’re going to dinner in a “good” area, a nice little place on Lovers Lane-just a few blocks from the Inwood Road tavern where patrons last year suffered a vicious attack by robbers who left one man dead and another wounded (page 54). No doubt many of these people, drinking beer and singing along with the pianist, had suns to protect them at home. They didn’t know the battle lines were about to be redrawn.

That’s why I haven’t yet crossed this Rubicon and taken up the gun. Once I begin reshaping my life to fit the ugly contours of our new reality, where do I stop? Why not just take the expressways to work, avoiding those inner-city streets? No more clubs or restaurants late at night. Even writing this column, one friend warned, could alert “them” to my unarmed state.

Where does this kind of thinking lead in a world where it hardly makes sense to talk about “good” and “bad” areas anymore? Is a gun at home-and one in the car-and one in your coat, for crowds-enough to keep you safe from “them”? How does it change you, being ready to fire at something, someone in the dark? What price will we pay for our safety?