Packing a Pistol – away

Amid all the noise about handguns to automatic weapons, who should or shouldn’t own them and how they should be acquired, no one is asking the key question.

Can you kill someone, up close and personal?

That’s not an easy question to answer.

Years ago, I purchased a handgun. It was a Smith & Wesson Magnum .357 with a barely two-inch barrel. It was made for close-up work – messy and lots of noise. I bought that particular model at the suggestion of a man who taught the police how to shoot.

The man said a bullet from that gun would put someone down. Nothing funny or glamorous about it. When I was at the range with him one afternoon, he pulled my ear protection off for a moment and had a chat with me.

“You buy a speed loader for that thing,” he said. “If it’s 3 a.m. and there’s someone you don’t know in your living room, you fire and keep on firing. When it clicks empty, you load up again and keep firing. Don’t take any chances on someone firing back. Ever.”

The next piece of advice came from a man who had spent two decades with the Michigan State Police, part of that time as an undercover narcotics agent. After his police work he got a job where I worked at the time. I used to cover the police beat as a journalist, he used to be the police, so we came to know each other pretty well.

We met at the range once. Contrary to what I was expecting, he was not a very good shot. I mean, he could hit the bull’s-eye and all, but he couldn’t send bullets booming one after another through one hole in the target, which was about 40 feet away.

After our session, standing in front of his car, he told me that other than undercover work, he hadn’t pulled his gun for years. He was proud of that fact because it meant he found other ways around whatever situation he was in.

“Only unholster your weapon if you’re going to kill someone. Not wing them, not scare them. There is no other reason to have your weapon in your hand. Make up your mind to that. If you cannot kill someone, then you have no business having a gun,” he said.

That prompted a lot of soul searching on my part.

I kept the gun unloaded in my nightstand, but with the speed loader right next to it. At the time I had no children in the house. My son was in the U.S. Army and playing with much bigger weapons.

Years passed. One day, my wife weighed in. Out of nowhere, she came to me and said having a gun in the house made her nervous and she would appreciate it if I got rid of it. My wife comes first. The gun was gone the same day.

I didn’t sell it because I didn’t want the police coming back to me in case it was used in a crime. I took it to the police department and surrendered it. A sergeant tagged it for an incinerator in Lansing and gave me a receipt.

As for the question of whether I could kill someone if, say, a shooter was threatening my wife, the answer is yes, I could. I learned that about myself.

Don’t let these yahoos who scream about gun rights distract you. Think about whether you have it in you to take a life before you go to the gun store and heft that nicely machined weapon in your hand. If you buy one, know in your heart that you can use it. If you don’t know that, put it down on  the counter and walk away.