On a cold, clear January evening in 2014, I came face-to-muzzle with a semiautomatic pistol. I was living in an apartment complex in East Memphis at the time — a location I had chosen for both convenience (I worked nearby) and, ironically, safety. Returning from the gym around 8 p.m., I was walking from the parking lot to my unit’s exterior door. The midwinter sky was dark, but the streetlights and porch lights were illuminated. As I walked the small path along the side of my building, I sensed another person behind me. I didn’t think much of it; neighbors and their visitors came and went in a constant loop.
photograph by bodgan kupriets / unsplash
I turned the corner and, arriving at my door, paused to retrieve my keys. When I looked up, a matte black and shiny silver pistol was pointed at my head. The person I had sensed on the path behind me was now immediately before me, with a black mask covering the lower half of his face. He wasn’t a large man — about my height, 5’7” — but so what? He had a gun. He never said a word, just gestured with the gun at my purse, which I mutely handed over. Job done, he ran back the way he’d come, and I tremblingly entered the apartment. (Less than a month later, I moved out. Hard to feel comfortable walking through that door again.)
The police eventually located and arrested him (it turned out later that he had robbed at least one other woman in the same apartment complex), although they never managed to try him for the case involving me. He didn’t show up for court, so they issued a new warrant, set a new court date, for which he also didn’t show.
At the time, I told myself that the semiautomatic he pointed at my head was more bargaining tool than anything. I wanted to believe that this exchange was purely transactional — sort of a rock-paper-scissors agreement. Paper covers rock; gun takes purse.
After I was robbed seven years ago, an alarming number of acquaintances asked me if I planned to acquire a gun of my own. My answer was and remains no. Another gun won’t solve anything, and had I been carrying a gun that night, I feel certain my chances of being killed would have risen exponentially.
But a couple of years ago, I googled the name of this man, as I was in the habit of doing periodically, after it became clear that he was not ever going to be tried for the aggravated robbery against me, or for the other aggravated robbery against my neighbor. I was astonished to discover that he had been arrested and imprisoned, at long last — though not for anything having to do with robbery. No, he had shot and killed his girlfriend in the home they shared. The mug shot I remembered seeing online, attached to aggravated-robbery charges, was now being published by local TV news stations in articles about his murder charge, subsequent arrest, and sentencing. The person I tried to believe was using a gun simply for bargaining had used a gun — perhaps the same one — to end a life. That’s the thing about guns: They have a habit of going off. Or getting stolen. Or being borrowed by a child.
On September 30 in Memphis, a child shot another child at their elementary school. The two had gotten into a fight, as kids sometimes do. This particular fight ended when one 13-year-old put a bullet in the abdomen of the other 13-year-old. The victim lived, and is expected to recover physically, but how will either child recover mentally, emotionally?
A week before, on September 23, a recently fired Kroger contractor entered the Collierville Kroger store, armed. He shot 14 customers and employees, killing one, before committing suicide. One store employee told news crews, “We thought it was balloons popping.” Only when the popping continued did the reality coalesce. The larger scene is horrifying, but details like this one — that there was a moment when people still thought they were hearing something so innocent as balloons — will break your heart.
Just over a week later, in the early-morning hours of October 2, a Rhodes College student was killed and his girlfriend wounded by a gun during a home invasion. One suspect has since been arrested; initial reports stated that multiple armed individuals had entered the house.
Ten days later, at a U.S. Postal Service annex facility in Orange Mound, an employee fatally shot two fellow postal workers before killing himself. Relatives of the shooter mentioned that the man had been bullied at work.
Our society is incredibly, wildly armed. In a widely quoted but no less staggering statistic, America’s guns outnumber American people. Yet instead of embracing sensible gun-control laws, Tennesseans are now welcome to tote guns pretty much at will. Without first passing a background check or completing training, as of this April, those 21 and up in our state, provided they are without certain criminal convictions and mental-health diagnoses, can carry guns openly or concealed, long guns excepted.
After I was robbed seven years ago, an alarming number of acquaintances asked me if I planned to acquire a gun of my own. My answer was and remains no. Another gun won’t solve anything, and had I been carrying a gun that night, I feel certain my chances of being killed would have risen exponentially. Guns aren’t bargaining chips, and they aren’t symbols of patriotism. They’re designed for one purpose — killing — and they do it very well. I hope you never find yourself staring down the barrel of a semiautomatic. But if you ever have just that sort of supremely unlucky day, I bet you’ll wish there were one fewer gun in our city, not one more.
