An Evolving View on Gun Ownership from a Liberal Perspective
I'm not what you would call a party-line Democrat. I mean I'm registered to vote as one, but the party doesn't fit me very well. It's too right-leaning to really satisfy me. Over the past several years (about 15 if I'm really being honest), my views have changed significantly. I no longer see things in the same black and white manner that I did in my youth.
When I joined the Army, I was conservative. Not because I knew what I was talking about, but because I was 18, and my mom was. When you’re young, your parents’ political views are essentially yours. My mom embodied GOP views of the pre-Reagan administrations, and I fell into those same ideas fairly easily, especially since I had heard so few dissenting viewpoints. There wasn't much political discussion in our house after-all, because we largely agreed. Though we would debate topics like abortion, the internet was still in its nascent phases, so what we were debating was opinions only, and neither of us took offense.
Once I joined the Army, I gained a broader perspective. I went to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and saw the greatest suffering I had known up unto that point. Mass graves, buildings riddled with bullet holes, gunfire erupting at election protests... It occurred to me that I didn't actually know much about anything more than the street I grew up on.
Upon return to Fort Polk, I reenlisted, and was transferred to a new base. While there, a plane flew into some buildings in NY, and we almost immediately went overseas. There, I saw real suffering. Over multiple tours, I saw people starving, I was shot at, our base was hit with rockets and mortars, grenades were thrown in our trucks, etc. Essentially, there all sorts of enemy combatant shenanigans to keep us busy. But we also handed out shoes to children. We handed out basic ingredients for cooking to starving families (flour and shelf-stable products, mostly), and we went to the villages and sat with elders. I shook hands with people missing limbs from the aftermath of mines leftover from the Russian occupation, and I held people bleeding all over the dirt. By the time I had done three tours with 36 collective total months in Afghanistan, I was staunchly anti-war.
Then, I was transferred to the desert of Fort Irwin for a few years, spending weeks in the field at a time to work with units preparing for deployment. Finally, I was sent to Korea and was there when they sank the Cheonan, and shelled the South Korean artillery base.
I was traumatized. I had nightmares. Essentially, if I wasn't overseas and there wasn’t a conflict, I was training someone to go overseas for a conflict.
When I was finally out, I swung politically and emotionally as far left as I could in a reaction to the things I had seen. I was at war with myself, forced to reconcile things I had done and seen with what I thought was right. Liberal views on society needed to mesh with authoritarian views that had grown in me from experience as a
leader in the Army. That wasn’t possible without denying the fact that I had changed enough to make those views irreconcilable. I looked at news of mass shootings (which were nowhere on the level they are now), and became vehemently anti-gun. I had seen first-hand what they could do to people, and then witnessed the aftermath of violence.
My views were so anti-gun and so reinforced by my PTSD that the first time I went to the range as a civilian with a friend I broke down in tears. Everything I had seen came flooding back to me after I was done sending rounds down-range. Everything that I was suppressing and holding back rushed out, and I became convinced that I was right about needing to stay as far away from guns as I could. Over time, I worked on my PTSD, and through therapy worked out my aggression and internal conflicts, but it wasn't until there was a literal triple-homicide on our street that I felt the need to once again have access to a gun. I felt the need for my wife to as well.
Though the two are not related, this homicide coincided with the BLM protests and the death of George Floyd. There was a growing sense of unease, even here in liberal Southern California. My wife and I became gun owners. Now, as I watch, the country slides ever closer to internal conflict. The events of January 6th, the lack of prosecution by the appropriate courts, the widening political gaps between the two dominant political parties, and the "MAGA-nization" of the most credulous of us have me convinced that further violence is coming. Not in the form of a civil-war, but more I the form of escalating domestic terrorism.
I hope I'm wrong, but I'm building a rifle just in case. And I'm buying my wife a shotgun. I'm not doing these things because I'm afraid of the government taking our rights, and you won’t hear me screaming about not living in a “free state,” but because I see the rise of the Christian Right. Now, when the Orange Cheeto runs for office a third time, he talks of internment camps, mass deportation, and urges his followers to take violent action against those who disagree with him. He talks about being dictator for a day, and wanting to suppress the media.
I see the cult of personality that has grown around this man, and I know that his reelection would be a disaster for freedom in this country. Christian Nationalists are waiting to enact Project 2025, stripping the government of its power and dismantling it from within. I see GOP governors and officials taking away people’s right to choose in the name of “freedom" (which, to them, means the freedom to impose laws that suppress women in accordance with their bible). I see women whose personal health information is shared across state lines to see if they had an abortion elsewhere so they can be prosecuted, and I see doctors in Texas facing a $10,000 fine for terminating a pregnancy, regardless of the reason. I saw footage of literally self-described Nazi's at the GOP convention who were not turned away.
This is Margaret Atwood’s worst dream come true.
I see all of this and I am reminded of a fascist in 1931 who swayed a nation. I am reminded of a hardline religious minority who took over a middle-eastern country and installed Ayatollah Khomeini in place of the largely pro-Western government the year I was born. In both of those cases, violent change happened because regular citizens thought they were insulated by laws, and neighbors, and rules. We now believe that the bulwark of governmental rules, regulations, and laws that promise free and fair elections will insulate them from the possibility of an authoritarian regime.
They won’t though. We’ve already seen them come close to toppling that wall.
Trump's most ardent supporters believe he is the second coming of Christ, and that the election was stolen. Some believe that Obama is really running the government and telling President Biden what to do. These people came to the capital armed to "take the government back" from people who think like me, and many seem perfectly fine with Trump being a dictator so long as they're on the right side of his politics.
Laws don't protect us from that sort of crazy, and those people are armed. It's easy to think that California is a long way from Washington, but there are Trump flags in my neighborhood. I don't believe we're safe, and I don't see the situation getting better. It’s bigger than Trump, though he emboldens the worst of us. When he passe (and he will, eventually), another far right person will take Trump's place, and their ideas again will spread like poison from the darker corners of the internet. Their hate will be taught to our children if we’re not vigilant, and it will happen because we fail to teach them to appreciate the horror of what has already happened.
Because we don’t teach the horrors of the past, we fail to prepare our children for what could come.
So, I build a rifle. Not because the government is coming for us, but because the citizens are. And, if I now have to wonder about my neighbors, then we will be armed, too.
I’m no longer anti-violence, I’m anti-fascist.