Riveting piece for the
NYT tonight by a novelist who deeply loved guns--until he accidentally shot and killed a friend.
The gun lobby likes to say guns don’t kill people, people do. And
they’re right, of course. I killed my friend; no one else did; no
mechanism did. But this oversimplifies matters (as does the gun control
advocates’ position that eliminating weapons will end violent crime).
My friend was killed by a man who misunderstood guns, who imagined that
comfort with — and affection for — guns was a vital component of
manhood. I did not recognize a gun for what it was: a machine
constructed for a purpose, one in which I had no real interest. I
treated a tool as an essential part of my identity, and the result is a
dead man and a grieving family and a survivor numbed by guilt whose
story lacks anything resembling a proper ending.
No comments:
Post a Comment