wfn.org | Handgun: Conflicting Passions End a Love Affair

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11-September-1998 
98297 
 
    Handgun: Conflicting Passions End a Love Affair 
 
    by John Railey 
    Winston-Salem Journal 
    copyright 1998 Piedmont Publishing Company, Inc. 
    All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission 
 
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.-I gave up my handgun this week. 
 
    I gave it to High Point police, who will turn it over to a machine shop 
where workers will grind my beloved weapon into scrap metal. 
 
    For years, I was an admitted hypocrite, a supposedly pacifist Quaker 
who owned a handgun. 
 
    The only flimsy argument I could make in my defense was that I was just 
part of a sea of handgun-using Americans, many of whom have strong 
religious beliefs.  Plenty of those users are law-abiding. 
 
    But plenty aren't. 
 
    The slaying of two Capitol Police officers in our nation's capitol 
building, allegedly by a man wielding a handgun, is the latest and most 
heinous example in our long bloody wave of handgun crimes. 
 
    There are efforts to turn the tide. 
 
    Earlier this summer in Charlotte, delegates to the 210th General 
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted by a 3-1 margin to 
"intentionally work toward removing handguns and assault weapons from our 
homes and communities."  The resolution challenged my beliefs, and it could 
challenge those of millions of other Americans of all faiths. 
 
    We live in a violent land where the right to keep and bear arms has 
always held even sway with freedom of religion.  Americans love God and 
guns, especially handguns.  But if God says its wrong to kill - and 
handguns kill - how can we continue to justify these dual passions. 
 
    I'm not talking about taking away anyone's rifles or shotguns or 
infringing on anyone's hunting rights.  I'll keep my own long guns. 
 
    Sure plenty of people murder with long guns.  But handguns, with their 
easy concealment, are the weapon of choice of killers and robbers. 
 
                          The killer inside me 
 
    All that said, I understand well our nation's long love affair with 
handguns, and all other firearms.  I grew up in a lush Tidewater back 
country where guns were a constant as sure as the beating sun that 
penetrated even our lonely swamps. 
 
    We owned rifles and shotguns for hunting, and handguns for 
self-defense. 
 
    At 16, I had a cheap .22-caliber, snub-nosed revolver.  I'd set it in 
the console of my '73 Capri and cruise my small town, my long hair tied in 
a bandana, jamming to Van Halen on the radio. 
 
    I'm lucky I'm not writing these lines from a prison cell. 
 
    Not that age brought reason. 
 
    My first handgun was stolen.  But after college, I bought another one, 
a .22-caliber Ruger pistol. 
 
    I came to believe I needed the gun. 
 
    I spent my first years in newspapers covering crime.  I knew what 
violence could befall a person, and I also feared aggravating some felon on 
the loose by writing about him. 
 
    And even covering religion, I couldn't part with my pistol.  I kept it 
unloaded on a high shelf in our bedroom closet. 
 
    It was the safe way to do it, but I doubt that I would have been able 
to wake from a dead sleep and load it in the dark if an intruder broke into 
our house. 
 
    There was little practical value to the gun.  It was a security 
blanket, my umbilical cord to my country's ugly past. 
 
                         Time to end the affair 
 
    I almost didn't turn in my gun. 
 
    In fact, my first draft of this column dealt with my conflicted 
emotions on the issue.  But when I read it through and considered my 
hypocrisy, I changed my mind. 
 
    Tuesday morning, I turned in the pistol at the police department in 
High Point, where I live. 
 
    At first, I felt defenseless, even, yes, emasculated.  Later, I just 
felt free. 
 
    I'm thankful for efforts such as those of the Presbyterian Church to 
bring the gun issue home. 
 
    The efforts give us a peek at a new America, one where we could walk 
free from our past, leaving our rocky love affair with handguns behind. 

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