What If David Had Owned a Glock?

When I was young I was like many other kids. I had a big mouth that got me into a lot of trouble. I was about seven years old when I found myself being beaten to a pulp, on a daily basis, by the older brother of a classmate that I had run afoul of. He waited for me, just outside the schoolyard, like some horrible, pasty crew-cut vulture. My legs were a little too short for flight to be an effective strategy against an 11 year old and, no matter how valiant the effort, fight wasn't working too well, either.

I decided to implement Plan C. As he walked home alone one afternoon, I ran up behind him, hit him solidly in the middle of the back and drove him nose first into the concrete sidewalk. Then I ran like hell.

His mother dragged his battered face to our house, demanding that I be disciplined. When she saw the size of the kid he had been beating up (and who had broken his nose) she smacked him sharply alongside the head and marched him home where, I think, she smacked him some more. My father, an ex-soldier, thought that my tactics were appropriate to the situation, and I was not disciplined. I never had any problems with that kid again.

The kid that was beating me was a predator, and I was prey. As I stood on the sidewalk that sunny afternoon, I had a tough decision to make. My mind was filled with doubt, and fear. What if I didn't take him out on the first try? What if all I did was succeed in making him mad? How bad was the beating going to be then? In the final analysis, emotion over-ruled logic, and I took action. In retrospect, it was a lucky, but ill-considered, decision that turned out much better, for me, than I had any right to expect.

Thinking back on that day makes me contemplate our culture of violence, and the role of guns.

The kind of violence that I have described has been going on for time immemorial. It isn't going away. There will always be predators, and there will always be prey. The prey will always have to decide whether they are going to continue to take the abuse, or whether they are going to cowboy up and do something about it. I must sadly admit that my decision, all those years ago, would have been much easier if I had had a weapon-any weapon-handy. A weapon that would have allowed me to deal with him without any potential for him to retaliate would have been better. One that struck fear into his heart, and made him feel the way I did would have been best. In short, I was faced with the same dilemma that David faced when he stood across the field from Goliath. David, you will recall, was carrying the Glock of that era, a slingshot. I can't be totally sure, but I believe that, if it had been an option, I would have chosen the certainty of a weapon over the uncertainty of my "hit and run" attack.

I mean, that's the way armies fight, right? Why engage a man with a knife when you can shoot him with a rifle? Why use a rifle from a hundred yards when you can lob a shell 7 or 8 miles? Why lob a shell, when you can launch a cruise missile from 1000 miles away?

The difference is that we hope that an army, unlike the 7 year old on the sidewalk, will employ its weapons with a cold and calculating logic, attempting to achieve a predetermined military objective, and not because it is scared.

The culture of violence is nothing new. What has changed, dramatically, over the past few decades, is the access that scared kids have to deadly weapons. Fists and feet have been replaced by knives and guns.

And we, as adults, seem unprepared to do anything about it.

As adults, many decry the idea of increased gun control. The debate about gun ownership has been going on, with heated rhetoric from both sides, for many years, and I'm not going to weigh in on that issue. But where is the heated debate about the responsibility of a gun owner to safeguard their firearms, and stop them from getting into the hands of children?

Gun safes and trigger locks make it hard to steal guns, or use them in the event that they are stolen. Does the right of a responsible adult to keep a loaded gun in his or her bedside table trump their responsibility to society-to children-to stop that same gun from ending up in the hands of a scared child?

Does it seem right that we, as a society, have more laws to prevent children (or anyone else, for that matter) from getting their hands on pesticides than firearms, and stiffer penalties for failing to do so?

I'll confess that I never once contemplated poisoning my nemesis with DDT. But, if I'd had a gun?