As the student-led movement to establish reasonable gun control laws intensifies, Betty and I have every reason to be sympathetic to and supportive of their efforts. The unfortunate fact is that we both have been profoundly affected by gun violence, or at least I, speaking for myself can attest to this. There is not a day that goes by without my thinking, one way or another, about my sister’s self-inflicted gunshot using my father’s pistol which had sat in his bedside table. That was 55 years ago come July, and that’s a long time to have a recurrent multifaceted tragic life event surface in many different forms, all negative connotations.

The gun had been there for years, unfired to my knowledge except maybe once back in the 1940’s when Joe Louis defeated Billy Conn for the heavy weight title, daddy may have gone outside to fire it into the dark evening sky, confirming how hungry we black folks were for anything that enhanced our racial self-esteem. We kids knew about it and the several bullets that were also always in the table. I flirted with disaster once when as maybe an 11 or 12 year old took my friends upstairs to show off the gun. Of course picked it up, and I don’t think I let anyone else to do so, but whether I did or not, I was obviously on a slippery slope to disaster if at some point, some immature kind of judgment intervened. I have no idea what Chester or Sarah experienced with that gun’s lethal presence in the house, especially close to her bedroom one door away from his room. It’s hard for me to think that Chester didn’t do some examination of that weapon, probably I’d think pushing the envelope further than I did.

I’d guess that the gun was there for the reason most people give for keeping them around, for protection. Mother was sensitive to the presence and presumed dangers from “prowlers”, creatures who lurked around people’s yards at night. When I was very little, it was the war years and the ending of the depression, so as I recall there actually were derelict/homeless folks around. I don’t remember though daddy’s ever hauling out the pistol when mother would send out the alert that a prowler was about. I remember once we came home, all of us from some activity and it was felt that the house had been broken into, but on that occasion, Chester snatched the sword from the mantle and brandished that while the inspection of the house began. All of these are kind of haunting, hazy memories for me, which of course might be more rigidly defined in my mind if anything had happened other than the unconfirmed threats. The point is, I don’t remember daddy’s turning to the gun even in these incidents….the upshot is, that as far as I know, the gun idled in its potential lethality, for at least 2 decades (in 501, I don’t know about the Frances street house) before my sister turned it on herself, so easy to operate that she, who was definitely mechanically challenged, could figure out how to fire it.

I guess I have always had “reasonable” views about guns, like Sarah using her own free will picked up the weapon and shot herself with it, the gun didn’t jump into her hands and pull its own trigger. I have no doubt though that if the gun hadn’t been there, she likely could not have killed herself, but then again, I don’t know, because it was clear from her notes that it was not impulsive. One factor in my thinking is that we grew up with guns, bb guns, pellet pistols, and target shooting at boy scout camps And like any other challenge, it was fun to shoot. I got another chance to shoot a serious weapon in some context or another in the army, I don’t remember the context, to fire a recoil-less rifle, which weighed a ton and was incredibly unwieldy. I was to aim it an a burned out tank maybe 100 yards away, and fortunately a drill instructor was there to hold up the front end or I might have fired it straight into the ground. I ended up missing the tank by yards.

I am reminded that all of these years I have kept a bb gun that I got when I was maybe 12, and I even lent it to Leonard Brown for him to years ago to shoot at woodpeckers marring his house siding. They ignored the bb’s (which have been loaded In the gun for now 60 plus years; there’s no getting away from the fact that I have secretly valued having this gun. When cleaning out 501, I looked hard for a pellet pistol too which we had along with a target, which we fired at in the basement. This pistol looked like a serious weapon but had disappeared at some point.

I don’t remember anything about my neighborhood friends (white boys) had real weapons. They must have had bb guns, but I don’t remember anyone talking about even 22’s, which were popular in that era. I don’t remember anyone hunting, or anyone’s father having a protective pistol. That lack of any memory of such doesn’t compute for me but that’s what it is.

We plan to attend the march 24^th for gun control (actually we’ll have to see how that is defined) and we learned last night that David and Maura are going to the DC demonstration. That will be a first for me, I have ignored all of the Internet solicitations about gun control because it has seemed futile since high-powered weaponry is so out of control, but now seems like a pretty serious effort is underway.

Another memory: grandpapa for many years had a shotgun which was stored in the rafters of the garage, but it had disappeared by the 90’s when I was cleaning out the house. There was other hunting equipment there too, like a hunting vest. There was a story that daddy had gone hunting but had only shot an owl, but whether that was true or not I don’t know. I should coda the story of daddy’s pistol; as far as I know, the police confiscated it after her suicide.

Another gun-relevant note: I rescued grandparents’ now ancient record player (his master’s voice) from the house at 501 and it has sat in the garage now for 25 plus years, waiting for some decision on it. I really wished we had space for it somewhere. Anyway though, inside its front grillwork (for lack of a better word) there was always a bullet pushed into it that was there even at 501—who pushed it in there? I don’t think that I did, but it seems like maybe I could have, but why?

There’s just no escaping the fact that if there hadn’t been an unused gun in our house, it’s likely Sarah would be alive today, and there’s no doubt to me about the impact all those years with her would have had on my life and especially personality, and inner sense of self. Maybe it’s long, long overdue to get going on the anti gun, anti-violence movement.

In closing, my question is “how many guns are out there sitting unattended in bedroom drawers, awaiting use as protectors Of the household, but in fact, more likely to be, intentionally or accidentally, a source of tragedy and grief in the household?”

Typing While Black welcomes this guest blogger.