People Guns Don't Kill

I’ve grooved into the routine lately of having supper every Sunday with my grandmother. The conversations often waft into musings of yesteryear when I’m delighted to hear about people and places only preserved in black and white photos or her bemused memories. There is one character in our family’s history, though, that almost always softens her voice and eyes. Someone that has often hushed tones of conversations and provoked a momentary silence.

There are few blurry silent movements on the DVD of pre-camcorder family movies. There is a yellow haired lad at the altar’s podium in my parents’ wedding album. And there is my father’s anecdote about the excited boy peering into the car window wishing luck as he and my mother left my grandparents’ driveway late one summer evening in 1975 to meet me. But that’s all I really know of Lee Michael.

Except every once in a while Worcester Magazine does a retrospect of its history and first issue. That’s when the details we don’t really talk about might get hinted at. But still not enough to understand why he isn’t part of Brennan Christmas or St. Patrick’s Day. Or why I never knew the man he would never become. Because Lee Michael was shot by a neighbor in 1976.

I was thinking of this story today as I read a piece in another Worcester newspaper. It isn’t the same story because my cousin was white. But… it is the same story when I think about how a family grieves and speaks in hushed tones because the loss is so unfathomable and sad.

The Trayvon Martin story has raised up the issue of race, one that I think about and contemplate a lot of the time. But it also makes me contemplate the issue of guns. Especially because right now our state, fronted by a senator I respect greatly, is presenting a law confirming the rights to defend oneself in one’s home. I don’t deny there is some logic to that. I acknowledge it, but I don’t agree with it.

I’ve heard so many times that people argue guns don’t kill people. People kill people. I suppose in a philosophical way, that is true. But isn’t the vehement defense of the 2nd amendment and this proposed bill all about putting guns in the hands of people? People who want to protect themselves… supposedly. But sometimes defense of one’s property ends up in the death of a 15 year old boy.

I could list a million more reasons why I don’t think gun ownership is a right that needs such angry validation. I don’t believe in taking that right away… but I just wish more people would be aware of the human beings they say guns don't kill. Human beings who die from having a bullet tear through their flesh. And their families, who grow silent and feel the ghost of that enduring sadness in the air 36 years later.