10/22/2010

"I was anti-gun, until I got stalked"

This very interesting article by Jennifer Willis is at Salon.com.

"You need to arm yourself."

I blinked at the Portland police officer in my living room. This uniformed bear of a man -- packing a gun, a nightstick, a radio and who knew what else -- was responding to an ongoing stalker problem that had started several months earlier. I'd received letters, a phone call, a few packages and several e-mails from this unbalanced stranger who'd read a few newspaper stories I'd written and taken a shine to me. When the latest letter arrived -- mentioning my boyfriend, Mike, thoughts on religion, and a trip I'd taken but hadn't told anyone about -- I was seriously alarmed.

But get a gun? Surely, I'd misheard him.

"Getting a concealed carry permit isn't hard," the officer continued. "And they make ladies' purses with concealed weapons compartments."

In that moment, I understood the phrase, "blood turning to ice." I'm afraid of guns. When you get right down to it, I abhor them. I used to date a guy who owned a handgun and regularly trekked into the woods with his friends to shoot. I made him move the small gun safe from beneath the bed to another room before I'd agree to stay overnight. . . .

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2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

The presence of anti-gun statements in places where anti-criminal statements should be always crack me up. How can a rationale person maintain such a hatred of hardware? "I had always abhored knives and forks until one day when I was confronted by a steak, medium rare, with a baked potato."

10/22/2010 7:25 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

The old saying - "All it takes is one mugging to turn a liberal into a conservative" comes to mind.

10/26/2010 11:00 AM  

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