A Saner Perspective

Commercial Appeal appeal columnist Wendi C. Thomas went out and confronted her fear of guns.
She writes about the experience and it's a pretty good column. She loses points for hyping the melodrama and overplaying a little, as well as all those one-sentence paragraphs. I assume its meant to convey nervousness and quick passage of time, but a whole column of it is tiring to read.

There's one passage that reads a bit off:

He talks for hours. He preaches on about gun safety, gives us a primer on ammunition, and shows us several guns.

"Preach" is a slightly loaded word in any charged context, so I'm a bit leery of its use here. But without any quoted stuff, it's hard to know how accurate it is.

But then she honestly admits:

It's then that I remember what Roy stressed in class: Once you pull the trigger and the bullet leaves the gun, you can't take it back.

And that's when I know I could never own a gun.

I'm not against the right to bear arms.

But for me, having a gun says something.

It says I don't completely trust God to protect me.

And I do.

It says that I'm prepared to use it, maybe kill someone.

And I'm not.

This is smart. If you know you cannot shoot to kill, never, ever pull a gun on someone, much less point it at them. If you are unwilling to pull the trigger lethally, then you will be killed. Thomas is savvy to understand this and accept her limits.

On the other hand, we now know she's defenseless, unless she knows martials arts or employs some other means of self-defense. Not a wise thing to say to 150,000 or so strangers.

Still and all, pretty honest and balanced writing about a politically tinged personal experience. AlphaPatriot has some thoughts on this column as well. He reaches a similar conclusion.