CARLTON FLETCHER: Two sides of the gun control argument

Handguns are made for killing.

— Lynyrd Skynyrd

As the argument over gun use and gun control in this country looms:

A man is at home with his family watching a favorite TV show when they hear a noise. The family’s pet toy poodle yips frantically in a back room, and the man’s wife looks out a window. She sees stealthy movement toward the back of the house. She alerts her husband.

“I think there’s somebody out there,” she says.

While the man walks to his truck through a garage door in the kitchen to get the pistol he keeps in his truck, there is a crash in the back of the house. The wife grabs her two children, and they too exit the house, settling on the opposite side of the two vehicles in the garage. The husband walks quietly into the living room.

After he turns off the TV and the lights in the room, he sees a figure coming down the hallway, backlit by a nightlight. The dog is still barking, but in the chaos the man remains calm. He ducks down behind the island in the adjoining dining room and waits quietly.

The figure creeps farther along down the hallway, and in the dim light the homeowner can see that the intruder is holding some form of weapon. Utilizing some of the training he’d gained while serving in the U.S. Army, the man tosses a dish in a high arc across the living room. When it hits with a crashing sound, the intruder lifts his arm and fires a weapon in the direction of the noise.

With the muzzle flash of the gun offering perfect target location, the man squeezes off a pair of shots and the intruder spins and falls where he once stood. The man hears his family scream in the garage, and he quickly sticks his head in the doorway to let them know he’s all right. He carefully walks over to where the intruder lies, kicks the gun away from his now lifeless body and quietly walks down the hallway to make sure there are no others in his home.

After a careful check, the man gives an all-clear call to his family, and they rush back into the house, gathering in a fierce group hug.

When a deputy from the sheriff’s office arrives 22 minutes later after a call from the man, he offers a gruesome — and horrifying — bit of news to the family. The man who’d broken into their home, who now lay dead on the floor of their home, was wanted in seven states. He was the chief suspect in 12 armed robberies, seven of which ended with victims being killed by the intruder.

The man offers a silent prayer, lets loose a huge sigh of relief and tells his wife, “Thank God we had a gun.”

—

A young man stalks down a neighborhood street, his demeanor giving every indication that he is angry.

“Man’s gonna suspend me from the team,” he says, half out loud. “Who’s he gonna get that can do what I do?”

The young man is walking the street when he should be at football practice. His coach has suspended him for the rest of the high school season for getting into a fight with an opposing player. Those are the kinds of things that happen in the heat of competition, but this young man had already been suspended for a game earlier in the season for the same infraction. And he’d often gotten into fights with teammates during practice and had served 10 days in-school suspension for fighting with a fellow student.

As he walked along, one of the guys he’d fought with in the past, who just happened to live in his neighborhood, drove by with some friends. The driver slowed as they pulled alongside him, and the guy from the neighborhood yelled, “Yo, superstar, how come you’re not at football practice? You gonna go and fight the coach and principal next?”

The boy stopped where he stood and stared after the vehicle. He fumed as the crew in the car drove off, their laughter trailing after them.

The young man cursed wildly, causing a woman in an adjacent home to bring her young daughter hurriedly indoors. He fumed, and instead of walking home, where he’d been headed, he walked on to a combination restaurant/bar where it was known in the neighborhood that you could purchase just about anything you wanted, legal or illegal.

He went inside and was immediately accosted by a shady character.

“What’s up, little man, you look angry?” the young man was asked. He mumbled a reply, then told the older man what had happened.

“Looks like you need a little something to take care of business,” the man said.

He motioned with his head, and after a moment’s hesitation, the young man followed him outside.

“How much money you got on you?” the man said. The young man opened his wallet and found $62 in mixed bills.

“Tell you what,” the older man said. “I’ll ‘rent’ you this for that $62, and you can bring it back to me when your business is done.”

“This” turned out to be a well-used .38 Special, its serial number unreadable. The young man held it in his hand awkwardly, having never seen a gun up close before. The older man laughed.

“Boy, you know what you’re doing?” he chided. “You got to know how to use that thing if you’re gonna take care of your business.”

The young man walked off, the weight of the gun heavy in the pocket of his hoodie. His anger had subsided somewhat, the presence of the weapon heavy on his mind. He was thinking about the turn he’d taken when the same car came down the street. Again, the driver slowed down, and again the guy from the neighborhood took a verbal shot at him.

“Hey, how many touchdowns you gonna score this week from your seat up in the stands? he yelled, and his companions all laughed.

The young man’s actions were almost involuntary. He took three steps toward the car, reached into his pocket, pulled out the gun and just started pulling the trigger. Before the frightened driver sped away, one of his companions was dead and another had been hit by a stray bullet and was in intensive care at the hospital.

The young man was picked up by police 30 minutes later, the gun still in his hand. He’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Two very different situations, similar in that easy access to weapons — legal and illegal — were contributing factors to eventual outcomes. Despite calls to “get rid of all guns” and “make all weapons legal,” our impotent Congress should be looking for ways to control access to weapons that can, in an instant, save a life or needlessly take one.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ABH_Fletcher.