Under no pretext. . .
A new pastime and my complex relationship with guns
I have a complicated relationship with guns. I have been both fascinated by them and utterly repulsed by how some awful people misuse them. The Sunday before last I attended a range day of the local chapter of a politically left-leaning gun club, and four days before that I lost a high school friend to a senseless and random act of gun violence. As I said, my feelings about guns are complex.
Let me first talk about my friend’s death.
Brian Cason Pence, who I had always known by his middle name, was killed the night before Thanksgiving while lying asleep in his bed. Three young men aged 17, 18, and 19 drove up to his house in a quiet and affluent neighborhood in North Richland Hills, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth, and riddled it with handgun fire. They then drove off. Cason was hit multiple times. Neighbors called 911, and he was quickly taken to the closest trauma center in Fort Worth, where he died of his injuries. Cason was 52. His wife was in another part of the house and was uninjured. I can only imagine her shock and horror that night. That poor woman. And poor Cason. Cason’s killers were having what the local authorities were calling a “juvenile feud” with someone that I assume lived in Cason’s neighborhood, and fired at the wrong house. None of the killers were from North Richland Hills. They drove in from Fort Worth to do their idiotic and deadly errand. The news has not reported on what their motives were. Were they just trying to scare someone? Did they even mean to kill anyone, much less my friend? Who knows? And who cares? My friend is now dead. My only hope is that he did not suffer.
One of my favorite contemporary crime fiction writers is Tana French and she has a quotation that has stuck with me in the years since I first read her book Broken Harbor:
"Out here in the real world, my man, you would be amazed how seldom murder has to break into people’s lives. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it gets there because they open the door and invite it in.”
Cason is not the first person that I’ve known to be murdered with a gun. But he was the first one that I knew who was not involved in the drug trade or with a gang. Please know that I am not saying that those folks’ deaths were not tragic as well. But Cason was part of that 1% of the truly innocent, those who do not open the door and invite murder in, but before the police apprehended his killers rumors flew about why he was gunned down. Even by people who knew him very well—people who should have known better, honestly. But murder is so disruptive to the harmony of daily living that people cannot help but try to find a reason for it, even if there is none. Saturday was his funeral. Rest in peace, friend.
Let me tell you a little bit about Cason before we move on. He was wickedly smart. He was a drum major in our high school band—he cut a dashing figure in that uniform, just like he did his Marine Corps dress uniform. He had been a Russian translator in said Marine Corps and worked in IT after his service. He was hilarious and possessed a dark, but not cynical sense of humor. And he was kind. He adored hockey. Ninety percent of his Facebook posts were pictures of him at Dallas Stars games. The other ten percent were pictures of his family. He had an adult son. He was a cat dad. He was very handsome and he had a beautiful head of hair—I went to his barber while I was staying in Texas in 2021 because I admired his hairstyle so much. A couple of years ago he made me an open invitation to stay with him in his guest bedroom when I was in town. An invitation that I never got to accept. The world is darker without Cason. People hate social media and Facebook in particular, but without it, I would not have gotten to stay in touch with him over the years. He will be missed.
Last Sunday I had lunch with a very close friend of Cason’s where we shared memories and sorrow about his passing. It was nice to be able to talk about Cason with someone that loved him dearly. Afterward, I headed into the suburbs to go to the range day to meet some hopefully nice folks and to learn how to fire a gun again. Thanksgiving week had blisteringly cold temperatures and my trip to the gun range took almost three hours by public transit. One-and-a-half of those three hours were spent waiting for a 4:30 bus that never came. I caught the 5:30 bus and got dropped off a little more than a mile away from the gun range. Unfortunately, because I was in a quasi-industrial section of a suburb without streetlights, I had to trudge in the dark for most of the journey. Say what you will about the city of Chicago; we do have sidewalks and streetlights. I gave up on walking in the grass by the road because of how uneven and bumpy it was and how much overgrown brush kept forcing me into the roadway—I just knew that getting a broken ankle while in sixteen degrees Fahrenheit with single-digit windchills in a fairly deserted area was a bad idea. This meant an even worse idea of walking in the street in the dark with my head on a swivel looking for the headlights of oncoming traffic. Thankfully, there were very few vehicles on a Sunday evening and I was able to walk the last third of my trip on sidewalks lit by the floodlights of industrial parks. I was fortunately nice and warm in my Columbia Labyrinth Loop Hooded Jacket with Omni-Heat Infinity Advanced Thermal Reflective Material and Omni-Heat Recycled Synthetic Down. Because I have lived in the Midwest for almost two decades I am compelled to tell y’all that I got it on super-sale. I am in no way being paid to endorse this coat, but I stayed nice and warm in it—honestly, I got a bit overheated and was slightly sweaty when I finally arrived at the range. By golly, it’s a pretty darn warm coat.
When I got to the gun range I had to fill out a waiver at an electronic kiosk saying that I wouldn’t sue them in the event of injury or accident. Back outside, I found the other members of the group—it was cool to see that of the fourteen of us less than half of us were white cishet males. After a couple of introductions, we headed inside to the store that the ranges were attached to. We checked in at the sales desk, those with Illinois Firearm Owners Identification cards (FOID) gave theirs to the clerk and folks like me without a FOID turned in a driver’s license or state ID. The sales clerk clipped the IDs to a clipboard behind the counter. The chapter president of the gun club paid for the five lanes we had reserved for the hour. The two men working at the gun range that night told us the rules and reminded us to always wear eye and hearing protection while in the range and that guns could not travel between lanes unless they were in their cases. Each lane had to be checked out to someone with a FOID, but they could have guests like me in their lane. A kind member of the group let me borrow some noise-canceling electronic ear muffs and my prescription eyeglasses were considered acceptable eye protection. Once we were all in our protective gear, we were escorted to the range. There was a handgun range and a rifle range at the facility; we used the rifle range because a couple of folks brought rifles and carbines. Here is a bit of trivia for y’all: a carbine is a long gun that uses handgun ammunition. For instance, one of the members of the chapter brought a Ruger 9mm carbine. Here’s what his carbine looks like:
Folks like myself without FOIDs were put into groups of two or three to observe those who brought guns and to be trained on their use. I hung back a bit, watching from a distance for about fifteen minutes, and then someone asked if anyone wanted to fire a gun on his lane. I raised my hand and this very friendly man asked me about my experience with guns on a scale of one to ten. I said I was at about two or three because it had been so long since I had fired a gun. When I was about ten or eleven my dad taught me how to shoot. I am left-handed, and originally learned to fire left-handed, but my right eye is the dominant one, so I thought that maybe I should try re-learning how to shoot right-handed, but this proved far too awkward that evening. Even though the last time I fired a gun was a year with a nineteen in front of it, I still have the muscle memory for firing a gun left-handed. I might try to learn right-handed next time that I go to the range, but this time I stuck to southpaw shooting which proved awkward for those instructing me, but we made it through. The first gun I fired after a twenty-five-plus-year hiatus was a handgun whose brand name eludes me chambered in a 9mm Luger round. I was shown how to safely handle and fire this weapon. I was shown all of the various safety steps and I was told how to get into the proper firing stance, and then it was my turn to shoot. I was told how to aim properly. I was instructed to disengage the safety mechanism and then to fire at the target twenty feet downrange. I did so, and it brought home to me just how powerful and potentially deadly guns are. Of the ten or so rounds I fired, I hit the target every time and was within two or three inches of the bullseye every time. This is not to brag about my abilities but to show that even a person who has not picked up a gun in over twenty-five years could still be incredibly dangerous to others.
After firing the 9mm, I was invited to another lane to shoot a rifle chambered to fire a .22 Long Rifle (.22 LR) round—one of the most popular if not the most popular round in the history of firearms. Reasons for its popularity are that the cost of guns and ammo are inexpensive compared to other chamberings, there is almost no recoil and very little noise compared to other rounds (it sounds like a small firecracker going off), and it is easy for beginners to use. Many people were given a .22 rifle as their first gun. For instance, I was given a Savage Arms bolt-action .22 rifle by my dad when I was twelve years old. I learned how to fire, clean, maintain, and safely store that gun. Later I was given more powerful firearms, but I learned almost everything I needed to learn from that .22 rifle.
I again tried to fire the .22 rifle right-handed, but it just felt so uncomfortable. Firing a right-handed gun as a left-hander is not ideal—the rounds eject right in front of your face—or even directly into your face depending on the gun, controls like the safety and magazine release are on the opposite side of the firearm, and in the event of a catastrophic failure of the firearm your face and most importantly your eyes are inches away from a potential explosion. For these reasons, and because I am right-eyed means that on future range days, I will attempt to learn to fire right-handed. I have one coming up on Sunday, so maybe I will try then. I’ll also bring my own ear protection and my sweet retro shooting glasses that I originally bought for a Walter Sobchak costume several years ago.
The last gun that I fired was an AR-15 rifle of unknown branding. I had never fired the notorious AR-15 before. It was an interesting experience. This rifle had a scope mounted on it—it took me a while to figure out how to sight the target through it. The AR-15 is surprisingly light—it was only slightly heavier than the .22 rifle that I fired earlier. It has very little recoil as well. Again I hit the target every time and had groupings within a couple of inches of the bullseye. This is a serious piece of equipment and there is no ignoring the fact that it is the civilian version of the M16. It looks like it was made for military use. Another bit of trivia for y’all: the AR in AR-15 does not stand for “Assault Rifle”, it stands for “ArmaLite Rifle”—ArmaLite being the name of the company that first designed the M16/AR-15 platform in the late 1950s. Like all of the guns that I fired that evening, it is semi-automatic. Semi-automatic is a term that needs a bit of demystifying. It simply means that a new round loads every time you squeeze the trigger until the magazine is empty. This is how all repeating firearms that are not bolt-action, lever-action, or single-action revolvers fire. It is not the same as the fully automatic firearms that the military or SWAT teams use. It looks similar, but it differs significantly. A person with a high amount of training can fire a semi-automatic AR-15 accurately at a rate of about 30-60 rounds-per-minute or about 1-2 rounds-per-second, whereas an M16 can be fired at anywhere from 600 to 750 rounds-per-minute or about 10-12.5 rounds-per-second. That’s a huge difference in firing rate.
I realize that private gun ownership is a very polarizing subject and whether or not guns like AR-15s should even be legal is even more polarizing. Over the years I have vacillated quite a bit on the subject. When I was a tween and early teenager I was the “gun kid” at my school. In hindsight, it was one of my many hyperfocuses over the years. I was obsessed with guns and wanted to be in the military after graduating from high school. I collected magazines about guns and hung pictures of guns on my walls and the door to my bedroom. I used to buy and trade copies of Gung Ho and Soldier of Fortune magazines as well. That is until I was 13, and my mother told me that the mass murderer at the 1986 Edmond, Oklahoma post office had stacks of Soldier of Fortune magazines in his house in addition to many guns. This snapped me out of my gun fascination. I gave away all of my gun-related magazines. I lost interest in shooting, hunting, and being in the military. I never wanted to be someone like a mass shooter. I still felt that guns were fine for other people to own, but that I was not interested in them any longer. I would go and shoot tin cans and bottles from time to time with my friend Peter, but I cooled on the whole subject. For years I didn’t even think of guns until Columbine happened in 1999. After that, I was pretty solidly anti-gun and thought no one should be allowed to own firearms unless they were strictly for hunting or sport and registered. This was my stance for many years. I was more of a liberal back then and less of a leftist; as I moved further left in my politics my thoughts on gun ownership became more in line that they are a necessary tool to protect the proletariat from the oppressors who are already armed to the teeth. Thousands of mass shootings later, I remain ambivalent on the subject and I can think of more than a few people I know personally to have been killed or seriously injured by firearms. Most recently Cason. I do not claim to have the answers, but my feeling is that there are already over 393 million guns in the United States, and I would like to have some training and insight into their use and how to protect myself and others. Will I ever have a gun for self-defense? That remains to be seen and is unlikely given my struggles with bipolar disorder and living with a spouse who abhors them, but I do enjoy shooting in a safe environment and meeting new comrades, so I am glad that I joined this gun club. There is more to the gun club than just shooting—there is extensive training available for learning trauma first aid with courses like Stop The Bleed being offered to members regularly. I am probably more interested in learning this trauma first aid than I am in learning how to shoot more skillfully. Even if there is a civil war or revolution in the United States, it is very unlikely that I would ever be on the front lines fighting. I am physically and temperamentally more inclined to be a medic of some sort. This is probably going to be the last time that I talk about guns on this blog, but I am willing to discuss them elsewhere. Do not hesitate to email me or otherwise contact me if you wish to engage further on the subject.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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