About a decade ago I was friendly with a Southern conservative woman who never went anywhere without her loaded Glock. Always in her handbag or the glove compartment of her car. She loved how it made her feel — safe, protected — but was she actually ready to kill someone who might try to rob her or worse?
Imagine waking up each morning and thinking “this might be the day when some bad guy will try something and I’ll have no choice but to shoot his lights out.” Imagine carrying that idea in your head all the time.
Leaving aside the idea of homeowners keeping a loaded weapon in their bedroom closet to protect their families from whatever (which I understand), I suspect that pistol-packing conservatives are more turned on by the idea of “carrying” than anything else. Packing heat makes them feel like a secret Dirty Harry, and this feeling somehow completes them on some emotional level. Guns, I believe, have become a totem — a symbol of potency or a willingness to stand their ground should push ever come to shove. A gun makes an owner feel like a member of some kind of steady-as-she-goes, right-thinking fraternity..
How many weaponized righties are actually ready and willing to shoot a bad guy? Very few, I’m guessing, and probably fewer than that. For most of them the notion that they might use it, that they could if their hand was forced with no way out, is what soothes or satisfies.
I’ve been shoved from time to time, but I haven’t been in an actual fist fight since my late teens, and the odds of getting into any kind of altercation these days are close to nonexistent. I don’t drink or even “go out”, for one thing, and I can’t recall the last time I visited a Patrick Swayze tough-guy bar. Plus you never know how hair-trigger crazy a would-be opponent is, especially in these crazy times. Plus I wouldn’t want to risk getting my fingers snapped or swollen, as this would hinder my daily writing. Plus I’m not in good enough shape these days to fight anyone more than 15 or 20 seconds.
But I like the idea (and I mean the “idea”) of carrying a sandbag cosh. The kind, you know, that Tim Roth carried around in Stephen Frears‘ The Hit. As a totem, mind — a weapon I’d almost certainly never use but could theoretically use if, say, some kind of brute threat were to manifest. So yes, I’ll admit it — I like the idea of carrying one of these guys around. And it’s a far less crazy notion that carrying a loaded pistol.
Will I go so far as to actually buy one of these things? I’m mulling this over as we speak.
