What gives you the right?

Guns may be guaranteed by the Constitution. But why should anyone have the right to make us live in fear?

I’ve always said that my biggest fear is getting shot.

Well, besides birds. I’m very afraid of birds.

But while birds perch on nearby power lines, dance across my deck, cackle from the trees, and scavenge for food on every street corner, the fear of getting shot is abstract. You either understand what it’s like, or you don’t. Like, you’ve either been shot or you haven’t.

Of course I fear the pain of a bullet entering my body, ripping any flesh, veins, arteries, bone, in its path. I imagine that at first I’ll feel nothing, and that once it’s inside, the bullet will explode, causing me pain far beyond my worst menstrual cramp, migraine or paper cut. I don’t claim to be a doctor, but this is what I imagine.

I imagine it every time someone reaches into their pocket on a busy street or on a mostly deserted street. I imagine it in line at airport security and in line at my corner bodega. I imagine it on the subway and on Amtrak, at Chipotle and Starbucks, at the movie theater and Broadway theater.

In America, you are always but a fabric’s width away from someone else’s piece of metal that could leave you dead. One swift dive into a pocket, flick of a finger, could end it all. Your friends and neighbors and fellow consumers have enormous power over you — your fate is ultimately in their hands. And this is what I really fear: people believing they have a right to be able to kill someone, should they deem them killable.

You might think you’ll be safer if you have a gun, too. If they shoot you, you’ll just shoot them back. Right?

Well what if they shoot you in the head? Or the eye? Or the heart? What then? Maybe, despite being shot, you’re somehow still be able to reach for your gun, sparing others in the first guy’s path. In the end, though, you still got shot. Your head or your eye or your heart or may never be the same. The people who love you may never be the same.

But there’s a very real chance you won’t have time to fire back. It will all happen much faster than you could’ve imagined, all your hero fantasies evaporated in the ringing of a shot. The only objective is to survive. Maybe you’ll have time to take cover from the deluge of bullets, maybe the shooter will run out of bullets. Maybe with just one shot, you’re gone.

You might think you “deserve” a gun, because that’s what you’ve been told. You have a RIGHT to protect yourself. It’s in the Constitution! But what about my rights? The right to feel safe walking four blocks from my house without getting shot, unlike a man just yesterday afternoon. The right to know that it’s unlikely my family or friends won’t be victims of gun violence. The right not to have to see mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, teachers, co-workers, lovers, friends, mourn someone important who was shot to death because someone else thought it was their RIGHT.

When I saw the news that Congressman Steve Scalise was shot, I felt sick. I imagined his family learning the news, and the sheer terror of not knowing if he’d be ok. Despite his A+ rating from the National Rifle Association and his reputation as a champion of the Second Amendment, I grieved for him. For that feeling of an explosion inside ones body, as I have imagined it. For his personal terror. I do not wish that for anyone.

But the fact remains that anyone can get shot anywhere by anyone at anytime in America, whether you’re at a morning softball practice in Virginia, a UPS store in San Francisco, or a first grader at school in Connecticut. If someone else decides it’s time for your life to end, they have the power to make it so.

This is no way to live. This is no way to die.