Gun Owners Support a World with Fewer Guns

One of the best ways to create change is by educating those around you, but in this case, some of the hardest sells may be gun owners. Sometimes, however, they will surprise you.

“When I go to a public gun range, I am horrified in the way that a race car driver is scared on the highway,” Sam told me when I asked him to describe the vast majority of the people who own guns in America. “They do not have a fucking clue what they’re doing, and it’s horribly scary,” he said.

While I anxiously arranged my travel to the two-day firearm training course in the Southwest, I connected with other gun owners who, like Sam, felt misunderstood, frustrated, underappreciated—caricatured, even. They slowly reshaped my understanding of what it means to own a firearm in America, painting a far more colorful and intricate picture of American gun ownership than the rigidly divided political debate does.

“Many gun owners are just big freaking nerds. It is just another thing to nerd out about,” Eryn Sepp, a white thirty-year-old Iraq War veteran who once worked at a gun range, told me over a lunch of milk and strawberry shortcake. Her blue eyes sparkled as she described what appealed to her about owning firearms. “I mean, if it’s not World of Warcraft and it’s not Pokemon Go, it’s guns,” she said. “People like to be excited about something. They like to feel like they know the terminology. There is this culture you get accepted in the more you can talk the language. ‘I mean, gosh, if you’ve ever fired a .17 HMR, then are you just not the coolest? What a rare round!’” she said enthusiastically, throwing her head back in laughter. “It’s fun. It’s just fun to know about these things.” (That’s a .17 caliber Hornady Magnum Rimfire cartridge, by the way, a smaller-caliber projectile in a necked down .22 magnum casing made to achieve greater muzzle velocity and a flatter trajectory than previously available in a rimfire rifle.)

For Eryn, guns are a sport and a means of self-expression. She talked about her craft and her firearms like a musician showing off a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Sunburst. Sam struck a similar tone. He first encountered what he refers to as real, authentic, hardcore gun enthusiasts at the elite gun training facility he had invited me to experience for myself—an institute that has helped develop and establish the shooting and safety techniques that have been adopted by law enforcement and militaries all over the world.

Sam set foot in the center after coming home from his second tour of duty in Iraq, frustrated by the U.S. military’s limited firearm training options. The experience transformed his entire life. He dived into a new world inhabited by about a million or so truly dedicated gun enthusiasts he describes as the real “regulated militia.” This loose group of Americans travel around the country taking weeklong courses in guns, marksmanship, and any other firearm-related subject you can imagine, ultimately receiving better training than the military or the police. They’re a varied lot—orthopedic surgeons, truck drivers, teachers—but they share the common values of responsibility: “responsibility for their personal security and responsibility to own and use guns in the best possible way, by investing in training and practice,” Sam said, adding that these gun users strive to live “a lifestyle of the modern minutemen, who exist to support and augment the police/military/government in order to fully manifest our values and lifestyle choices.” He joked that “for most of us, Lady Gaga said it best: ‘We were born this way.’”

Sam and Eryn see guns as an expression (or enhancement) of the lifestyle they choose to live. Maj Toure believes he needs firearms to survive. Maj is an African American man around my age from Philadelphia. In his North Philly neighborhood, residents inevitably come into contact with guns, whether they like it or not, and do not have access to the kind of gun courses Sam does. “A lot of times in my community, firearms are available before you have the information to even handle them properly. You can run across a gun at fifteen,” the dreadlocked artist and activist told The Trace.¹

Maj is an activist, a Republican, and an NRA member and he is building a movement to educate and train African Americans to properly use firearms. His organization, Black Guns Matter, holds trainings and informational sessions around the country about how to shoot firearms and legally carry them. “What we want to do is, if anyone runs across a gun at a young age, we want them to know what to do and not to do. It’s about making sure people from my demographic aren’t doing the wrong thing.” Or are perceived as doing the wrong thing by the police. “What we’re trying to do is say that just because you have a gun does not make you the bad guy. But while you have your firearm, which you have the right to have, you have to be a responsible, card-carrying good guy.” Maj argues that by teaching people conflict-management skills and using guns only when they absolutely have to, many communities of color will be safer—and law enforcement will view armed black men as less of a threat.

Using a gun for self-defense is rare. Surveys show that in America a gun is used defensively in about one out of every hundred crimes of personal contact. There are an estimated eighty thousand defensive gun uses in the United States per year.

Eryn is responsible for one of those uses. About five years ago, she was sitting in the parking lot of a hotel on her way to a Black Eyed Peas concert. Suddenly a man came up to her car window and threatened to rob her, demanding she empty her wallet. Reflexively, Eryn grabbed her unloaded Kimber .45, which just happened to be sitting on the armrest between the driver and passenger seats, stuck it in the man’s face, and yelled, “Get the fuck away from me.” The attacker bolted, but the incident shook Eryn and reinforced her habit of constantly scanning for threats. It is a quality she picked up even before joining the military, and she felt good that at that moment, in that car, she was armed, even though not loaded. “My fear for my personal safety comes from going about my daily life as a woman. I heard an author say once that you could tell from twenty-five meters away if a guy is going to say something smart to you, and that is absolutely true. Walking down the street, you know if some guy is going to try something. I think every woman goes through her life like that, and so then you give a woman a gun and you have given her power back, and I think that is why a lot of women like to shoot.”

The tension between, on the one hand, building communities with fewer guns and fewer gun crimes and, on the other, the desire to own a firearm for self-protection—for you would never use it irresponsibly!—is a sticking point. It helps explain why this work is so difficult. Many people recognize that, yes, we have so many guns and they’re too easy to get, but guns are also superb for self-defense in certain circumstances. Eryn and millions of other women would be safer if America had far fewer guns. The robber would’ve been less likely to have been carrying a gun himself. Still, statistics and probability are worthless in the moment of threat. This contradiction is perhaps the central challenge for gun control advocates.

Gun owners like Sam are living out what they describe as their “martial values” of self-sacrifice for the protection of others, and those like Eryn are carrying for their own protection. They are not responsible for America’s gun problem. For the most part, they are well trained in how and when to fire a gun, and they have proven that they can own guns responsibly. Even Maj preaches safe gun ownership and is working to minimize actual gun use.

On the other side are the millions and millions of people who buy weapons out of fear, blindly rushing out to purchase firearms anytime a politician floats new gun-safety regulations. For many of them, gun ownership is less about protection and more an expression of a social identity purposely constructed—as we’ve seen—by the NRA.

“They say, ‘It’s my right,’ yet do nothing in the realm of responsibility,” Sam complained. “They want to own guns because it gives them a false sense of security, a weak sense of power, and with it they talk about overthrowing the government. These are the people who bring AR-15s to Starbucks and open-carry pistols in order to make people uncomfortable and challenge the police. These are the people who are ignorant, incompetent, do not train, and give people like me a bad name.”

Eryn goes shooting at a gun range with her fiancé at least once a month and encounters many such people there. She is always careful to avoid talk about her support for Democratic politicians and other topics that would betray her progressive leanings. “I joined the NRA because I came home from Iraq and I started working at a gun range, so of course it would make sense that the NRA was going to be my people,” she said. “But what I did not realize when I joined was that there are two different NRAs. There’s the NRA that’s really great and does education in the communities, but then there’s the NRA-ILA [the group’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action], and I did not understand I was getting into that organization when I joined the NRA.”