NATIONAL GUN OWNERS SURVEY or WHAT IT MEANS TO KNOW THE BODY ISN’T A TARGET
- Do you agree that the Second Amendment guarantees your individual right to own a firearm?
Yes, but—
- Do you support the confirmation of pro-Second Amendment judges to the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts?
No, the second amendment didn’t account for three round bursts.
- Do you support laws that protect your fundamental right to use a firearm to defend yourself and your loved ones from a violent criminal attacker?
Once, in my Alaskan middle school, we were shown a video of a deer being harvested after it had been shot in the chest and forehead. The hunters, with a brisk ease, used a knife to separate the meat from its skin before dragging it a quarter mile to their Ford truck. A few of my classmates gagged, a few asked to step out. I stayed and wondered what that deer did to be shot.
The hunters, with a brisk ease, used a knife to separate the meat from its skin before dragging it a quarter mile to their Ford truck. A few of my classmates gagged, a few asked to step out. I stayed and wondered what that deer did to be shot.
- Should Congress and the states eliminate so-called “gun free zones” that leave innocent citizens defenseless against terrorists and violent criminals?
The next day we went to the firing range with pellet guns and shot at targets of human silhouettes. We touched the torn holes the pellets made in the paper and took them home to our parents to show how well of a shot we were. They were only silhouettes, I realize now, guns/threats/violence absent. And still, the targets were clipped to our fridges, displaying our deadly accuracy. Lauded for how close we aimed at their inky hearts.
- Should Congress pass a law that gives law-abiding citizens the right to carry a firearm across state lines?
My father will retire soon, and we have discussed what he will do with the guns in his house once he moves from Alaska to California. I’ve told him to sell them, donate them, have a family friend hold onto them, but of course, he is resistant. They haven’t left the safe they are stored in for years. Still, he insists on keeping them.
- Do you support laws that would require you to dismantle your guns and keep them in storage so that they are of no use to you if you are attacked by a violent criminal?
There was a teen in my Boy Scout troop who, after inviting friends over to his house during their lunch period, pulled a revolver from one of his family’s cabinets to show off the type of power it contained. They must’ve gazed at the steel of its barrel, felt the smoothness of its stained oak, remarked at how heavy it sat in their barely adult hands. That its curves, stamped to make whole, fit so easily in their palms. When the child has touched power before he knows how to control it, where will all that energy go?
- Do you agree that law-abiding citizens should be forced to submit to mandatory gun registration or else forfeit their guns and their freedom?
The boy passed the revolver to his friends. The street at the edge of their yard was quiet, save for the odd Subaru or Chevy; it was fall and the rain had coated the surrounding trees in a twinkle like that of shattered glass. Across the street, there were Cottonwoods pinching off their brown leaves as if they had forgotten how to live. The salmon swimming up the river next to their yard were beginning to rot. No one had yet noticed they were going to be late for their next period, and frankly I’m sure none of the boys cared. They joked with the revolver, as all boys would do, spinning its chamber about and reveling in the way it clicked. There was danger in that house, and maybe there shouldn’t have been.
- Do you believe the NRA should continue to defend your gun rights at the federal, state, and local levels?
The bullet sliced through one of the boys’ torso and hit another boy in the chest. Only the second boy lived.
- Would you vote for a politician who supports a gun-ban agenda?
Yes, fuck your guns.
- Would you vote for a politician who calls for the repeal of the Second Amendment?
I sometimes wonder what my father will do with his soon illegal firearms once he brings them down to California. He won’t be able to take them to the firing range since they will be confiscated the moment they see him handling his AR-15. He will have to keep them in a safe—locked, collecting dust, chambers rusting from moisture—and he will only be able to bring them out to show his friends. The firearm—for my father and a lot of other gun owners—is loved because they know what it means to be powerless, to feel as if the body is not enough. The threats they see lie right outside of themselves and so they must keep others as far away from them as possible.
- Do you believe that college students, who have been trained in gun safety, should be allowed to carry a firearm on college campuses to protect themselves?
I was in my sophomore year of college as the doors automatically locked in my calculus professor’s classroom, while he continued to teach. He was in the middle of a lecture on gradient vectors and was determined to press on as the administration emailed us to shelter in place. We did not turn off the lights, we did not cower behind desks, because now we were adults and as adults we were not scared of threats/weapons/other men. We decided to calculate the arc of a bullet in three-dimensional space, analyze the ballistics of a 5.56 as it passes through a human analog, and solve for the momentum of the shrapnel as it shears through bone. Meanwhile, there was a team of LAPD pushing through an empty freshman quad five buildings over. They slowly cleared room after room, a news helicopter following their every move. Reaching the third floor of the business school next to us, the team found a terrified professor who said she had seen an active shooter. She was hungover and drunk and hysterical and broken after learning her friend was shot and killed during the music festival in Las Vegas the day before. There was no shooter found, and two hours later after the lecture finished, we were released to go to our next class. I didn’t. Instead, I walked back to my dorm and curled up in my bed to cry. I was unable to text my father, my brothers, my aunt that I was safe because it felt as if I had already died.
- Do you believe more restrictions on law-abiding gun owners will make our country safer?
When there are people with danger in their hands, are they not also the danger they are protecting themselves from?
When there are people with danger in their hands, are they not also the danger they are protecting themselves from?
- Do you support or oppose allowing teachers who have been trained in gun safety to carry concealed firearms to protect school children from violent attackers?
I was in my sophomore year of high school, the drapes were drawn in my English teacher’s classroom, and he was holding a Black and Decker circular saw at the doorway. The cord was dangling at his feet, unplugged and thus powerless. Still, he carried it above his head, safety guard removed, and a fisherman’s calm in his elbows. The door couldn’t lock; our class couldn’t stay quiet. They were giggling, sending Snapchats, wishing danger didn’t exist in our school’s hallways. Because if we pretended everything was normal long enough, then that too must also become reality. The undersides of my knees tingled because for half an hour I had been stuck in the pit of a cabinet next to annotated textbooks of Shakespeare and a dozen copies of Stephen King’s Rage. And if I stretched out, I didn’t think I’d be able to fit back so snuggly. The other desks and cabinets and closets had all been taken. Nowhere else would be left to hide.
- Do you support or oppose the confiscation of firearms from law-abiding citizens without due process?
I was wearing a Blink-182 shirt, a red flannel, hair that hadn’t been cut since freshman year, torn chinos, and Brooks I would later use for cross country practice. There was a mole on the backside of my neck, a scar from shaving on the underside of my chin and calluses on the balls of my feet. In my backpack, I had a Rubbermaid container of curry for lunch, a partial draft of a science fiction novel I had written, and late French homework I needed to turn in the following period. And if given these details I wondered if, after the gunfire, the police would be able to determine my body among everyone else’s. Or would they need a swab of my father’s cheek to match my DNA to his? An hour after I was told to hide in the cabinet, the principal gave us the all clear over the intercom. I learned that the police had apprehended a teen who planned on selling a handgun to his girlfriend. No one was shot, and so luckily our school didn’t make the news. Still, they shuffled us to the next period and assumed we could compartmentalize the trauma of the morning. And in French class, I was given a conjugation worksheet where I was asked to give the passé composé of to live, the present tense of to flee, the simple future of to lose. J’ai vécu; Je fuis le danger; Je perdrai moi même.
We made crepes with hotplates and square pans, we celebrated by dusting them with powdered sugar and strawberries and Nutella. We heard the fading wails of police sirens as they returned to their station. The drapes were opened, the sweet smell of butter anxiously twisted in the air, and still, I couldn’t stop thinking about the deer as it was being skinned.
- Do you support or oppose an outright ban on all semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and pistols?
Though, partway through the lesson, our French teacher stopped altogether. She smiled, struggled with conjugations for a few more minutes, and then said she couldn’t continue. We sat there quietly for a moment, feeling that our heartbeats hadn’t slowed down, our arms hadn’t stopped shaking, our voices hadn’t quite quelled their quivers. She went inside one of her cabinets with a minifridge, pulled out a container full of batter, and told us she was going to make crepes after school for her tennis club. But because we were well-behaved, we were quiet, we had hidden, et maintenant nous vivons, she decided it was the best time to make crepes. So, we did. We made crepes with hotplates and square pans, we celebrated by dusting them with powdered sugar and strawberries and Nutella. We heard the fading wails of police sirens as they returned to their station. The drapes were opened, the sweet smell of butter anxiously twisted in the air, and still, I couldn’t stop thinking about the deer as it was being skinned.
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Note, questions selected and rearranged from an NRA survey.
Maxwell Suzuki is a queer writer who lives in Los Angeles. Maxwell’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in CRAFT, The Normal School, and South Dakota Review. He is the Prose Editor of Passengers Journal and reads for Split/Lip Press. He is writing a novel on the generational disconnect between Japanese American immigrants and their children.
