Jackinthebox
Member
- Nov 30, 2014
- 814
- 40
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I was a teenager, growing up in a rough part of town, in a small city north of NYC. In fact, our little city is the end of the line, for anyone who buys a train ticket to get the hell out of Dodge. You got a contract on your head in NY? You get a one-way fare on metro-north to the end of the line, in Poughkeepsie.
Our little city is historic and beautiful, seedy and deadly.
So there I was, one late summer night. "Strapped" as we called it back in the day, armed with a 9mm pistol at 16 years old. I vaguely knew something about a mandatory prison sentence of five years or some such, but that did not mean much to me, having been shot at several times already in my youth, beaten, hospitalized, left for dead on different occasions and circumstances.
I was not walking heavy with some point to prove, with a tool to flash, or to bolster my ego. My experiences led me to believe that this tool could be vital to my survival.
Now came an average weekend night, where we looked for a cool dude to buy us a few 40's from the deli next to the nightclub. Usually if we bought them one or two, we would get someone to hook us up. It didn't go down that smooth on this particular night though.
I wound up with a INGRAM MAC-11 pointed in my face. Maybe how I was dressed, some jewelry, being white, I was a mark. The man thought he was going to get something from me of value, when all I had was beer money, a gold chain... and that Beretta in the small of my back.
It happened so fast, I never had time to reach for it. If I had, he would have blown my head off. When he told me to turn out my pockets, I wished I had a pocket knife in there, rather than the 9 resting idle and useless.
Well, as luck would have it, a city bus came up the block at a rapid clip. One quick shove, and that was a rap on the MAC. Two shots let off well above me as he tumbled from my shove, and his body cracked across the front of the bus like a deer on a hick highway, and got rolled up underneath.
You know what that has to do with my right to bear arms? Not a goddamn thing.
From that day to this, one circumstance or another, a gun is just a tool that may be useful in one situation, but not another.
But that is not why we have the 2nd Amendment anyway. It's not about hunting, it's not about person defense. It's about drawing a line, so that tyrants cannot supersede the people.
Our little city is historic and beautiful, seedy and deadly.
So there I was, one late summer night. "Strapped" as we called it back in the day, armed with a 9mm pistol at 16 years old. I vaguely knew something about a mandatory prison sentence of five years or some such, but that did not mean much to me, having been shot at several times already in my youth, beaten, hospitalized, left for dead on different occasions and circumstances.
I was not walking heavy with some point to prove, with a tool to flash, or to bolster my ego. My experiences led me to believe that this tool could be vital to my survival.
Now came an average weekend night, where we looked for a cool dude to buy us a few 40's from the deli next to the nightclub. Usually if we bought them one or two, we would get someone to hook us up. It didn't go down that smooth on this particular night though.
I wound up with a INGRAM MAC-11 pointed in my face. Maybe how I was dressed, some jewelry, being white, I was a mark. The man thought he was going to get something from me of value, when all I had was beer money, a gold chain... and that Beretta in the small of my back.
It happened so fast, I never had time to reach for it. If I had, he would have blown my head off. When he told me to turn out my pockets, I wished I had a pocket knife in there, rather than the 9 resting idle and useless.
Well, as luck would have it, a city bus came up the block at a rapid clip. One quick shove, and that was a rap on the MAC. Two shots let off well above me as he tumbled from my shove, and his body cracked across the front of the bus like a deer on a hick highway, and got rolled up underneath.
You know what that has to do with my right to bear arms? Not a goddamn thing.
From that day to this, one circumstance or another, a gun is just a tool that may be useful in one situation, but not another.
But that is not why we have the 2nd Amendment anyway. It's not about hunting, it's not about person defense. It's about drawing a line, so that tyrants cannot supersede the people.