An Old Lady With a Shotgun

The poet Acrisius once wrote, “To him who is in fear, everything rustles.” You know what he meant.

He was talking about a guy in bed on the verge of sleep who hears a strange noise and freezes.

He was talking about a woman at night in a parking garage who hears footsteps behind her as she walks to her car.

He was talking about a child alone in his room who sees monsters in the shadows on his ceiling and huddles down under his blankets.

And he was talking about members of a subculture in America who sense danger everywhere, are arming themselves to the teeth and are daring anyone to try to take their boom-booms away.

Like kids with a favorite toy, they sleep with their guns, take them on vacation trips and feel a certain comfort in their very presence.

I’ve heard from a lot of them since I told the NRA and its adherents to go to hell a week ago.

Many of the letter-writers, telephone-callers and e-mail senders raged to the point of bug-eyed incoherence over the comment and foresaw a day of apocalyptic chaos if gun owners were forced to turn in their toys.

But others discussed the subject in a more rational manner and wondered if they didn’t defend themselves and their families from the thugs running amok in the city, who would?

They hear the rustling, and it’s growing louder.

*

I’ve been afraid before. I slept with a loaded .45 on my chest and grenades within reach in the foxholes of a war a long time ago.

Night was the worst time, because the enemy floated soundlessly among us like fragments of a shadow in the darkness.

Night is still not a good time, and though the situation is different I remain aware, if not fearful, of my surroundings, and I understand the apprehension of those who shun the darkness.

I don’t go to ATMs at night anymore if I can avoid it. I don’t walk through the parks after sunset. I study everyone who passes on the street and turn to watch to be sure they don’t strike from behind.

I’m alert to possible danger in banks, I park on lighted streets, I lock my car when I’m driving and double-lock my doors at home.

I’m not exactly paranoid about danger being everywhere, but if it is, I want to know about it. And then what? That’s what a lot of the letter-writers and the e-mailers asked.

I rely on the statistics that say the likelihood of someone gunning me down is minuscule. I don’t drive a car anyone wants, I don’t wear a Rolex watch and I’m not a guy with a walker shuffling through a high-crime area with cash from a Social Security check sticking out of a pocket.

The idea that I might be in the way of a madman spraying the street with bullets from an AK-47 is an element of caprice that statistics can’t predict.

*

The question that always arises is if you do have a gun and you’re suddenly confronted with a perceived danger, when do you shoot and, more importantly, whom do you shoot?

Do you shoot when you hear a noise or do you wait for the whites of their eyes? Do you shoot a kid on your property, a face at the window, someone pounding on the other side of your front door, a burglar running away, a drunk who threatens to punch your face, a guy who insults your wife, a neighbor who won’t stop his dog from barking, the dog itself?

And if you’re face to face with another gunslinger, who shoots first? Decent people have a hard time pulling a trigger, maniacs don’t.

I keep thinking about an old lady I interviewed when the Night Stalker was haunting the San Fernando Valley. She lived alone in a small house in Arleta and to defend herself from the horror around her, she bought a shotgun.

The woman was so frail she could barely lift a cup of coffee and I wondered how in God’s name she could ever lift and fire the .12-gauger she’d bought for $129 at a local gun shop. And I wondered if she could ever bring herself to kill another human being.

I think of firearm advocates in the same terms as that frightened old lady, not as posturing gunfighters but as people afraid of the rustling that grows louder in the night.

Good citizens suffer the sins of felons, and I grant you that if guns are outlawed, the outlaws will still have them. That’s a chance we’ve got to take in order to establish a pervasive climate of nonviolence which, hopefully, will dominate the world we’re trying to create at the far end of the next millennium. Today is a good time to start.

Al Martinez can be reached online at: al.martinez@latimes.com