This is part of the personal collection of someone I met a few weeks ago. More about that in a minute.
It’s an election year, and I’m on the ballot defending my City Council seat in a suburb of Detroit. One of the biggest issues this year is overdevelopment, and destruction of habitat and greenspace. I’ll insert my shameless plug here: Stop by my website gwenmarkham.com and help me out if you can.
About 6 weeks ago, at a meet and greet in a resident’s home, I met a voter who was furious about all of the overdevelopment. But it was also clear that this man was a serious NRA member. Turns out he owns a small local business, manufacturing ammunition. His biggest customers are local police departments and gun ranges. A few days later he asked to be my Facebook friend. OK. Why not?
In September someone was lurking around one of the local community college campuses with an AR-15. My new FB friend wrote a righteous rant about how this idiot endangered people, and made responsible gun owners look bad. Hmmmm. Then after the Vegas shooting he posted this WaPo article https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/opinions/i-used-to-think-gun-control-was-the-answer-my-research-told-me-otherwise/2017/10/03/d33edca6-a851-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html and asked people to at least consider the other side.
I’m not a gun enthusiast. Far from it. I’m someone who was at the original Million Mom March in DC in 2000. I’ve marched, called, written my officials, and spoken to parent groups on gun safety. I was not raised around guns, don’t care to ever own one, but want us all to be safe in public spaces. I am, however, a big believer in diplomacy first, whether it’s on the little league field or at the UN. So I posted on his FB page that I’d like to meet for coffee.
My FB friend challenged me one further. He invited me to see his manufacturing operation and talk through the subject. So this week we met. He showed me around his shop, and as a former manufacturing engineer, I enjoyed understanding how it worked and meeting his staff. I learned some things about ammunition, and then he and I had a really good discussion about guns and gun control. There’s a lot we don’t agree on. For example, he thinks I’m safer in my home if I own a gun, I do not agree. I talked about people I’m close to who would be at risk if a weapon was readily available during one of their mental health episodes. I talked about lax punishment for leaving a weapon unattended and then a child finds it. We talked about how to balance the rights of the gun owners as compared to the rights of people to be safe in public spaces.
We talked about other countries and their laws, and how they differ from here. He showed me the paperwork required for a background check. He has a license to transfer firearms. That means if someone orders a firearm online, it’s shipped to him, and then he performs the background check before releasing the weapon to the buyer.
Finally, he took me to the break room where he had laid out part of his collection of weapons. He spends almost every weekend in competition or as a vendor at gun shows, and doesn’t hunt for sport or food. He showed me his firearms, explained semi-automatic, automatic, and bump stock to me. I learned some things. So did he. We both learned that It’s possible to talk to the other side. We have a lot of other concerns in common, like environmental destruction and rights of the individual in society. We each offered ideas on regulation and safety. Of course we agreed that no one wants what happened in Las Vegas to happen again.
I know it’s easy to yell about how the other side is evil. How they don’t care about the innocent who are killed. How they close their minds and ears to the suffering of others. It can be hard to reach out to have a serious conversation with someone. But it’s worth it. It’s the only way things can change.