A Good Guy with a Gun

I must admit I am biased when it comes to guns. Sometimes a personal experience will influence the way one thinks. No matter what arguments to the contrary, this life event left deep seated emotional scars that influenced my thinking.
I remember walking into the hospital room on the 8th floor Pediatric Unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital in NYC and seeing the dark haired, handsome little boy lying in the bed closest to the window. His family members sat by his bedside for hours on end. Even though visiting hours were rather stringent in the decade of the 60’s, we bent the rules for this little boy and his family. Their sorrow was palpable even though it was obvious they were trying to mask it for the sake of Anthony.  They tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy in front of this beloved child, but their smiles were plastic and weird. The child still seemed “normal”. I don’t know if he was aware of the reality of his condition. I don’t know if any of us adults, family and staff included, could honestly internalize the horrendous reality in front of us. Sometimes in life you can’t recall every last detail of an experience but you can feel the overwhelming emotional pain that surrounded it. That is the part that stays enmeshed in your heart and soul forever. This was the case in this incident.
Anthony was probably 10 years old when he found the hidden gun and went to get the bullets that had been carefully hidden in another part of the house. The gun belonged to his Grandfather. I remember him as a gentle, loving man, a “good guy” by every stretch of the imagination. Now he sat at the head of his grandson’s bed, a broken man, a man who would never be whole again. Little boys that age are inquisitive, and a lot of the time they are smarter than you think. Anthony got a bullet in that gun and accidentally shot himself through the neck. In medical terminology, Anthony, was now a quadriplegic. It is easier for me to say that term than to define its meaning. Anthony could not move his arms or his legs and he would never, ever move them again. Believe me when I say, having known the particulars of the story, this family was as good as any other family on earth. I am infuriated when people brush it off as negligence or act like this could never happen to them because they would be much more careful and responsible. Accidents happen. Not one of us is perfect. I know this man was a good guy with a gun. But I know more than anything else in this world, he wished he never had that gun.
This experience that colored my thoughts and feelings about guns was so heart wrenching that it is hard to describe without reliving the pain.