I'm a New York City liberal, and I want a gun

It is exhausting to live in fear of someone who knows your habits showing up at your door. My former partner refused to accept the end of our relationship. As I detailed in my petition for an order of protection, for the better part of the past year, he has sent alarming and frequent messages to me, my family and friends through a number of platforms. Even after I asked him not to contact me and my loved ones, he reached out to my family and friends and asked them to persuade me to speak with him. This sort of controlling and obsessive behavior is alarming enough on its own, but also has made me fear what else he is capable of.

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In April, he printed out dozens of photos of me and friends, and recorded a YouTube video of himself slowly flipping through them while reciting a poem he’d written. I broke down sobbing; it felt like there was no escape. For the next several weeks, fearful that he would show up at my home, I slept with a sheathed hiking knife under my pillow. My friends made fun of me for doing so, and with good reason: Even if my harasser had managed to enter my apartment and threaten my life, what was I going to do? Go Rambo on a man practically twice my size?…

The unfortunate reality is that you are more likely to be shot and killed by a relative or someone you know than by a stranger if you are a woman. While most murders in the United States involve a gun, most gun deaths in the United States are actually suicides, and preventing gun deaths is as much about investing in mental health and our communities as it is about enacting purchase restrictions.

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