Gun envy

For as long as I can remember I have wanted a gun. Not a little, cute, keep-in-purse number, but rather, a really big super Uzi. Preferably one with an attachment for the top of my car. In all honesty, this is one of the things that most concerns Chaim about me.

On Friday I was walking down the street in my sort-of-suburban neighborhood. I bumped into my friends' son, Yishai, heading home on leave from the army. Yishai is one of those all-around nice guys who probably wouldn't voluntarily hurt a flea. He was dressed in his uniform and the obligatory, yet informal, army fashion statement, very cool sunglasses. He sort of looked like the Poster Boy for the IDF.

Yishai is doing his compulsory service in an Education division of the army which means he is not a combat soldier, but almost immediately, I noticed his M-16 slung over his shoulder.

"Hey," I blurted out. "I thought that you were in Education?"

"I know, I know," he responded because we both knew I was looking at the gun. "I've had this for a year and a half now." He seemed less than thrilled.

But as I passed him I realized that I was thinking: "Well, if you don't want it, I could take it off your hands." He probably would have loved to hand it over because it seemed like an albatross around his neck -- of course, he would have ended up unhappily ensconced in the stockade for a good long time if he had even lost sight of the gun for an instant. The IDF does not have much of a sense of humor when it comes to its guns.

I know that guns are dangerous and I even shot an M-16 a few months ago at a firing range set up to teach citizens how to participate in community protection groups. Chaim and the kids couldn't get to their turns fast enough but when it was my turn I took the gun reluctantly and only agreed to have the teacher put three bullets in it.

Firing that thing gave me the creeps. My whole body vibrated from the "backfire" of the gun. My arms buzzed for the next 15 minutes. All I could think the entire time I was holding the gun was that I could end someone's life with the item in my hands. The implications were horrifying and overwhelming.

Which brings me back to my gun fantasy. For years in Toronto I used to commute daily across the top of the city on what is probably Canada's busiest highway system. Every other day or so I encountered someone I deemed to be a driving idiot who deserved to be knocked off on the spot.

That, of course, would have required an Uzi perched on the top of my car with a red firing button placed somewhere strategically near the steering wheel. Some days the only thing that got me home with an ounce of sanity was the thought that someday I would get my car Uzi.

Now I live in a country where guns are commonplace. Some of the nicest, gentlest people I know own and wear guns in their belts every day. Some of them even carry their guns on Shabbat. If I had even seen a person carrying a gun in Toronto I would have run for cover, but here I am often relieved to see a gun-toting soldier get on my bus to Jerusalem, or to line up in the grocery story in an outlying part of Israel behind a person with a gun in his belt (admittedly, I only know one woman who totes a gun.)

I think it is easier to say you want a gun than to actually have a gun. My need for my vigilante justice plays beautifully in my head. People do stupid things. I see them do those stupid things. I shoot them. Then I go home and have lunch knowing that the world has one less stupid person.

However, in reality, I forget that there is another step. Those people are dead.

Therefore, despite my gun fantasy, I am going to leave the guns in the reluctant hands of people like Yishai who really wish they didn't have a gun and would rather do anything but shoot it for any reason other than the protection of their country.