Wearing a Gun

I’m not a gun person.  Personally I don’t need a gun, never have.  In the Air Force, once a year for four years we did weapons training, an afternoon away from my usual radio duties.  I barely qualified.  Sometimes on vacation there was target shooting at some relative’s farm, mostly .22 rifles.  So it took a little getting used to when I started wearing a .40 caliber Smith and Wesson to work every day.  Becoming a police officer was never something I seriously expected to be, so when it happened at age 58, I was a little surprised.

At first in the Academy we wore all the equipment, a duty belt with pouches, rings and a holster.  We put red plastic guns in the holsters, realistic looking things except for the red color.  We practiced drawing them and pointing them.  One of my classmates ridiculed me for the way in class she saw me reaching for it, almost caressing it, getting used to the feel of it.  It took some getting used to.  After six weeks in the Academy we went out to a shooting range and began learning how to use the real thing.  It was a challenge.   

For three long days we fired the weapons, stood, aimed, fired, fired, and fired.  The third day when we broke for lunch we were all standing in a row in front of the targets and we all raised our hands and said, “We still have a round in the chamber.” 

“Yes,” the instructor responded, “so go to lunch.”

There we were, 30 new recruits all sitting around on benches near the range eating bag lunches, all of us with loaded pistols, cocked and ready on our waists.  I’m sure I wasn’t alone in reassuring myself we had all been carefully vetted for our self restraint.   I think until then most of us never thought about how police officers always wear their pistols hot, no loading, no cocking, no safety.  Out of the holster, one pull on the trigger and it was a lethal weapon.   From that day on at the Range we wore our guns “hot.”    

Four months later we went to work in our Parks, a uniform, a badge, and wearing a .40 caliber pistol, 11 hollow points in the magazine and one in the chamber ready to fire.  For the next three months we learned to do our job in the field under the careful eye of a training officer always watching us.  Then one day I came to work, reported in, got in my car and began patrolling by myself, wearing a gun. 

It was about two months after I started patrolling alone, two months wearing the gun, when my radio crackled, “1358” my badge number.  “Central.” 

“Go ahead, Central.”

“Report of gunfire in the Park, Mitchell Canyon area.”  

“Enroute,” I responded. 

It had been a slow day, now something exciting.  I headed for Mitchell Canyon and left the paved road travelling down into the canyon in my 10 year old four wheel drive Jeep Cherokee.  Bouncing along I was having fun, and then the thought came like a voice in my head, “Gunfire in the Park!  Are you out of your mind?”

For a moment I felt the fear common sense required.  I looked at it and consciously decided to be cautious and continued down the road.  “It’s what I do.  I’ll handle it carefully and hope I don’t get hurt and that no one else has to be hurt.”  Mitchell Canyon is an area of the Park on the edge of widely spaced suburban housing to the west and ranch land to the east.  I drove down the canyon stopping frequently to listen through my windows for more gunfire.  Nothing.  A kid with a .22?  A rancher firing at bottles?  A backfiring car?  Whoever it was, they were gone by the time I got there. 

Another day and another call at 2 a.m. was to assist a Ranger on a medical.  And then we were confronting a subject whose ‘seizures’ were related to ingesting methamphetamines or something worse.  He threatened to attack us with a knife he said he had.  He didn’t and he was arrested. 

It didn’t happen very often but once a month or every few months, something would come up and wearing a gun enroute and having it when I got there was an important part of the job.  It made it possible to respond to calls, two men fighting or the backcountry at 2 a.m.            

That’s why they gave me a gun, so that I was prepared to go into situations where common sense said  go the other way. 

There are regular reminders of how dangerous that can be.  Somewhere all too frequently and sometimes very nearby, a police officer is shot doing his duty.   They aren’t shoot outs like on television.  More often they are ordinary situations gone very bad, stopping a car, calling to someone acting strangely to stop and chat, chasing a thief, or searching a house.  Sometimes an officer is caught off guard; someone has a grudge or a mental illness or wants to make a point and decides shooting a cop is the thing to do because they wear badges and guns.   One time I attended a funeral for four cops.  For the 20,000 of us there, it was a lesson in how dangerous this job could be.    

We frequently remind each other, be safe, be cautious, be wary.   

So at the end of the day when I took off the gun, it was a great relief.  It was heavy to wear and even heavier on the mind.  Without the gun I could relax.  I didn’t have to protect it; no one was going to call on me to solve a situation beyond their threshold of fear. 

I enjoyed being a police officer.  It was cool.  I enjoyed being powerful and I enjoyed solving problems that before I would never have taken on.  I never got in the habit of carrying a gun off duty like a few of my coworkers did.  I could easily do without the power and I preferred not being so vulnerable.  As one instructor in the Academy told us, off duty he preferred being a very good witness to being an active participant. 

And when I retired I enjoyed taking the gun off for good.  I have a gun now, the first weapon I was issued.   I purchased it when they were replaced with newer models.  I have magazines and bullets for it.  I am well trained on how to use it.  But most of the time it’s securely locked up.  I never expect to use it.  Maybe on vacation I’ll take it out in the desert and fire off a few rounds.  This time I expect to hit the bottle.