This is About Guns, This is Not About Guns

essay

When I was ten, my father bought two rifles from a beloved cousin—the Second Amendment Indian who owned dozens of firearms—then took me to the reservation landfill. That place was more than a landfill, though. It was more than a receptacle for the unwanted. We didn’t call it a landfill. We called it the Dump with a capital D—with a formal D. There was no shame in scavenging there. We’d all reclaimed something that another Indian had discarded.

My Dad wanted to teach me how to shoot—how to shoot to kill. All these years later, I guess he thought that it would be easier for me to shoot the Dump rats— those vermin—than it would be for me to shoot a larger animal. Something with larger eyes. And there were plenty of rats. It was a little city of rats.

But once my father kneeled to shoot, he couldn’t pull the trigger and kill those rodents. And neither could I. So we shot at tin cans and plastic bottles instead. I don't think I hit one target. The rats were never in danger even if I had been shooting at them.

I haven't held a gun since that day and don't plan on ever holding one again. But that abandoned hunt remains special to me. It was a faintly primal moment, a bare echo of those long ago days when Indian fathers and sons, sinewy and sacred with pride, killed and conveyed the food that fed the tribe.