A Guest Post

Today I'm going to try something new. Instead of posting my unique (read: crazy) thoughts into this entry I'm going to defer to the words of a friend. She sent me this little essay because she wanted to share her experience with fire arms in the city of Philly. Since I live in Texas she thought I could possibly relate seeing how everyone down here is a gun-toting maniac. Well, not quite, but possibly in her mind we are.

This friend of mine, the venerable Dr. Tang, and I go way back, all the way to grad school. Maybe not too far back in time, but if feels that way as we've both finished up school and since moved away from Beantown. What makes her essay so interesting is the fact that she is not U.S. born. A citizen of China, she came to the U.S. to pursue her degree and to experience the myriad of cultures we have here in America. I was fortunate enough to be part of that. And, as her essay shows, she continues to explore the corners and cracks of our culture that a lot of us take for granted. It's an interesting work and I hope she produces more. Enjoy.

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A Gun Store
by
Min Tang

Here I am, Girard Avenue, which runs along the Delaware River. I took orders from Girard College all the time. “Ja-rahd… Spell it? G-I-R-A…-A-R-D. No. R-A-R-D…What? I mean G, not J.” It’s one of those street names I have trouble remembering. Try to say it yourself. I bet you need one more sugar in your coffee to make your stiff Chinese tongue curl around those two “R’s.”

“Yah, those people can be difficult. It is a boarding school, and they usually ask for big orders. Get to ask them what hall and their names. … Safe? You mean are they in good or bad areas? Yah. Nasty area. Don’t go there.”

Here I am, walking down Girard Avenue on a bright and warm Wednesday afternoon. Do I feel safe? No, not at all. Everyone on the street has darker skin than I, I need to be vigilant. “Notice your whereabouts,” I was told by a local. That is why I need to look around, check the street names, for example. Poplar, Myrtle, Parrish—Wow, every single one of them could make me bite my tongue! God bless I don’t get calls from those places.

“Pistol Range” An arrow curled towards the right pointed to a rusty iron door. Next to it was an empty garage—think of the kind in which drug deals are done in movies. I hesitated and remembered seeing a police car parked at the corner a minute ago. So I turned the rusty knob and climbed the bare metal stairs. Another glass door, locked from inside. I pressed the door-bell.

“Gun Safety Control…” I was reading the posters while the guy behind the counter (black) was talking to a female customer, black again. Forgive my hypersensitivity to skin colors - I cannot help it when mine is the fairest, for the first time in my life.

“Hey, ma’am,” he called out as she was leaving.
“You know that it’s against the law if you buy a gun for someone else?”
“Oh?”
“So, if you buy a gun for your friend, and if your friend uses the gun to kill someone, you will be charged with a crime as well. You know that?”
“Oh… No.”
“Yah, remember that before you buy a gun.”
She smiled knowingly and left.

“How can I help you, ma’am?” he looked at me. This tall middle-aged man gave me a big and friendly smile. I liked him immediately, I guess, because of his clean look, like everyone else. He was in a jacket, just the right length to his waist, and the cuffs of his sleeves just reached his wrists. He didn’t look like the ones on the street, with their jackets reaching down to the knees. He had no hat, and he wasn’t wearing a hoodie, like the guy who robbed me three months ago.

“Just look around…interesting,” I said as I scanned the rifles and pistols hanging on the wall, “many people come here?” I started to regret my ignorance of weapons: caliber, recoil, range, German-made, M17, AK10, they are jumbles of letters that make no sense to me, and why should I care?

I looked into the eyes of this friendly black man—who are you? Who are those people coming here to shoot? For what purpose do they come? How does it feel when you pull the trigger? Bang! Does your mind turn blank? Do you feel a rush of adrenaline, like falling off a cliff, or winning a million dollars? Tell me, tell me about the human souls that maneuver the cold, hard, dark metal…would you?

In his eyes I see nothing more than a professional readiness to serve a customer; I think of seeing myself behind the counter in the pizza shop.

“Well, the guns…oh…where are they from? I guess there must be some better than others.”
“They are from everywhere. American, German. Austrian, those are good. Yah, we get some from China too. You from China?”
“Hah, my accent must have said so.” I laughed. He is certainly more experienced with people. How many Chinese come here? I wanted to ask but didn’t.
“You know. If you want to buy a gun, you get to try it first. Come here and try different kinds until you find the kind you want. It’s an investment, ya know. It doesn’t hurt to be careful.”
“There must be a gun store around here.” What makes him think that I want to buy a gun?
“Yah, next door.”
“You guys owned by the same people?”
He was silent for a minute, then he nodded with a sly smile.

The gun store looked into the street with the same worn-out facade as every other store along the street: old paint was peeling, long-forgotten plants dried out at the corners of the walls. Not far away I saw the police car I remembered from earlier. Again, I was buzzed in. Two guys, black, were examining the guns at the counter and talking to each other. A woman, white, was scurrying around behind the counter. Nobody seemed to notice me. Nobody seemed to notice each other, or anything other than a potential buy-and-sell deal. “All Sales Final” “No Arms Carried Inside Store” Black and white signs like those from a second-hand store. Guns, hung on the wall or lay on the hard wood inside the counter. Different lengths and sizes, perfectly still, reminded me of the dead fish I once saw in a fishery store; it is scary for either of them to turn around and stare at you.

“So what do I need to buy a gun?”
“A photo id, your alien card, and three utility bills from three consecutive months.”
“Well, the thing is I don’t have my alien card yet. It may take a few months.”
“You need it absolutely.”
“What kind you recommend for a woman my size?”
“Get all papers first, then we’ll talk about it.”
“Well, I kind want to know more before…”
“No more questions, honey. I’m sorry I can’t answer any question until I get the papers.” She hadn’t looked me once during the whole conversation. Buffs and bluffs, she seemed to know that I wasn’t serious.

Sure, I wasn’t serious. I’m not serious about guns, but I am serious about understanding the kind of life that “necessitates” owning a gun. And I am serious about the kind of people who lead that kind of life.

“Hi, you, get a gun?”
I turned, a black man was yelling at me. For a moment I couldn’t recognize him. “It’s me, the guy from the Pistol Range.” He touched his baseball cap. “You!” I wanted to tell him that all black men look the same to me, “just like all Asians look the same to you, right?” But I didn’t. I’ve gotten a little smarter after years of living in the US. Once I joked to a friend about being “a stingy Jew, just like us stingy Chinese”. Later I had to apologize profusely by self-deprecation, by mocking my ancestors, all the way back to my great-great-grandfather’s generation.
“No, not yet. I don’t have all the papers they want. You have a gun too?”
“Sure. I have it with me now,” he patted his butt. “I’m going to the bank, lots of money on me, ya know.”
“Ever used it?”
“Sure…But I can’t tell you about that now.” He winked at me, “you?”
“Well, I was robbed three months ago in Boston.”
“Wow, it must have hit you bad. Now you’re in Philly and you need a gun. Come to the range. I’ll help you.”
“Sure.”

I said good-bye. Should I tell him I was a lieutanent in China, and that I completed a month of firearms training, and that guns do nothing to me? Oh well…I’ll visit him again.