What Happens When You Write About Gun Control in America
When you write a piece about America’s unique and uniquely deadly gun problem, as I have done many times for Esquire, you expect a few things to happen: gun-control people will applaud, gun-rights advocates will get upset, and your Twitter mentions will be a mess for a few days. But when, in the face of another school shooting, you write an angry one about how you’ve finally had it and now you want to take all the guns away —even if that piece ends up being pretty moderate when you actually look at it—a whole new series of events will happen. In case you’re thinking about taking on such an endeavor, here are a few things to expect. Gun people will skip the “reading” part and go directly to the “reacting.” You cannot trust everyone to read past a punchy headline. That’s why plenty of people—plenty—ran right to their keyboards to say: “You’re taking my guns? You’ll get them bullets first.” I would also accept—and did, oh my God, so many times: “Go ahead and try, the streets will be awash in blood.” “Good luck confiscating all those guns yourself, really hope you don’t get murdered by law abiding citizens lol.” “Molon Labe.” (I’d never heard this one before, and it appears to be the gun lobby’s version of “Bazinga.”) Lots of memed-up screenshots from Tombstone and Deadwood , which, if you’re trying to convince me that 2018 America is not the Wild West, are less than encouraging. This […]
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