Sweet little old ladies with hand guns scare me. I encountered my first sweet little old lady with a handgun several years ago.
In the midst of our pleasant conversation this retiree with a childlike voice said, “After hearing about hoodlums threatening folks in the parking lots and stores, I got a gun and put it in my glove compartment just in case I ever need it.”
She made no mention of having taken any lessons on gun safety. She said nothing about learning how to handle it, going to any shooting range to practice or precautions she had taken to keep it away from children.
She wanted a gun for protection. She got a gun.
The next time I encountered a gun-toting, sweet, little old lady, our conversation had turned to the state’s concealed carry law.
“We all went and took the classes to get a license for concealed carry. We want to protect ourselves, so we carry guns in our purses.”
“You do?”
“Yes. I have a purse designed for a handgun.” Mentally, I stepped away from that woman. I did not want to be caught in the cross hairs if emotions ever flared.
I know. I know that having a concealed weapon has quickly resolved some situations. However, usually it’s some trained, practiced, younger person with quick reflexes. It is not usually a sweet, little old lady who has arthritic joins, does not exercise, and has visual or auditory issues. That was the case for the oldest sweet little old lady I know with a gun. We chatted about the pain of aging, children living far away and the cost and availability of nursing homes or retirement complexes.
We talked about the inconvenience of forgetting where we are going, what we were saying, the frustration of forgetting what we were talking about in the middle of conversations and the annoyance of losing things.
“I lost my jewelry last week. I had it when I was on that couch,” she said. We decided to move the couch and look under it. As we shoved the couch aside, the edge of a colorful tote appeared beneath the couch skirt.
“That’s my gun,” the feeble octogenarian said. She picked it up with a hand covered in age spots, reached inside and pushed back a cloth wrapped around the pistol.
“I only have one bullet in it,” her voice quavered.
“Like Barney Fife?” I joked. I don’t think she heard me because she continued, “I have it fixed where the first time I pull the trigger it just clicks. The next time it will shoot.”
Right. You can’t make up your mind about whether you need to quit living alone and move to a nursing home, but you have a gun ready to use if you feel threatened.
Nothing changed with any of these sweet little old ladies, except now I know they have access to a gun under the couch, in their handbag or glove compartment.
How I feel about it does not matter. Having a piece quells their anxieties. I do not understand how any elderly woman could expect to whip across the car seat, open the glove compartment, pull out the gun, switch off the safety, aim and fire quickly enough.
I just cannot imagine any of these sweet little old ladies racing across the room to the couch, bending down, pulling out the tote and shaking out the gun.
Or, worse yet, some bad guy comes and she cannot remember where she left her purse.
I am sure each finds great comfort with the heft of that gun in their hands. I don’t. It just feels scary to me.