32 FRANK’S FIRST GUN by Alan Brickman
When he lived up North, Frank never considered getting a gun. Even in situations when he felt threatened, it wouldn't have occurred to him. But here in Louisiana, in New Orleans, most people he knew – men and women, old and young, every race and ethnicity – had guns. People talked about their guns all the time – 22s, 38s, 45s, pistols, rifles, shotguns, AR-15s, automatics, semi-automatics. Frank knew people who kept them safely stored and secured, and others who kept them in an unlocked drawer in the living room. He knew people who kept one in their car, and others in their purse or brief case, ready at all times. Whenever Frank read a newspaper account of another mass shooting, he became more anxious about all the guns. Nowhere felt reliably safe anymore. His conviction that there were "too many guns" seemed validated on an almost daily basis. When a random argument on a drunken Friday night got heated and someone said, "You wanna go outside?" it used to mean a fist fight, but now it could just as easily become shots fired. And yet, here he was. Frank pulled into the parking lot of a nondescript strip mall and saw the sign above the storefront he came looking for – Sportsman's Guns and Ammo. When he tried to enter the store, the door was locked, so he stepped back to see if there was a notice indicating hours of operation. Instead, he saw two posters, one with a picture of an old-fashioned six-shooter with the caption, "We Don't Dial 911," and another with a photo of a snarling teenager pointing a gun straight at the camera that said, "Second Amendment College of Art: We're Looking for People Who Like to Draw."
