My grandmother kept a shotgun on the back porch. It was not a weapon of war, nor a tool of intimidation. It was a farmer’s tool, loaded with rock salt to drive away predators from her pigs and chickens. That old shotgun, now rusted and unsafe, sits with me today. It is more relic than firearm, a reminder of a life tied to the land and the rhythms of rural survival.
On August 5, 2025, my oldest brother died. In his house, I found ten guns. There was one shotgun and six rifles. One rifle looked like it was meant for shooting from a distance and was complete with a scope. There were also three handguns. I handled them the way you handle something both dangerous and heavy with meaning. I had my husband check each one to ensure it was unloaded. Then, I left each open so it was clear it was unloaded. After that, I drove them across the country in the trunk of our car.
After a quiet drive across the country, I laid them out on my garage floor. I considered keeping them, perhaps even melting them down into a single piece of steel I could hold as a symbolic gesture against violence. But that, I realized, would be attachment, clinging to the form of something I had already chosen to release. Instead, I made arrangements to turn them in to the Albuquerque crime lab which will destroy them and give the scrape metal to local artist to repurpose into something beautiful. “Do not chase after the past, do not seek the future. The past is gone; the future has not yet come.” —Bhaddekaratta Sutta (MN 131) in the Pali Canon
Guns have been part of my family’s story for generations. But they are not part of my identity. I do not hunt. I do not shoot. I do not find comfort or pride in owning them. For me, their presence is a reminder of a broader American story, one of a culture where firearms are more than tools; they are symbols, sometimes of independence, sometimes of fear, sometimes of dominance.
We live in a country where gun ownership is often woven into ideas of personal freedom, family tradition, and self-reliance. Yet alongside those values exists an undeniable truth: our nation’s relationship with guns feeds cycles of violence. We revere the object and avoid the harder questions about why we feel we need them, about the cost in human lives, and about the other ways safety could be achieved.
I hold my grandmother’s shotgun and my brother’s rifles not as weapons, but as artifacts. They are pieces of history, both personal and cultural. But I also hold a conviction that the worth of a life is greater than the worth of any gun. We must evaluate the values that prioritize the gun over the person. If we do not, we will keep living in a culture that quietly accepts violence as the price of tradition.
Everyone fears punishment; everyone holds their life dear. Putting oneself in another’s place, one should not beat or kill others. Him I call a brahmin who has put aside weapons and renounced violence toward all creatures. He neither kills nor helps others to kill. —Dhammapada, Chapter 10 and Chapter 26
Share this:
