A Gun Virgin No More
This "gun control" liberal fires his first weapon
It’s a cold, blustery day in Northern Indiana. My knees hurt from crouching, but I breathe out and calm myself. Another breath in, hold it, and “POW! ding!” My first shot on the AR rifle my brother-in-law just purchased — my first gunshot ever — and I’ve hit the target at 30 meters.
I try two more shots, and both of those hit the target as well, the last one squarely in the center of the six-inch hanging metal spinner we’re aiming for.
I’m no longer a gun virgin.
And apparently, I’m a great shot.
More likely, it’s that the AR-style rifle we’re firing is massively popular for a reason: it’s lightweight, easy to customize, has minimal recoil, and even dummies like me can hit a target on their first go.
My blood is racing, and my heart is beating fast. The air smells crisp and a bit wild. My phone rings. It’s Dana, my lifelong friend and genXy co-founder.
“Ohmigod!” I tell her, “I’m up at the farm with Christy and Mike*, and I just fired an assault rifle for the first time! I just lost my gun virginity!” I’m pretty sure I sound breathless and a bit manic.
“Um, wow! How was it?” she asks, dubiousness crinkling the edges of her voice.
“It. Was. Amazing. So easy to aim and fire! And fun!”
“So, should humans own these guns?” she asks. We’ve talked about this a lot. She knows what my answer would have been up until very, very recently.
I am a mid-50s GenX gun skeptic. I’ve been advocating for gun control for the better part of my life. I am an avowed hater of the NRA and the gun lobby. I desperately want there never to be another school shooting for the rest of my life.
I also don’t want to live in an American autocracy bent around the perverted will of a Russian dictator.
“I don’t know,” I say.
I am thinking about the United States Constitution quite a bit these days. Or, to be more accurate, I am contemplating the Oath to the Constitution.
You know, the one that presidents, congresspeople, federal employees, and military service-people are required to take to do their jobs.
New U.S. citizens take a variation of it, called the Oath of Allegiance.
You know who hasn’t taken either version of the oath? Me.
Probably you, too. Because average native-born Americans who haven’t served in the federal government, the military, or been elected to high office don’t have to take it.
The full text of the Oath of Office to support and defend the U.S. Constitution is as follows:
“I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
This oath is codified in 5 U.S.C. § 3331 and has been in use since the Civil War era, emphasizing loyalty to the Constitution rather than any individual or political party.
Here’s the Oath of Allegiance for new citizens:
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”
I read these and I feel inspired, and a little guilty. Nearly 55 years, and I’ve never taken this oath, while expecting all the rights and privileges the Constitution affords. Far more than a simple pledge to the flag — making a vow to a symbol of America, and not the thing itself — the oath to the Constitution is a pledge that each of us and any of us should feel comfortable taking.
The U.S. Constitution is the bedrock of our nation. It is the thing without which we do not have America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Colorful flags mean nothing, songs mean nothing, people and places and sacrifice mean nothing if we don’t have as the foundation of this nation a clear allegiance to our fundamental document.
If our fellow citizens don’t honor it, we have nothing. If our elected leaders shun it or despise it or try to change it outside of the defined amendment process, we have less than nothing — we have a black hole at the heart of this nation where laws and duty used to be.
I want to take this pledge. It burns within me, now, and larger: I want all of you to take it, too.
Who could object? Who would be threatened by all Americans rising to pledge loyalty to our Constitution? Why would anyone want to stop us?
Let’s find out.
We’re driving home from the farm, and we’re talking about all of this: guns, the Constitution, the pledge to the flag, and the oath of allegiance.
My brother-in-law Mike is a stand-up guy. A native-born Hoosier, he worked in tool-and-die machining as that industry transformed and fell away from its union past. He retired from the Army National Guard after a long career, leaving as an E9, with a pension and with honor. He then put himself and my niece and nephew through college on the G.I. Bill. Now, Mike is an award-winning 4th-grade teacher.
He might not be your first pick for “liberal Democrat,” and the truth is, he’s probably not. He describes himself as a 60–40 centrist, someone who has no home in the Republican party because the GOP left the center of our national politics over these last decades, and so he now finds himself stranded, a Democrat by default.
My sister, Christy, and I were raised by a liberal mother and have always felt more comfortable on the left. Growing up Jewish in South Florida in the 80s, and as GenX latchkey kids, we’ve been skeptical of a government that nearly failed our single mother during the Reagan years, one that may fail her again, now, in her final years, as Social Security faces its most dire threat from within.
Pressed, the three of us all consider ourselves patriots, but it’s a weathered, tempered, hard-beaten kind of patriotism. America is exceptional, sure, but we acknowledge that America also has a long history of doing the wrong thing several times before it finds itself doing the right thing at the last minute.
And all three of us agree that national and local Democrats are failing this moment, badly. We feel the looming dread of this crisis in American political life when all guardrails seem to be failing.
We discuss a deeper worry.
Seventy-five million people voted for Harris in 2024. Many of those people would agree that things are disastrously off-track in these first six weeks of the new Trump administration. This present course of action, with DOGE cuts and layoffs, hideous foreign policy, it’s all unsustainable.
There is another shoe, and it’s going to drop. We all know that it is.
But what if all of those people are simply waiting for someone else to do the hard work to save our democracy?
A one-day economic blackout barely moves the needle. Democratic Party leaders seem to have no agenda, no plan, other than perhaps standing so still that no one will notice them. A joke, but unnervingly accurate.
What do “We the People” do? Are we all just so overworked, underemployed, and stressed out that we’re waiting for someone, anyone else to lead?
Lincoln said this country exists “of, by, and for the people.” Except, what if we don’t push back? What if the greatest superpower the world has ever known just shrugs and rolls over into autocracy because, goddamn it, that would be so much easier than doing something hard? What if we’re all too “busy” listening to our Spotify Discover lists and buying cheap crap on Temu?
We don’t know the answers to these questions. I didn’t know the answer to Dana’s question earlier.
But day by day, I become more and more sure that we are living in mind-bendingly extraordinary times and that the world as we have known it is falling apart, never to return. So, what do we do?
We may resist. We may fight back. We may submit to unearned power in a way that dishonors every patriotic American who has ever lived.
But I’d feel better if we started making a pledge, to ourselves and to each other — that we will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies.
All of them.
*My absolutely excellent sister and brother-in-law. Not their real names.
This really resonates. (And I worked at an anti-gun violence nonprofit. What an out their experience firing my first gun. Anyways, the tension between personal beliefs, current events and our responsibility as citizens is palpable. But, honestly I don’t know the answers either!
I appreciate how candid you’re being here. And the path you took from firing a gun to reexamining what we as (labeled) Democrats are “supposed to” believe, versus personal beliefs. I’m still trying to parse through my own thoughts against the current, flat state of the Democratic Party.
I’ll never go red, but I will give them one thing: They definitely stick to their guns (pun intended) and stick to their beliefs. In contrast to the inconsistent and quiet blue team. It’s truly frustrating.