please dont shoot me
In an average round of Counter-Strike I kill about a dozen people, maybe more if I’m doing well. When I was playing through F.E.A.R I would fill twenty or thirty clone-soldiers full of lead per sitting – similar counts apply for Metal Gear Solid, Half Life, Kill Zone, Black, and a handful of others. In the last six months, I’ve probably killed hundreds if not thousands – I have no idea how many I’ve sent to an early grave over my life time.
But you know what? Guns scare me. I don’t like looking at them, I don’t like holding them, I especially don’t like seeing them pointed at people. It could be that I’m scared of fast-moving projectiles in general – rubber bands stretched tight, bb-guns, airsoft guns, all of that stuff sort of freaks me out. I feel like I’m constantly flinching whenever I’m around things with the capability to shoot me – I’m just waiting for that projectile to hit me. I hate how heavy handguns feel, how little effort it takes to squeeze the trigger with your index finger. I can’t quite get over the suspicion that even with the safety on, I could get it to shoot if I just squeezed hard enough. I hate armed guards in airports and outside of banks, and I hate armed police officers.
Today, while I was waiting for the bus, I saw some cops taking down a guy – one officer had his handgun out and was holding it straight armed diagonally at the man’s feet, and as the man held his hands up and knelt on the sidewalk, another officer shouldered a big shotgun and pointed the muzzle right at him. That wasn’t a good thing for me to watch – I could imagine exactly what would happen if the cop pulled the trigger, if he had some perverse desire just to put a little pressure on it, just to see how hard he could press before it fired… and the guy’s head would explode. I’ve shot enough zombies and seen enough counter-terrorists though sniper scopes that I know what a headshot looks like – a burst of red, and the other guy is dead. Only this would be in real life, and the inside of his head would’ve splattered all over the brick wall and concrete.
I felt conflicted – like I wanted to quickly hide behind something bullet proof, where even a ricochet couldn’t find me, and at the same time I wanted to run over to the officers and yell, “Calm down! Put your guns away! Don’t screw things up!”
He was only a skinny guy, no shirt, just a ragged pair of pants, and you could tell he was scared. Of course he was scared – one finger twitch and his life was over. I hate guns.