As the participants took notes or typed on iPads, Vernon demonstrated the proper ways to hold and load a weapon, then had the class practice repeatedly with dummy bullets. He dispensed advice of the most practical sort. He said the best gun to own is one that’s reliable, fits your hand, and feels right to shoot; he prefers a semiautomatic Glock 22. Women don’t need to limit themselves to tiny guns—”Oh hell, no!”—and just need to find one that’s comfortable to handle. When leaving a gun at home, he said, make sure to lock it up someplace thieves won’t think to look—definitely not under the mattress or in a nightstand drawer.
And then there was the question of what to do when you’re packing and have to use a public toilet. “Try to find a single-use bathroom, or a stall next to the wall,” Vernon suggested—adding that it was a bad idea to set a gun on top of the tank, where it can slide into the toilet or be forgotten.
He also methodically reviewed the specifics of the new law, such as the prohibitions on carrying guns in government buildings, in bars and any other business that posts a sign out front, and on public transportation—a provision that he found so absurd that it inspired him to act out how he would have to unload and break down his gun when he sees the bus coming and then reassemble and reload after reaching his stop.
One of the women in the class wondered what would happen if she accidentally carried a gun into a Starbucks that banned them. “They could charge me with a misdemeanor?”
“If you stick around for the police, sure,” Vernon said. But he pressed them to comply with all the provisions of the law, however illogical they might seem.
Most of the participants in the class were wary of giving their names or talking to me on the record about their interest in guns. But afterward I received an e-mail from Karl Hubert, a 63-year-old attorney. “If the 2nd Amendment had actually been available to African American citizens in the past, all over our country, then past atrocities committed against Black citizens, such as lynching, rapes, tortures, and many other horrible atrocities, would not have been visited upon our African American mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, children and friends,” he wrote, “as these citizens would have had the ability to protect themselves, and not be at the mercy of societal bullies.”
Vernon has the same view. But, he says, that’s not the ideal. “In theory, it would be good if we didn’t need guns at all. It would really be good if the world could be at peace and people could treat other people with respect and dignity. That’s the world I want to live in. But that world don’t exist. Not on this planet. So I have to prepare myself to live in the world that exists.”
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