Nolte: I Bought a Gun on a Lark... Then I Needed It

The first firearm I purchased was just because. The year was 1993. I was young, had money burning in my pocket, and my buddy needed cash. And so, for a couple hundred bucks I owned a 9MM handgun, which immediately went under the bed, mostly forgotten, a totem to my spendthrift ways.

Another 15 years would pass before that investment paid off.

When we moved to Los Angeles in 2003, the gun came with me, and I again slipped it under the bed because that is where it had always been. Five more years passed.

I don’t want to say that our Los Angeles neighborhood changed, because I don’t know that for a fact. Maybe our luck changed. All I know is that things went to hell pretty quickly.

I worked out of the house. My wife commuted. It was February, so it was dark when she got home. One night, before she had even taken off her coat, we heard gunshots followed by a car crash. Trust me, only in movies do people confuse a car backfiring with gunshots.

I’ll never forget the conversation with 9-1-1.

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