Earlier today, around 5pm in the afternoon I decided to swing by the Portage Barnes & Nobles Bookstore and get a snack and something to drink from the Cafe. I sat down with my Nook HD and was enjoying my drink and my snack and everything was going just fine until this one fellow came into the Cafe. He seemed like an average guy and I only briefly glanced at him, I half think because he was sitting adjacent to me and instinctually you just want to see who’s near you. I noticed that he was carrying a 9mm handgun in a holster attached to his belt. This was extraordinarily provocative and I couldn’t not notice it even though I tried.

I have talked at length about this very situation in a hypothetical sense with a loved one and I am fully aware of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and I’m aware that Michigan has a fully respectable non-concealed carry law on the books. Nothing about this was a crime, illegal, or anything like that. It was however provocative, worrisome, and ultimately repellent.

This situation, now that I’ve been faced with it – and I’ve seen people carry weapons like these before, mostly state cops in their uniforms who stop at the bookstore Cafe for some coffee on their way along I–94, has created a new personal rule for me. None of this touches on honest police officers in their uniforms – it’s a part of their job and they have strict rules and extensive training on the conditions where they can access their sidearm. You don’t get bent at your appointed Gunslinger, Jake. But it has created a new rule for regular folk (or out of uniform police, carrying) that if I see that I will leave. I don’t have to remain anywhere I don’t feel safe, I have a car, I have feet, hell, I had my bike in my car. I could have pedaled away if the car wasn’t going to hack it. It isn’t against the law, and it wasn’t a crime, but it was definitely against my sense of safety and the risk was a bright throbbing red cloud around that gun.

How do you know that a situation won’t come up? Mistakes can be made. People can get weapons who shouldn’t have them and people can get permits to carry who really shouldn’t have them – how do you know? The uniform, or if not that, a displayed badge is enough to settle folk, but just a regular guy with a gun? It’s time to leave. So this is my new rule, it’s just for me and not necessarily for anyone else but if I see someone with a gun I will leave. I don’t have to be anywhere – my liberty guarantees me that and it’s all quite humdrum when you get right down to it. It doesn’t have to upset anyone, think of it as “I have to wash my hair” if it makes you feel any better. Just because people are allowed to do something doesn’t also mean that I have to stay where I do not feel safe. A bookstore is the last place where a gun should be, but that’s my personal opinion and the law is quite clear that the fellow carrying the weapon was in his rights to do such a thing, just as much as it was my right to get up and leave.

I know guns. I was trained by a competent marksman on how to handle various weapons and even how to load ammunition. I have read the Second Amendment and I know the law in Michigan. I would suggest that other people heed their surroundings with more consciousness and see people like the fellow I saw and do what they feel comfortable in doing. Each of us has to behave according to the dictates of our conscience and our morality. For me? Staying in a place where I don’t have to be (like the Barnes & Nobles Bookstore) makes it a snap. I just walk away calmly and quietly. I fully understand that the probability of gunplay is quite on the same level of being struck by lightning or winning the lottery, but what I know of a gun and what I know about the fragility of the human psyche – I’m all set now – Time to go.

I just wish there was a provision for private landowners, or in this case tenants of buildings like Barnes & Nobles to establish a Gun-Free Zone. Why have a gun in a bookstore? The people at a bookstore are not stupid, at least that’s the last thing one would expect, and they’ll likely be quiet introverted types who are averse to danger, risk, or doing something stupid. I look in the mirror for that. I know guns, I know people, and I know that the two really shouldn’t be mixed together – especially in public situations. How can you be sure that someone who has a permit to carry a weapon won’t have a spontaneous psychotic break, a stroke, or even temporal lobe epilepsy? What if they suddenly hallucinate danger? It comes down to risk. If you don’t care, then fine – but I do. People are a mess, on their own they are trouble, but with a gun? Now they are even worse trouble. Trouble waiting to happen.

And that’s what it comes down to. A gun is murder waiting to happen. What point is there in even having a weapon if you aren’t going to kill? It serves no other purpose, especially in a bookstore. You aren’t going to hunt a wild volume of Sherlock Holmes bargain book, it just sits there. It’s people you’ll be hunting instead. I often times wish I didn’t know, that I wasn’t so sensitive, that I could just get along and shrug and pay it no mind – but I just can’t.

So, I move along. All set now. Time to go.