I'm intimately familiar with guns. I've had as many varied experiences with firearms as anyone you know. I am rooted in a lifetime of conflicting emotions about guns.

The opposition is also conflicted as, this week, congressional Democrats conducted a sit-in protest on the House floor demanding a vote on the so-called "no fly, no buy" proposal to prevent individuals on the no-fly list from purchasing firearms. While the right continues it's NRA-authored refrain, a not-insignificant subset of the left (including blogger Glenn Greenwald, whose work on the Edward Snowden leaks led to a Pulitzer Prize for the Guardian) is raising the valid concern that the no-fly list itself is flawed, if not outright Islamophobic. It argues that this is reason enough to oppose proposed legislation to close the "terror gap" in our gun laws.

I am certain that both sides of objection are fundamentally irresponsible and outright wrong.

I grew up in the part of northwest Florida that is essentially Alabama. Some of my earliest memories are of sneaking into my parents' room to look at the long guns our landlord stashed in the closet to keep them out of reach from an unstable partner. I was terrified of them, partly because my parents did not—and never have—owned their own firearms. That was my attitude towards guns until I finished high school and got a job that required me to carry one.

I enlisted in the Army at 18, and I trained on weapons in the American arsenal ranging from the M9 Beretta 9mm pistol to the Mk 19 fully automatic grenade launcher. I deployed to Afghanistan to support the pursuit of terrorist networks, where I carried an M4 carbine rifle every day for 14 months. I would exaggerate if I told you I spent it in the thick of the shit, but I can say I've been shot at. After spending that much time with a rifle always within arm's reach, I still to this day occasionally wake up looking for one.

After spending that much time with a rifle always within arm's reach, I still to this day occasionally wake up looking for one.

After leaving the Army in 2008, I began purchasing my own guns after a series of break-ins at my home. I owned a range of pistols, from a .380 caliber concealed carry weapon to a Glock .45. In my gun safe, I kept the same model pistol that Texas Gov. Rick Perry used to kill a snake, and the same model George Zimmerman used to slaughter Trayvon Martin.

Around that same time, I regularly and inexplicably had trouble boarding airplanes. Ticketing kiosks always rejected my check-in, forcing me to hurriedly wave over assistance at short-staffed counters. I began arriving an additional hour before the window recommended by airlines, knowing that my check-in attempts would always be painful.

Finally, on a return trip from Pittsburgh in 2009, a ticket agent looked up my reservation and deadpanned, "Oh… you're on the list." Not knowing if "terrorist" was one of those words that you risk being tackled for uttering in an airport, I asked, "The list that… bad people are on?"

"Yeah, that one," he responded.

Protestors outside the Capitol after the Democratic sit-in. Tom Williams Getty Images

I have a common name, and that name was on the no-fly list. Running a few additional personal details through their security system allowed me to board my flight, and for many years after that, I would skip the kiosk, walk directly to the front of the line at the counter, and say, "My name is on the list." Those words always got me instant assistance and on my way. But that process always took longer than I had ever needed to purchase any of my guns.

A few months after the incident at the Pittsburgh airport, as I drove off the campus of the college I attended on the GI Bill, swarms of police patrol cars sped by my SUV from every direction, unlike anything I'd ever seen. Texts messages and emails began pouring in to my phone.

"Are you OK?"

"Can we get a thumbs up?"

I had no idea what they were talking about. I had to call my mom in Florida while I was driving to find out.

Minutes earlier, as I sat in a club meeting in a nearby building, a disgruntled biology professor, Dr. Amy Bishop, walked into a faculty meeting with a loaded 9mm handgun. After 30 to 40 minutes of normal behavior, she stood up, drew her weapon, and began firing at the heads of University of Alabama in Huntsville biology faculty and staff, one at a time. When she arrived at Dr. Debra Moriarity, her weapon jammed. She walked out of the room, borrowed a phone from a student, and called her husband to ask for a ride home.

A few years later, I was living in Denver and hadn't fired my guns since leaving Alabama. I was preparing to move to the Washington, D.C., area and needed cash. I packed up my firearms and sold them all at a gun show in Denver before moving east. I was without a gun assigned to me or in my belongings for the first time since high school.

The previous year, I was planning a public event with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords when she was shot in the head in broad daylight. Not long after the move, James Holmes opened fire in the suburbs of the city I had just left and slaughtered a dozen moviegoers, injuring another 58. And, that same year, as my daughter sat in a kindergarten classroom in suburban D.C., Adam Lanza murdered 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Newtown was the fourth shooting in three years with which I felt a personal connection: my school, my work project, my adopted town, my daughter who was the same age as the victims in Sandy Hook. That night, I let her sleep next to me for the first time since she was a toddler. I'd gone back and forth over whether I would ever buy another gun, but that night I hugged her tight and, in tears, swore I'd never again allow firearms into my home.

That night I hugged my daughter tight and, in tears, swore I'd never again allow firearms into my home.

I've been a gun enthusiast, and I've been on the receiving end of shots fired by terrorists, and I've been mistakenly put on the no-fly list. Undeniably, that list is flawed—nearly always in a way that affects people who don't look like me and who regularly deal with humiliating harassment and discrimination. But I've also been personally and repeatedly touched by gun violence and mass shootings.

I don't have to wave down a ticket counter agent at the airport anymore, because the powers that be refined the criteria for the list. To say we shouldn't enact the kind of meaningful, common sense reform that would have prevented attacks like San Bernardino and Orlando assumes that the no-fly list was carried down the mountain by Moses, permanently etched in stone. It's arguing that because the battery in your car died, you should give up on ever driving.

We live in the only country in the world where mass shootings are a common occurrence, and "no fly, no buy" is one of the few meaningful reforms that enjoys broad, bi-partisan support amongst voters. Regardless of how many innocent people are on the list, it also contains legitimate terrorists. We've changed what gets people on the list before, so to say we can't both pass a "no fly, no buy" bill and also get people off the list who don't belong on it is dangerous, short-sighted, and a shocking lack of vision.

There isn't much more worth the trouble.

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