I first got involved with gun violence prevention after the 1999 massacre at my Colorado high school, Columbine, which claimed the lives of 12 students as well as my former basketball coach, Dave Sanders. A year later, I attended the Million Mom March in Washington, D.C., and eventually became a board member of the Brady Campaign to Reduce Gun Violence.

The campaign has tried to bring some common sense into our nation’s debate on gun violence, everything from asking if there’s a gun where your kids play to advocating that Starbucks change its policy of allowing people to openly carry guns in its coffee shops.

After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, I listened to the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre say, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” So I decided to find out what it felt like to be that “good guy” by carrying a gun everywhere I went for a month — and by doing the absolute minimum that’s legally required.

I was appalled at how easy it was for me to get a gun without any training. Over 30 days, I followed four rules: carry the gun with me at all times; follow the laws of Washington state, where I live; only do what is minimally required for permits, licensing, purchasing and carrying; and, finally, be prepared to use the weapon to protect myself at home or in public.

Ms. Magazine ran my initial post on the experience in June. More than 2,000 readers responded to that article — most of them angry gun-rights advocates saying how stupid I was. (One even suggested that I put the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger.) Most of them missed the point entirely: I wanted to show how easy it is to obtain a gun without being required to know how to use it.

If LaPierre is right, it’s important to understand how it feels to have a weapon — in my case, a 9mm Glock — at hand without any legal requirement that the owner knows how to use it. Responsible gun owners will seek out training. But what worries me — and what should worry everyone — is the irresponsible owners possessing some of the more than 200 million guns in the U.S. today.

Putting family at risk

From the start, I knew that I was putting my family and myself at risk.

Only two days into my 30-day experiment, I went to breakfast with my two kids and some friends. When I returned home, I put my purse on the counter and then spent the next hour enjoying the beautiful weather out on the back deck. Walking into the kitchen to refresh our drinks, I noticed my purse — with the Glock still inside it. I’d forgotten to lock it up! Panic set in as I realized my teenage son was playing video games just 10 feet away. What if he’d decided to get the socks I’d bought him from my purse while I was outside? I realized how I’d just straddled the fine line between being a responsible gun owner and an irresponsible idiot whose 15-year-old could have accidentally shot himself or someone else with my gun.

A gun in a home is 43 times more likely to be used to kill a family member than someone else in self-defense. With more than 200 million guns in our country, most in our homes, it’s no wonder that over 19,000 people in America die from suicide and accidental death by a gun every year.

I decided to keep the gun in a locked safe and the key to it hidden when I was home. But that didn’t seem to make me less anxious. Before I had a gun, I would go to sleep thinking about what I’d make for dinner tomorrow or how to help my son on a project or remind myself to pay a bill I’d forgotten. With a gun, all I thought about were the sounds I heard at night. I would lie awake thinking: “Is someone breaking in? How fast can I get to the gun? Will they hear me? How much time do I have before they get to my bedroom? What if they go to my son’s room first? Will I shoot them in the face or heart or stomach?”

And then: “How in the world would I live with myself knowing I took a life?”

In a short time after acquiring the gun, I had two repairmen, a carpet cleaner, and a salesmen in my home. If the gun was for self-protection, it was not going to do any good in the safe, but it was not really practical to have it pointing at them while they worked. Living with a gun was not easy. There was more worry, more responsibility, and higher risk for everyone in my home, especially my family.

The man in the stairwell

The urine smell was particularly strong in the grimy, dimly lit downtown parking garage’s stairwell. I was late for a meeting and barely noticed the large man enter behind me. When I got to the second floor, I became nervous, and the Oprah episode where a man attacks a woman alone in a situation just like this played in my head. I thought about the 9mm in my purse as I clumsily continued down the stairs in my skirt and heels. He followed me. I looked back at him so he knew I knew he was there (like Oprah’s expert suggested).

I thought: “Should I pull the gun out? Should I point it at him?” My heart racing, we finally got to the lobby door, where the man simply passed by me. I’d grown paranoid. He wasn’t the bad guy I perceived him to be, and the gun did not make me safe.

Already, I’d been to the grocery store, church, the bank, business meetings, restaurants, Starbucks, and even a yoga class. Most of the time, I had the gun on my hip covered by a jacket, even on 80-degree days. Nobody knew I had it on me, but it made me suspicious of everyone.

Very few places restricted me from carrying a gun. I had to store it in my glove box when I went to my son’s school for track meets and teacher conferences, and when I spoke at a community college in Vancouver, Wash., about gun violence — which was ironic, because 89 of the 90 crimes reported there last year were car break-ins. About half a million guns are stolen every year, putting them directly into the hands of criminals.

I should have just left it at home.

I had two trips planned during the month, but my concealed-carry permit is not recognized in California or Washington, D.C. This was inconvenient, so I can see why the gun lobby wants a national concealed-carry permit reciprocity law. But it’s a bad idea. An untrained permit-holder like me shouldn’t be allowed to carry a concealed gun in states that at least require training and safety classes.

I thought the gun would make me feel more powerful, more confident, and less fearful. I was wrong. All I felt was fear. Physically taking the gun out of the safe and putting it in a holster on my hip literally reminded me that I was going out into a big, bad, scary unsafe world. There were days when I put the gun back in the safe and stayed home because it simply took too much energy to be scared.

Ready to get rid of it

Thirty days after buying the gun and carrying it everywhere, I was ready to get rid of it.

So what do you do when you no longer want a gun in your home? There are hundreds of turn-in programs, but some take a more creative approach. One artist melts down seized guns and turns them into jewelry; there’s a sculptor who turns melted-down guns into public art; and one local government office turns guns into plaques that include inscriptions from school kids about ending gun violence.

My gun is now a piece of art.

I learned a lot during my month with a gun. I learned that I don’t feel safer and, in fact, I’m not safer with a gun. Whether I was trained or not, my gun was 22 times more likely to be used against me than I was to use it in self-defense.

I felt a huge sense of relief the day I got rid of the gun. I no longer had to worry that my teenagers or their friends would use my gun when I wasn’t home. I didn’t have to worry that I would be in a situation where I would make a choice about taking another life. I didn’t have to worry that my gun would be stolen out of my car and then used to murder someone.

After the Ms. magazine posting, most of the angry comments directed at me were about not obtaining any training. But then, the entire point of the experiment was to do the legal minimum, and Washington state doesn’t require it. In my opinion, the guy at the store shouldn’t have been allowed to let me buy the gun without mandatory training. The government shouldn’t have let me get a permit to carry a concealed weapon without mandatory training.

But they did. And each year, millions of guns are purchased by someone with no training.

It’s a convenient fantasy that anyone carrying a gun will stop a shooting. In late 2009, four cops were sitting in a coffee shop just south of Seattle, all of them fully armed and wearing bulletproof vests. A man walked in and shot and killed them all.

This is America. We have life, liberty, and freedom of expression — and the freedom to own a gun. We can each use those rights how we see fit and periodically discuss them; that’s democracy. Clearly, a lot of Americans will continue to own guns, and a small portion of them won’t have any training because it’s not required — with predictable, tragic consequences.

My experiment was 30 days of my personal experience. I’m just a mom who wanted to see what it felt like. Now I know.

Heidi Yewman is author of “Beyond the Bullet: Personal Stories of Gun Violence Aftermath” (DASH Consulting Inc., March 2009). A longer version of this piece first appeared online at The Daily Beast.