The six of us drove out to a tree farm that belonged to one of Pony’s friends, and there we shot up rocks with a vast assortment of handguns and assault rifles. The girlfriend sprayed a meadow with bullets from an Uzi, shouting, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” then fell over in her high heels. Pony had brought some kind of machine gun mounted on a flatbed truck, and the men shot tracer bullets as long as my hand.

One of those bullets ricocheted off a rock and deflected into the mountain beside us. About 10 minutes later we saw smoke. Five of us crossed the field with a single shovel and headed toward the flame while the girlfriend waited in the car. Of all the stupid things I’ve done in my life, nothing comes close to running into the woods to chase a fire in the middle of a hot, dry summer. With every flame I stepped on, I was reminded that shooting a gun wasn’t fun or productive. It imperiled my safety rather than insuring it.

When my father retired from the police department, he and my stepmother moved out of Los Angeles. They decided the guns wouldn’t come along. My sister’s children were young at the time, and she didn’t want the guns in her house, so I said they could come to me. I called Pony and asked if he would keep the guns for me until I figured out what to do with them. Pony had gun safes the size of walk-in freezers. But five years went by and then 10, and I never went back to pick them up. I realized that a gun was not capable of making me feel sentimental, even the guns my father had carried for 33 years.

Chekhov said: “You must not put a loaded gun on the stage if no one intends to use it. You must not just promise.” I am the exception to the rule. In all my years of growing up among firearms, there were never any accidents, which is not the same as saying there was never any harm.

My father never shot anyone. In 33 years on the force he never once unholstered his gun. My stepfather never shot anyone either, though I saw him point his gun at people in a state of white-hot rage.

It was my sister’s friend Betty Carter’s father who was shot. He was the nicest man. He ran the country market where we all used to hang out after school. Someone came in to rob the store in the middle of the day, and after Mr. Carter handed over the money, the man with the gun walked to the door, then he turned back around, shot him and killed him. Betty was standing there when it happened.

Don’t ever believe the old saw about guns not killing people. They do and they will, again and again. Guns shoot children, parents, siblings, lovers, neighbors, co-workers, strangers and friends, in error and in fury. This will happen until we decide it should stop, which would mean getting rid of not only the AK-47s but the pretty little silver .22s as well. All of them. No one ever asks for that, maybe because it feels prudent to not enrage the many people who own guns, but the right to not get shot takes precedence over the right to bear arms.