Gun Culture is SO Close!

A couple nights ago I was awakened by an argument outside my open window. It was my neighbor shouting at some guy in a car, apparently from work. Shortly the car sped off and I could hear another voice, of a woman calmly introducing herself to the man as the one who lives in the next apartment (sharing a wall). She must have asked him to put it down, as he replied "It's ok, it's pointed at the ground." It was then I saw in the dim light the assault rifle he held by his side. "I'm glad this is a 'Stand Your Ground' state", he added. She then retreated to her apartment and I stood amazed at her courage. I stood there wondering how much danger we were really in (What if the car didn't speed away, or pulled his own gun, or the woman surprised him or the guy's shoelace broke right then??) 

I wish I could say this is a unique situation, but the fact is that I've experienced a number of such incidents within 100 feet of my home or studio over the last 30 years. The first was when a kid living in a house behind my studio brought a friend to show a gun and accidentally shot him in the head... A few years later I had to call 911 when I saw a man with a rifle get out of a car and approach the door of a neighbor friend... Later I got up one morning to see a cop with a rifle hiding behind a tree in my front yard. I quietly opened the door and whispered, "What's going on?" "Hopefully no shooting, get back!" was the reply. Turns out he and his SWAT team, swarming my yard, were able to extract a guy next door who had a host of guns and who'd apparently threatened a family member. And all this is ignoring the incidents of woundings and killings of friends that I didn't witness.

I don't live in a dangerous neighborhood. It's a rather small town and I rarely go out. So is this common, that people around our nation often come into close contact with angry people with guns that we just never hear about because there's not blood enough to make the news?

I look with some longing at such very cute stories like the Japanese man who tried to rob a store with a lighter! Other advanced nations seem to be able to survive without armed citizens, let alone with assault weapons. How much more healthy is their mental state if they don't have to worry about getting shot? As for me I can never again go back to my pre-knowledge innocence of NOT thinking of the current mental state of my neighbor with the assault rifle.