What If We Bought a Gun? – Bearing Arms

America’s gun owners are becoming an increasingly diverse bunch, and the old stereotypes about who owns firearms and why are looking more outdated by the day. That changing landscape is now finding its way onto the stage in San Francisco.

A theater group named the San Francisco Neo-Futurists are staging a new production called We Bought a Gun!, which follows a Bay Area couple navigating the fears, frustrations, and complicated emotions that come with becoming first-time gun owners. In a city where politicians have spent decades making it harder for law-abiding residents to exercise their Second Amendment rights, the premise alone is enough to raise a few eyebrows.

Whether the play treats gun ownership as a legitimate choice or an exercise in liberal anxiety remains to be seen, but I’ve got to give the theater company credit for tackling a subject that’s downright taboo in some San Francisco circles.

In fact, it’s impossible to legally buy a gun in San Francisco, because there are no gun shops operating inside the city limits. High Bridge Arms was the last shop in the city, and it closed its doors in 2015 because conducting business had simply become untenable after 63 years in operation. 

So, are gun owners held up as people to be mocked, misunderstood by progressives, or simply potential neighbors, friends, or family? San Francisco Chronicle theater critic Lily Janiak had this to say about the performance. 

In “We Bought a Gun!” — a full-length play from a company that mounts 30 very short works in 60 minutes every Friday and Saturday night — performers Willie Caldwell and the mononymous Jeb don’t come right out and explain why they, a contemporary Bay Area couple, purchased a firearm. Instead, they initially create a sense of menace in the air, a chronic, low-grade panic.

They know the statistics, the pair say in the show, about the increased likelihood of homicide and suicide in homes with guns. At the same time, they live in a country where guns seem almost natural.

“Almost.” 

I guess that’s one way to describe the roughly 100 million Americans who own firearms. Then again, in a city where the last gun shop closed more than a decade ago, perhaps gun ownership really does seem like some strange cultural phenomenon that needs to be explored through interpretive theater.

Still, I’m intrigued by the premise, and particularly by the fact that the couple’s decision to buy a gun apparently isn’t presented as something that can be explained away with a simple political label. Even though I suspect there’s an anti-gun message at the heart of the production, there’s at least a possibility that, whatever other politics it might bring to the table, it recognizes that all kinds of people buy firearms for all kinds of reasons, and those reasons don’t always fit neatly into the assumptions that their friends, neighbors, or even family members might have about gun ownership.

For some, it’s a response to a terrifying encounter or a growing concern about personal safety. For others, it’s about learning a new skill or simply exercising a right they’ve never given much thought to before.

And sometimes, buying that first gun changes the way people think about the Second Amendment itself. It’s one thing to support restrictive gun laws in the abstract. It’s another to discover firsthand just how many hoops the government expects you to jump through before you can exercise a constitutional right. That’s especially true in  California, and I’m curious if We Bought a Gun! gets into much detail about the state’s 10-day waiting period, mandatory safety certificate, background checks on ammunition, and other measures aimed at legal gun owners. 

I haven’t seen We Bought a Gun!, and I’m not going to pretend to know whether the production ultimately challenges the audience’s assumptions or reinforces them. But if it gets even a few San Franciscans to consider why their otherwise perfectly ordinary neighbors might choose to own a firearm, I’d say that’s a good thing. 

Who knows? Maybe someone in the audience will even decide to buy a gun of their own. They’ll just have to leave San Francisco to do it.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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