Heidi Yewman fulfilled the bare minimum requirements for gun ownership in America. She didn't take any training or safety classes, because she wasn't legally required to take them. Then she walked around with that gun for a month and wrote about her experiences. I grant you that this is a very gimmicky concept for an article, but it feels as though Yewman got at some truth in the piece. I especially think this paragraph is insightful:

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. It was easier to be at home without the worry and responsibility of being “the good guy with the gun.” My awareness of looming tragedy was abundant. If I had to pull the trigger, my life, the person I shot, both of our families, and all who witnessed it would be changed forever.

The few times I've held a gun, the world suddenly became a video game, or a movie. It adds a hyperactive drama to life that I don't believe to be very healthy, one in which you could at any moment become the hero (or villain) of a perilous situation. Everyone is a potential attacker, every moment could bring with it a tragic accident. Everything is something to fear. It's no way to live.