Tony

When Tony was ten years old his father bought him his first toy gun. “It looked real back in the day. Back in the late sixties and the seventies the gun was looking absolutely real. One day we were riding in the car and I pointed the gun over at the man in the other car. My mama beat my butt. She told my dad, I remember this distinctly, she said, ‘do not buy him any more guns.’ My father never bought me any more guns after that.”

Although he wasn’t allowed any more toy guns, Tony had exposure to a real firearm that his father kept in his bedroom. “When he used to go to work, I used to go in there and grab the shotgun and play with it. I never fired it though.” As a teenager, Tony enlisted in the national guard. “That is when I started really learning about weapons.” Home from basic training, he started using drugs, beginning a long road of addiction that he continued to struggle with through his career as a guardsman, including tours in Iraq and Kuwait. When he returned from Iraq in 2008, Tony struggled to reintegrate into society. “I was scared of everything...I was paranoid of people.” He began carrying a shotgun in his car.

One evening, while using drugs, Tony “started hearing stuff. I started hearing voices. I thought somebody was coming in my mother’s house, so I reached in the front closet and got the shotgun. I set it down on my foot. I forgot the safety was off. I leaned to the right, boom. I shot my toe off.” 

The incident and recovery were traumatic for Tony. “I was afraid of guns for a minute. I did not want to touch a shotgun. I did not want to touch anything. I had to go through therapy. I had to go through pain. My walking was off for a while. My balance was off because I shot my big toe. I kind of laughed at myself because I was in the military for 25 years and never had a misfire. Never. When it came to guns, my whole life changed.”  Although he still keeps a small firearm in his home for protection, “I do not play with guns.”