Times are changing again, perhaps for the worse • Michigan Advance

I don’t own a gun.

I never wanted that.

There are about 49,000 reasons why I don’t. That’s the number of people killed by firearms in the United States in 2021, the most recent year for which complete data are available.

Research shows that simply having a gun in the home dramatically increases the likelihood that someone will be killed or commit suicide. In fact, more children than ever are being killed by guns, often unintentionally, and The Trace reports that people who buy guns for self-defense would be much safer if they simply called the police or ran away.

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But this isn’t an article about gun control. It’s about why I’ve been thinking about owning a gun in the first place lately.

I am concerned about the future of our country and the safety of my family. The two are not mutually exclusive.

One of the things that worries me is the fact that 70 percent of Republicans (or about a third of the American electorate) still insist that their likely presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump, was cheated in the 2020 election.

He wasn’t. There is absolutely no evidence for that. It’s a vicious lie that Trump continues to spread almost daily.

Nevertheless, national polls show that Trump and Biden are neck and neck in the race for the White House.

Intellectually, I have come to the conclusion that Biden will win in November, our democracy will survive, and Trump will ultimately end up in prison – where he belongs.

Still, I ask myself, “What if I’m wrong?” I was wrong in 2016. It could happen again.

If Biden wins, in light of the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, will Trump’s MAGA supporters accept the result or revolt? If Trump wins, will he make good on his promise to exact revenge? And will his supporters once again resort to violence to keep him in power, this time for good?

Like many other people, all of this makes me wonder: If Trump wins, should my family and I stay in the United States or flee abroad?

I’m not alone in my opinion. People who make a living helping Americans live abroad say business is booming.

Patricia Casaburi, CEO of Global Citizen Solutions, an upscale migration consulting firm based in London, told CNN commentator David A. Andelman: “As of 2020, 5% of our clients were Americans; today it’s 70%.”

And according to Gallup poll results, at the end of George W. Bush’s eight-year term, 11 percent of respondents wanted to leave the United States permanently. When Barack Obama was president, that number dropped slightly to 10 percent. But in 2019, halfway through Trump’s presidency (even before the pandemic rocked our economy and killed 1.2 million people in the United States), 16 percent said they would consider leaving the country permanently.

Of course, most people won’t go through with this, but if Trump wins the election, the ranks of our deeply disillusioned fellow Americans will surely grow even larger.

I had been thinking about this for a while when the subject came up in a recent conversation with my brother Ruben, a proud Vietnam veteran whose blood boils when Trump’s name is mentioned. My brother half-jokingly insists that he will become a recluse if the former president returns to the White House.

“I will stay and fight,” I told him, even though people like me would likely be Trump’s targets.

As a vocal critic of Trump, I am one of those people the former president calls “enemies of the people.”

On the contrary, I believe my views reflect those of most Americans who understand that a second Trump presidency could destroy, or at least severely injure, our democracy and lead to the persecution of virtually anyone who openly disagrees with him.

Not to mention that as a playwright, I often explore themes related to social justice in my work, and from a decidedly liberal point of view. I once wrote a satire that had the word “Trumpifornication” in the title. Do you know what I mean?

I’m not a Democrat, but I voted for Biden in 2020 and plan to vote for him again. I guess if the choice is between a rational, experienced, politically centrist octogenarian and a self-proclaimed wannabe dictator and newly minted felon who was also found guilty of sexual assault and massive economic fraud while also being accused of stealing top secret documents and trying to overthrow our government, call me crazy, but I’ll vote for the geezer from Scranton every time.

Speaking of targets, did I mention that I am brown, Latino, the son of an immigrant from Mexico, and someone who is not afraid to tell the truth: that the vast and overwhelming majority of immigrants who come to the United States only want a better life and have absolutely no evil intentions?

I could go on, but basically everything about me suggests that I, like millions of us, could become the target of his wrath or the wrath of his increasingly radical and violent supporters should Trump return to the White House.

And that brings us back to the issue of guns. Should I buy one to protect myself and my family from the MAGA cult?

I really don’t want that, because I believe this country would be a much better place if far fewer people owned far fewer guns.

At the moment my “weapon of choice” is my keyboard, my voice and my ideas, which I will never let go of.

Yet I am reminded of how, during the Civil War, fellow Americans, neighbors, and even siblings took up arms and slaughtered each other by the thousands over whether whites had a “state right” to rule over blacks.

I am not saying that civil war or widespread political violence is imminent – ​​at least not yet – but I do believe that “times are a-changing” and that this time things could get a lot worse before they get better.

In the meantime, I am still against buying a gun.

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