I didn’t, in that moment, understand that what makes a gun real or fake in the imagination ransacked by fear isn’t always the color of it, or the shape of it. Sometimes, it is the body of the person holding it, or the direction that they choose to point it in. What my parents were trying to teach wasn’t a lesson about weapons, but a lesson of the body and the threats it carries. We all have a right to keep the people we love safe.
