Wrestling with 'Rights' In The Grocery Aisle

The last time I saw military style assault rifles in person was in Israel. I remember them being present in shopping malls, in places of prayer, on street corners. I remember that it was heartbreaking to experience this as ordinary—guns being part of the mundane was shattering to me. 

I live in Washington, D.C., a place that also has military style assault rifles, now. I see them in similar places: at restaurants, on street corners, even in the park amongst the trees. 

What does it do to the psyche to understand that a militia is a necessity for safety? 

To somehow train ourselves to understand that a weapon of mass murder slung around a shoulder in the produce aisle is there to make you feel protected? I feel like I have a right to know the truth, though: Does that weapon make it more or less likely that I’ll make it home to eat my newly purchased oranges? 

Let me intentionally rephrase: what right do I have to know the truth?

What right do I have at all? 

Do I even have a right to the oranges? 

What even is a right? 

I think that's what the guns are for. Here in D.C., there in Israel, maybe everywhere, they exist as part of a system of safeguarding individuals from encountering the “other.” They are meant to differentiate—they are meant to prompt a question about who has a right to move through communities, institutions, and yes, even grocery stores and the produce aisles within them. I think my question is what side I’m on—if the guns are safeguarding one from the “other,” am I the one or am I the other? Does that change? I’d rather not choose.  

I have so many questions about how we function in a society where there is so much fear that weapons meant to murder actually make some feel safer. How did we get here? Where are we going? How will these times live in our DNA? Who will study this time we are living in and write the winning thesis entitled: Guns Don’t Solve Problems?

For now, as I move through D.C. with all my questions, including the salient and unanswered one about whether I have basic rights, I do know something is true. I will need oranges, and the gun in the produce aisle will not make me feel safer shopping for them. 

And my feelings of safety are valid; they deserve to be considered in the equation of how we safeguard anyone. My safety is not more important than anyone else's, and no one else's is more important than mine. Not when I’m in the U.S., not when I’m in Israel. 

I’m still working on deciding what a right is. What will my working definition be in a world that cannot seem to achieve it for really anyone?

I do know that when my definition is considered final, it will include safety: literally for all, at the expense of no one, and it will not involve guns as a fact of life in our communities.

This piece was written as part of JWA’s Pomegranate Writing Fellowship for Jewish Women of Color.