ArcaMax

"I've seen plenty of guys die with a gun in their hand."

A guy older than I was said that to me in a bar maybe 25 years ago. He was almost, but not quite, drunk, and we were talking about the number of friends I had who kept a gun to repel burglars, or to defeat the hordes of Black Americans who would one day attack their suburb or, if necessary, to fight off "the government."

And the older guy was wearing a dark blue suit because he was a manager in a large hospital, and he'd been in Vietnam at the age of 20, and now he was in a bar drinking mid-priced bourbon whiskey with me because I was the only other person in the place.

"It's a gun," he said. "It's not a magic wand."

And he left, sober enough to drive, and he lived close anyway, and the next day he went to work screwing around with union grievances, and ordering more toner, and going to meetings in conference rooms where the table was light brown wood and the chairs had black seats and backs, and were constructed of chrome tubing.

Alex Pretti, shot to death in Minnesota, had a gun. He even had extra ammunition.

Despite that, when the government came for him, they killed him, and they killed him ugly, and they killed him fast, and they killed him in the street, which is not how white people with jobs are supposed to die, not in America.

Not if they have guns.

Oh, America! How many of you have stood in front of the full-length mirror in the bedroom and practiced your fast draw? It was a Saturday morning, and your wife was at the grocery store, buying low-sodium chicken broth, and you were facing down imaginary evil next to a bed covered with a patchwork duvet your wife bought from Amaon.com.

"I don't want to kill you," you said in a steady voice, while your wife's perfume bottles looked on from her dresser, "but I will if I have to."

A big part of a man's internal life is built around fantasies of self-defense, dreams of defiance, scenarios of anonymous sex with much younger women who do not get pregnant, and playing sports professionally. It's a pleasant fantasy life, and it makes it easier to spend your work life driving a soda truck in Omaha.

If your wife knows anything about your fantasy life, and she probably does, she leaves it alone. After all, you've got a job.

What women fantasize about, men don't know, and that is a very good thing for men. If you knew your wife's fantasies, you wouldn't be able to drive the truck or shoot the gun. You'd just cry all day.

Alex Pretti had a gun, and it didn't help at all.

He was outnumbered, and he didn't say, "They only sent five of you?" and then draw his gun and lay them down in the street, full of holes.

Instead, they grabbed him, held him down and shot him in the head, and the bullets went into his head like they were going into a rotten cantaloupe because that's how shooting someone works.

The fantasy in the bedroom mirror never goes that far.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.