I recently had the honor of sharing my story in Newsweek‘s My Turn column. The essay is called “I Carried a Gun for a Month to Understand the People I Feared the Most.”
It’s a deeply personal piece that explores what happened when I decided to step into the world of gun owners—not as an activist, but as a woman trying to understand the people I was most afraid of. That month changed me in ways I couldn’t have imagined—and the story is one I share in my memoir, Dumb Girl.
Writing about fear, empathy, and transformation is never easy, but it’s how I process what I’ve lived through as I try to make sense of the world around me.
You can read the full essay here.
I’m deeply grateful to Newsweek for giving this story a wider audience. I hope it encourages readers to look beyond fear and toward understanding, even when it’s uncomfortable.
