My Eye-Opening Experience Visiting "The Hood"

It was a very different time in my life, I came from suburbia, and a loving home with two parents. I had no inkling of what people call "the hood" was like. Slang for "the neighborhood" the hood is basically a neighborhood with a high concentration of low to no income homes and crime. I had befriended a coworker, and let's just say at the time we both enjoyed the same herbal remedies. One day, he invited me to go with him to his brother's house in the hood to aquire that remedy.


When we arrived, I was immediately greeted as my friend and coworker vouched for me as "not a snitch." I immediately saw why this was necessary to ensure my safety, as there were more firearms than I could count scattered around the house, and huge bags of herbal remedies being prepared for distribution. Whether my friend's brother had acquired these firearms legally was very questionable, as some of his rifles and even handguns had barrel magazines like the one pictured above. This was an impressive collection, in every corner, everywhere you could have a gun sitting, there was a gun. Even the top of the refrigerator was littered with handguns and a rifle with a bipod.

Needless to say, it was an eye-opening experience for me. I realized there was an entire world out there that had no regard for the legal society's arbitrary rules about guns and substances. It gave me a huge understanding that most people lack, especially those with stable upbringings and a life above the poverty line.

I stayed at this house for over an hour while my friend talked with his brother, and got to know the general attitude about law and politics they held. It's no surprise people that live in areas with high crime rates would rather arm themselves than depend on police for protection, especially when police are so reluctant to even enter those areas. It made me realize the only people I knew that advocated gun control had probably lived very sheltered lives, blissfully unaware of the threat from gangsters and criminals in certain communities.

I have never really advocated for gun control myself, since I had wonderful history teachers that made it clear it was a tool of tyrants, and I had been using guns for hunting and target practice since I was a child. However, this experience helped me to understand why people would want gun control. I believe they hold those beliefs because they have never been around guns, and certainly have never lived in an environment where their survival may very well depend on one.