The world knows me as a facilitator of peace processes, a professor of conflict resolution, an author of peace training materials.   The world doesn’t know this: I love guns.

As far back as I can remember, guns hung on the wall above the well in the pump house on the family farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where I grew up. Carrying a 12 gauge shotgun down rows of corn on a chill Saturday morning in October, our terrier on the prowl and my teenage senses tuned to the hunt, thrilled me. With the deadly power I carried at the ready I could bring home a pheasant or rabbit if I was quick enough. I felt grownup, part of the world of men.

So in 1993, in a remote training camp in the high veld above Pretoria, on the third day of a course in conflict resolution I was leading for police readying for the new South Africa, when a couple of smiling officers came during morning break and asked if I’d like to go out on the firing range, I instantly said yes. 

I wasn’t sure exactly what they had in mind, but when I jumped into their van after lunch, a sprawling pile of weapons and ammunition covering the floor left little doubt. Three police trainers grinned at me knowingly, like boys in a toy store.  My heart was pounding.

We started with rubber bullets, in two varieties.  One was a heavy slug of rubber an inch and a half in diameter and over 3 inches long.  I had seen these fired at protesters and witnessed a colleague take a direct hit a year ago as a peace monitor working a chaotic line between police and protesters.  She limped into the office the next day with an angry welt on her thigh the size of a saucer.   Centered in the dark purple was a perfectly round, pure white circle larger than a quarter, exactly the size of the slugs I was now firing.