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I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about why he had a baseball bat in the back of his car.

"For protection," he said.

I think I've been away from Tennessee for too long. I know that San Francisco isn't the safest place in the world (although Japan might very well be), but I rarely thought about violence while I was there. Walking home late at night I would often be afraid that someone would snatch my purse, but I can count on one hand the number of times I thought about being killed. I didn't know anyone that owned a gun. And except for the occasional can of pepper spray, I didn't know anyone that carried a weapon of any kind.

Being back here is strange because everyone I know is at least conscious of physical violence, if not downright scared of it constantly. I know more gun owners than I care to admit. People carry baseball bats in their backseats for protection. It's a different mentality. We're brought up to be surrounded by weapons, tools whose sole purpose is to cause harm to other people. It's not the guns themselves that bother me, it's the reasons that people have them. I'm not saying it's wrong to want to protect yourself. I'm just saying that I hate that we even have to think that way.

The Tennessee legislature just passed a law that says it is now legal for people to carry concealed weapons into restaurants. Public places that serve alcohol, that cater to families with children. Why? So people can protect themselves against the criminal element who carry their pistols everywhere apparently. I wasn't aware that shoot-outs at Chuck E. Cheese were common enough to require such wild-west-type legislation. I'm mistaken about a lot of things these days.

Until my friend told me about the baseball bat in his backseat, I never considered owning a weapon. I never viewed anything in my house as a weapon (except for rolled up newspapers. Cockroaches must be stopped!). This morning I dropped a cast iron skillet while doing the dishes. The first thought that ran through my head was "If someone were robbing me, I could bust open their skull with that thing."