Once, when I was twelve years old, I took a train from the east coast of the United States. United States a Seattle after visiting relatives. During the trip we did not cross the border with the United States, but we crossed a special area of 100 miles (161 km) that starts at the border. This area is the command area of the Muga Patrol and, therefore, at one station, some agents got into the train. At the time he was a Mexican American family in the café wagon. An agent came to see us and asked me if I was a U.S. citizen. I said yes. Then he turned his attention to the family, whose skin seemed darker than mine. He asked them the same question and when they answered him yes, the agent asked them to show them the passports. Anxious as impatient, they rushed to look for the documentation they had in their suitcases.

The conversation suddenly stopped and I went back to my bank. A woman in East Asia was seen several rows beyond. Some agents turned to him to ask him for the passport, but it didn't seem that the woman could understand anything they were asked about. He merely repeated the word “paisano” without understanding anything.

Seeing that the situation was going on too long, I got up and explained to the agents that the woman was not able to understand her questions and that she had seen some earlier stops on the train. My intention was to reassure the situation, but instead the youngest agent turned suddenly and began to unload his pistol. I don't know if I thought I was going to get it all out of the way, because her older partner, whose eyes were overly open, had grabbed her from the arm and had quickly taken her out of the train. The woman stared at me, shocked.

That was my first contact with the armed police in my life.

A few years later, on the occasion of the summer break, I returned to the United States. One day, my friends, colleagues from Europe, came to visit me in a quiet neighborhood on my outskirts. In order not to make noise at home, towards one in the evening we went to my childhood school patio to drink something and to chat. We ate fast food and drank some cheap whisky, calmly, to have a good time together without getting too drunk.

At about three o'clock in the morning an alarm sounded, but as it seemed to be the alarm of a neighboring car, we didn't take much notice of it until we saw the police lights approaching. Before I could escape, three cops, with their lanterns and pistols in their hand, approached us as in a series of pecoras. Even if we were behind a building, they would soon meet us, so I decided to leave before the others. At least I was from here, unlike my friends. With my hands up, I slowly moved forward between the contradictory shouts of the police “Raise your hands!” and “leave the bottle on the ground!” It had three charged pistols and bright lights in front of it. I left the bottle on the floor, and I explained to you with as much peace of mind as I could that I had behind two people who would be grateful if they didn't shoot me, please. We were lying on the ground for 20 minutes and with our hands in the head, while the police searched their database for our names.

After verifying that we were not thieves, we were informed that being in the school area during the night was illegal, even more so drinking in it. They explained that we could stop there if we wanted to. In his opinion, we were “lucky” because if we were less than twenty-one years old, they would take us in their cars.

***

I grew up in that neighborhood, and those cops would stop me once or twice a month since I was thirteen, to ask me about my address or to ask me for identification. What I liked the most was going out with my friends at night, and in the United States. You're suspected of walking down the street at night. In fact, it was the second time I was picked up by the police officers in the department.

There are hardly any crimes in this area, but yet every police car has a shotgun and a semi-automatic assault rifle. In addition, each agent carries a semi-automatic pistol, a taser, an irritating spray and a taser. In a municipality of about 25,000 people, half a dozen agents work all night. I have been registered, I have been forced to sit against the helmets, with my hands under the back and, in general, I have been persecuted several times. And I was just a cis white man from a rich neighborhood.

Finally, around four o'clock in the morning, the agents gave us permission to leave. They were disappointed because we weren't a gang of offenders who wanted to steal the school desks, but at the same time they were offended for not having stopped us. Slowly, we went home, we knew perfectly well that after graduating from the world that was waiting for us, it was going to be like this.

***

This is life in a country where anyone can carry a firearm. When I'm asked why I live in Euskal Herria, one of the first answers is that I live without fear of being shot down the street. Most people think it's a joke. Not much less.

Here I'm not afraid to get a shot because I've bumped into what I didn't need in any bar-zulo. I know that in a traffic control, the police won't shoot me if I push my arm in search of my wallet. I know I'm not going to be shot in a mass murder by an assault rifle at the hand of an extreme right-wing conspiracy.

The leader of the ultra-right party Santiago Abascal Vox defended in the last election campaign the right of citizens of the Spanish state to have weapons to “protect themselves from robbers at home”. I am well aware of this kind of reasoning. On the one hand, this idea would have to seem reasonable in itself: to be able to defend itself. But let's talk clear. Firstly, in the Spanish State, the murder rate is extremely low. About 300 people are killed every year, 30 percent less than three decades earlier, and this is one of the lowest rates in the world. 50% fewer people than thirty years ago are victims of all kinds of crimes. Because if self-defense is the main reason, there should be less desire to have guns than ever before.

However, that is not the basis for the thinking of an extreme right-wing party, the National Front. Such empirical arguments would not convince any of them, according to American experience. Vox's reasoning is emotional: he should have the right to use every possible force to defend himself and his family. I would like to confront this idea rather than enter into a sterile discussion about the types of crimes, for what is really meant by that is that, in my house, I am the all-powerful authority and I have the right to kill another man, if I suspect he may threaten my authority.

If you're realistic, your assets are worth less than a life and you're probably not going to die with a thief -- surprisingly, most burglars know it's better to get into the houses when they're empty. They are therefore only intended to uphold the principle that the idea itself hides. In other words, they want to protect their ego. Vox is not in favor of self-defense, but is in favor of the right to die to protect one's sense of power.

Thus, it is not surprising that as the homicide rate in the Spanish state decreases, the number of femicides remains the same. Nor is it surprising that while right-wing men defend the right to kill other people to protect their own ego, they find men who kill women, as in most cases they felt injured by their ego.

We cannot allow men who wanted to kill other human beings to feel powerful by deploying weapons for society. Although in part this debate is not of great importance — because according to current law almost anyone can easily get a weapon — the fact that there are more weapons has a serious and undeniable influence on police action. When the police fear being shot, they prefer to shoot first and then ask the other way around.

The more weapons are dispersed, the more frequent the police weapons will be. Whatever the kind of situation we are referring to, any policeman could say that at that time “he felt his life was in danger” because the other moved his arm this way or otherwise. Any interaction with people would be considered a matter of life and death. Monthly or intensive traffic controls. Do not go through the step of cebravida, dead or alive. If the neighbor has complained about the noise of his house or if the alarm of his home sounds unintentionally, a life-and-death situation can be created. Usually, kill us and live them.

This is the real danger of the spread and normalization of weapons, the detriment of the rhetoric of “legitimate self-defence”. If anyone can carry a gun, the police internalize that people are a dangerous enemy and start to be considered soldiers. Then there is a situation similar to that we have in the United States, where the police kill more than a thousand people and injure thousands more each year with firearms. This explains why I may find myself in front of three guns in my childhood school backyard, even though in the environment there is almost no crime. How can cops seriously tell me that I'm happy to go free?

I sincerely believe that there are real arguments in favour of the right to have arms. However, Santiago Abascal’s argument is not one of them. This is an argument based on the fragile ego of man and it is clear the consequences it would have: feminicides, suicides and terrible risk in any interaction with the police. It is true that the debate on arms and self-determination is much deeper, but, in this case, I would like to underline one simple thing: today, although Vox’s cry is limited to keeping weapons at home, this is only the beginning. What the American left-wing media are saying about Trump can also be applied here: we have to take these extreme right-wing groups seriously, but not literally. We have to look at their attitude and their discourse carefully, but we do not believe that they are pointing to the real objectives they have. At first, they want to have guns at home; soon, with those weapons, they want to patrol the borders or bring them to view from our streets. One will necessarily bring the other.

***

In 2002, in the same dystopian and peaceful environment of the neighborhood in the suburbs where he lived, a man stole a bank with a piece of paper. The man was killed by a police officer who shot him from behind. Although it does not appear in the newspaper library, I remember that at the time I read how two agents shot him thirty times. This means that, during the shooting, there was a pause for the recharge of the weapons.

In 2014, a kitchen student who had committed a brutal crime was shot and killed by a police officer after a bank was stolen with a fake weapon. They said the police had done nothing but protect themselves. There are no witnesses to the murder.

All of these shootings took place in a community where about 25,000 people live with cash and white money. All of them have had the two agents of the Bilbao Municipal Police as protagonists. Throughout my adolescence, I lived in a subtle but constant tumult of violence.

During those years, nobody I know wondered if it really is worth taking a thief's life for about a thousand dollars. Is there anything worthy of being shot by a car right in front of the houses? The truth is that there is only one answer: the ego of a proud man.

After all, if we confuse self-defence with arrogance, the consequences will be felt by all.