I was standing on a friend’s front porch smoking a cigarette when I heard the first two pops. Initially, I thought it was a couple of kids blowing off a few firecrackers. In between the second and the third shot, my friend Joey grabbed my arm and said, "It’s a gun, get down." His eyes were wide and wild. In seconds I was kissing the peeling paint of Joey’s front porch choosing lead paint over hot lead.

As the fourth and fifth shot rang loud and clear I heard a car slowly driving by. Clearly there was someone shooting in our general direction. Why is this happening? Why are we getting shot at? Is it because we’re white in a black neighborhood? Is it just random dumb luck? Did someone want Joey dead?

As suddenly as the spray of gunfire started, it ceased. Joey was up and inside the house in a blur. Adrenal forced me up onto me feet, and I headed for the door. Then I heard the popping sound of gunfire again. I feared that I would be hit in the back. I fell to the floor for a second time putting my hands over my head curling up into a fetal position. I felt helpless. I heard glass shatter in the house as I squeezed my knees tighter toward my chest. I was doing all I could do to make my 5 foot 11 inch frame invisible; far from an easy task. Did a bullet make it into the house? Where was Joey? At this point I was convinced someone was trying to kill us.

Finally I heard the car screech off and the bullets ceased for good. I ran into the house where Joey was on the floor. "Stay down," he said. He had turned off all the lights and we were crawling on hands and knees. We found what seemed like a safe corner away from windows and called 911.

Within minutes the police were in front of Joey’s house. I quickly learned Joey had knocked over a glass candle and as far as I knew the house was untouched. The cops were blocking off the street off with yellow police tape and searching the ground with flashlights for bullet shells. Several neighbors had gone out into the street to see what was going on. Apparently we weren’t the only ones to have called 911.

As the officer approached us a voice on the other end of his speaker microphone attached to his collar reported, "The victim has called in. She claims the assailant, her ex-boyfriend, was firing a gun at her. He was last seen on the corner of NE Alberta and Garfield and he is suspected to be headed to his mothers house located at XXXX."

So we were not being shot at after all. We we’re simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unfortunately that wrong place happened to be Joey’s front porch on a Saturday night in quiet NE Portland neighborhood. After a drinking a few beers and ironically watching a FOX show on "Snipers", we had gone outside to take a few nicotine drags and before we knew it, we were caught in the crossfire of random violence.

Hours later the adrenal rush I experienced from the fear of getting hit by bullets left me drained. I felt like a limp noodle. All of my energy had been sucked dry. I never knew how close I actually was to getting hit by stray gunfire, but it was close enough to make me believe, momentarily, that my life was seriously threatened.

In the eight year that I’ve lived in NE Portland I’ve never been brushed with an act of random violence. I don’t consider NE Portland a violent or unsafe place despite its reputation as such. Yes, P-town has had a recent upswing in shootings in the past year and it has had its fair share of violent crimes, but for the most part I consider Portland’s 125 square miles filled with 665,000 people to be a pretty wholesome place.

Cities usually base their safety track record on homicide rates because unlike rape or other violent crimes, homicides rarely go unreported. Portland’s murder rate hasn’t fluctuated much in the past three years. Gang-related shootings pushed Portland’s homicide count to 23 late in 2002. The 30-year low is 22 homicides recorded in 2000 compared to the city’s peak of 70 in 1987, which was the height of Portland gang activity.

One could argue the fluctuation in gun related violence mirrors swings in the economy.

According to Police, drive-by shootings dropped 76 percent from 1996 to1999, during an overall economic boom. As the economy took a nosedive, gang-related shootings rose to 74 in 2002. Of the 74-gang shootings in Portland last year, 29 resulted in injuries, more than double the 13 gang-related shootings with injuries in 2001.

There is also speculation that the real estate boom in Portland has pushed gun violence toward city’s limits and into the edges of lower income homes of suburbia. Portland Police Bureau statistics reveal that gang violence is increasing in the outer east and southeast Portland neighborhoods and spilling over to Gresham and smaller east county cities.

But regardless of economic conditions random gun violence is clearly impossible to predict or control. Last November three homicides from gunfire within the span of six days occurred in Portland city limits. Despite Portland’s low homicide rate, we can’t escape the fact that gun violence occurs in America more than any other country in the world.

In Michael Moore’s recent documentary Bowling for Columbine, Moore explores the issue of violence in America. He sets out to answer the question: "Why do 11,000 people die in America each year at the hands of gun violence?" While Moore takes us on a journey to answer this question, time and time again people are baffled as to why our society seems to be the leader of industrialized murder.

Moore dedicated the film to victims of random gun violence like Herbert Lasean "Sluggo" Cleaves, Jr. One morning in 2001, while standing on a friend’s porch in Flint, MI, Herbert was shot in the stomach in a drive-by shooting. He died soon after at a near by hospital. That could have just as easily been me.

When I said I would write about my drive by shooting experience for this issue of Anvil it was my intention to think of an angle where I could make some profound point. Ever since then I’ve struggled to write this piece because there is no point to random violence. I could argue that America is a violent place because so many people own legal or illegal guns. I could blame the reason for my experience on Americans over indulgence of violent movies and video games or I could just blame the fact that the world is full of ignorant people who believe violence is a justifiable solution.

In my mind these are tired arguments. I’m baffled by my drive-by shooting experience. Why did it happen? What could the potential murder victim have done to be worthy of an early death? What was the shooter thinking firing a gun into darkness in a quiet residential neighborhood? Didn’t he or she realize they could kill an innocent by stander? It makes little sense.

In the end I can only conclude gun violence is as empty as bullet hole. It’s pointless and it solves nothing, which is the saddest crime of all.