“Sag Harbor” by Colsen Whitehead (pgs. 234-329)
During my additional research, I found that the time frame this novel took place as in the 1980’s??? I know during those times it was normal for a young boy to carry a weapon; however, I don’t recall them shooting at each other in the streets for fun…MAYBE HURTING GAME! NOT PEOPLE!! One night Benji is struck in the face by a pellet. Hopefully, this taught him and the others a lesson about playing with dangerous weapons.
Unfortunately, I am having a hard time getting into this novel! We have read a lot of books in this short period of time, and this book is my least favorite book compared to Girl, Interrupted and The Complete Persepolis.
aelamblog 
Where do you get the impression that it was normal for boys to carry guns in the 1980s? No more or no less than any era, really. Look at that crazy guy in Aurora. I will say a lot of white folks did freak out because there was gun violence at early rap shows, but that had as much to do with bad organization by the promoters as much as anything else.
Randy and the other boys are playing at being tough guys by getting in a BB gun fight, but we saw how poorly that went. They are posing as something that most of them will not become.
Still, though, there’s that one bit at the end of that chapter where the grown Benji is talking about that time, looking back: “For some of us, those were our first guns, a rehearsal. I’d like to say, all these years later, now that one of us is dead and another paralyzed from the waist down from actual bullets–drug-related, as the papers put it–that the game wasn’t so innocent after all. But it’s not true. We always fought for real. Only the nature of the fight changed. It always will. As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless.” (191)