By Agya K. Aning The Cut

Last August, only a week after Onnie Brown had moved into a rust-colored, ranch-style home in Phoenix, Arizona, a stranger started banging on her door, looking for someone named Ricky. “Ain’t no damn Ricky here,” she retorted to the scraggly white man.

Brown, a petite, 43-year-old single mother with a wide smile, knows how to handle uncertain situations, ones that could veer toward violence. Years ago, she had worked as a nurse in a maximum-security prison, honing a confidence verging on bravado and the ability to read people. “I wasn’t shaking. I wasn’t trembling,” she says.

Resting in her pocket was the .22-caliber pistol she’d grabbed from her desk. This was the first time she had armed herself against potential danger since buying the handgun four years earlier.

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