When I was a kid, my favorite toy was a Star Wars laser pistol, modeled after the one carried by Han Solo. Concealed within its plastic frame were two C batteries, which lent it a heft that made it seem more powerful and real. Held in my six-year old hands it granted me a sense of confidence and invincibility that was almost intoxicating. I wielded it with ruthless enthusiasm.

Gun violence was an essential feature of imaginary play throughout my childhood. My friends and I were experts in the use of handheld weapons - the more exotic, the better. Armed with crossbows, bazookas, and flamethrowers, we visited death and carnage upon one another without hesitation. We repeatedly died horrible, protracted deaths, clutching our chests as we gasped our final breaths in dramatic re-enactments of the scenes we'd viewed on television or in movies.

We had little or no understanding of real-life tragedy or human suffering, of course. Still, actual violence wasn't something we would have wished upon one another for even a moment. In all forms of our violent childhood play, whether gunfighting or swordplay or martial arts, there was an unspoken, implicit assurance that we had no desire or intention to harm one another.

In addition to my imaginary play, I had ample opportunities to shoot real guns as a youth. I fired revolvers at tree stumps and shotguns at clay pigeons during trips to the countryside with my father's friends, and I spent summers shooting lines of soda cans and apples with .22 rifles on the acreage of a nearby farm. I learned to like guns. There's something about the way the pieces of metal interact to move round to chamber and firing pin to primer that to this day I find highly appealing. To grip such an object in the palm of your hand, and see and hear the contained, channeled force of powerful explosions pressing pieces of lead into distant targets, is an absolute thrill.

As a child and an adult, I've killed thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of video game opponents with virtual firearms. I've taken lives without concern or remorse with nearly every category of weapon imaginable. Enthusiastically. Most of these deaths have been in the name of some honorable cause, but not all - I'll admit to occasionally shooting an unarmed character, simply to see how they react or watch them die. Despite all this, until a few years ago the thought of actually taking another person's life was never a consideration of mine.

At a certain point in my former law enforcement career, I found myself participating in extensive training to qualify to carry a firearm on duty. I spent countless hours on ranges, putting real bullets through pop-up silhouettes, and I stood in dark rooms before wall-size projection screens while I fired a laser-equipped pistol at prerecorded video scenarios. Eventually, I worked my way through mock-ups of real-life events, where I shot at other participants with simulated munitions.

I also spent ample time in classrooms, discussing what it meant to be able to kill, quickly and effectively. The most efficient means of causing death were discussed in clinical terms. I discovered that several of the qualification instructors had been shot at or had shot and killed assailants, and they shared their experiences for training purposes. Each time such a story was related, a hush would fall over the room. There was no pride or enthusiasm in the recounting of such events.

Early in this process I began to have misgivings. Not about qualifying to carry a gun, but about training to kill people. Really kill, real people, even to defend my own life. Though I'd spent countless hours in fantasy gunplay, those acts of imaginary violence I'd committed with my Star Wars pistol, gamepad, or keyboard and mouse hadn't prepared me in the slightest for the mindset required to make the decision to shoot another person.

Despite the fact that I'd looked down the sights of all manner of imaginary firearms, never once flinching before pulling the trigger, the simple act of raising the sights of my real-life Glock and pointing it downrange at a cardboard target took on overwhelming significance. I was preparing for an actual event, not living out a fantasy. Each time I reflexively drew and fired, I was practicing an act designed to end a person's life. For months, I had dreams in which I was confronted with lethal situations and found myself unable to shoot. I confided in some of my coworkers and found that they had experienced almost identical dreams.

Eventually, my anxieties subsided, and I can now say with confidence that I could easily and almost without thinking draw a weapon and kill a potential assailant, were I justified. It would almost be automatic. I don't make those statements with pride, but with acceptance, and some amount of sadness. I've no doubt that the experience would be traumatic, or that it would haunt me for the rest of my life, but I know that I could do it.

I'm grateful that, in my current position, I rarely find myself in situation where I'd need a firearm. On those infrequent occasions when I fasten my duty weapon to my belt, there's a hint of that same sense of power and confidence I experienced as a kid with my blaster pistol. Now, though, that confidence is tempered by a palpable sense of solemnity and dread that I doubt will ever leave me.

Yet when I mull over the weapons kits in Battlefield 2, deciding which will allow me to take the most lives, that feeling of dread is completely absent. When I line up a headshot, thrill to the sharp crack of my sniper rifle, and observe my victim slump over and fall, there is no remorse. There is no emotional burden to bear. And no matter how many soldiers I kill that round, or the next, or the next, that will never be the case in the real world.