He carried a gun as a teen, protecting a Milwaukee drug dealer. Today, he teaches gun safety.

William Olivier was 11 when he first wanted a gun. 

He lived with his mom, two sisters and little brother on North Booth Street in Milwaukee’s Harambee neighborhood. There was a fight brewing between Olivier’s sister and another girl. 

As the oldest male in the household, Olivier remembers how he wanted to protect his family. And from what he saw on TV, what he heard in music, what he knew from his block, he needed a gun to do that.

“I was thinking, ’I have to get my hands on a gun.’”

But he didn’t get a gun, not then. 

And not when he was 13 and got in a fight with a boy across the street. Olivier worried the boy would come back at him. So he went looking for guys he knew who would have a gun. Olivier found them and they had a gun, but the price was too steep.

“I remember feeling really really defeated that day,” he said. 

But Olivier would get a gun soon enough. 

He started hanging around some guys and met a drug dealer who has just gotten out of jail, a kind of neighborhood celebrity.

“He said, ‘Here, hold this gun.’ It was a Scorpion, what they call a Scorpion Tec-22,” Olivier said.

“I was so happy to take this gun. I put it in my coat, and just walked around like his bodyguard almost. It was an amazing feeling to the 14-year-old me.”

Over the next five years, Olivier was around guns often. But he never was arrested, never shot anyone and never got shot, he said, though he came close.

Once, a car had come down the block and shot at everyone, including him standing on the street. An hour later the car returned, he said. Olivier was standing next to a friend, who was now armed. Olivier was not.

“I'm literally sitting next to a buddy of mine and he has his sights trained on this car and for whatever reason, the gun didn’t fire, thankfully,” Olivier said. “I was half an inch away from being a party to a homicide.”

Changes point from the street toward college

Through those precarious years, things were changing in Olivier’s life, in a positive way. He was pointing toward college, even as some friends were pointing toward prison or an early death. 

Olivier was realizing the world was bigger than his neighborhood, one in which the possibilities, as he puts it, were “literally endless.”

Today, Olivier, 45, is community impact pastor for Bridge Builders, a nonprofit focused on neighborhood improvement on the north side of Milwaukee. He also contributed to two books, “Letters To Our Black Children” and “Voices of Black Men.”  

When Olivier was 19, though, it could still have gone either way.

Enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, he was back on the block visiting some friends one day when someone said they had a gun for sale. The price: $150. Olivier hustled off to the Walgreens ATM, drew out eight $20 bills and raced back. 

Twenty-five years later, he can still see the gun: A chrome .380 semiautomatic Jennings. 

“I'll never forget that day,” he said, “It made me happy that I didn't have to call any of my buddies in the event that something happened and I needed access to a gun. It just gave me a strong sense of responsibility and independence.”

The guy selling the gun predicted Olivier was probably going to “get caught up” with it, meaning he would get arrested or have other trouble. 

But that didn’t happen. Olivier took the gun home, stashed it away and went back to college.

Olivier said he is still proud he proved that guy wrong.

Modeling gun safety to Black men in Milwaukee

Olivier graduated from Whitewater with a degree in sociology. He went on to get his master’s degree in human services administration.

His jobs were diverse but always focused on people: Counseling young people who were running the streets like he did. Responding when children needed to be placed in protective care. Helping families get a meal. And even responding to two devastating hurricanes in Texas.

Looking back today, Olivier can see how he, as an 11-year-old boy, wanted to protect his family. 

“I can completely empathize with our young people in the community today, who have some of those same feelings,” he said. “But I've also learned that there are so many other ways to address conflict in a much, much more peaceful manner.”

As he got older, Olivier’s view of guns changed. 

He still loved them, but the boyhood fascination gave way to a much more serious-minded approach. Olivier realized most of what he and his friends knew about guns and shooting had come from television and movies. It was not safe, the way they handled them. And he muses how they even sometimes used the wrong kind of ammunition.

At 30, Olivier began taking classes. Today, he is an instructor himself. 

Olivier has his concealed-carry permit and carries often. He carries a gun in the city, in the suburbs and in rural areas – pretty much wherever he is legally allowed to carry. If a business doesn’t allow concealed carry, Olivier said he might decide not to go to that business. 

“Why do I carry? First and foremost, because I have a constitutional right to have one,” he said. “And then secondarily, I carry because I want to be prepared in an absolute worst-case scenario.’

He has not had to use a gun to defend himself or someone else, though there was one situation where he thought he might. Late one night a few years ago, he saw a domestic dispute that looked like it was about to boil over.

Olivier has become passionate about being a role model for safe gun behavior. He doesn't try to convince people to own a gun but if they are going to, he is adamant they learn about safety.

“I do feel like it's somewhat incumbent upon me being a Black male in this community, to be a responsible gun owner and to talk about responsible gun ownership, to hopefully help change the narrative for what gun ownership looks like, especially within the Black community,” he said.

About this project

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter John Diedrich examined the full extent of gun deaths in Wisconsin during a nine-month O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University.

The project reveals the full picture of gun deaths in the state and tells the stories of people affected by gun deaths and those trying to find solutions.

Diedrich was assisted in the project by Marquette student researchers Alex Rivera Grant and Ben Schultz.

Marquette University and administrators of the program played no role in the reporting, editing or presentation of this project.