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This underscores what I was sad to not hear last night in the debate. We don’t just have a gun problem. We have a gun culture problem - where guns are fetishized as part of an internalized identity.
I’m an skilled marksman and have been shooting for decades. I still hate guns.
I’m an skilled marksman and have been shooting for decades. I still hate guns.
I’ve been around more guns than most. My family thought me to shoot, then the Secret Service, then the FBI. I’m skilled with semi-assault and assault rifles. I enjoy shooting them. I would never own one.
I’ve had AK-47s pointed at my chest by child soldiers. I’ve had militants hold a pistol to me. I’ve watched a person standing next to be gunned down by assassination and a bus driver killed by a shotgun. Guns are lethal killing machines, not things to celebrate.
I have friends who are gun owners in Wyoming (where nearly everyone is a gun owner). I don’t worry about them. They don’t fetishize guns. They fear them. I worry about the suburban white males who use guns to substitute part of their identity as some sort of compensation.
It’s the white males who live in suburbs and exurbs whom I worry about. Some turn to pickups and country music to fill that void of identity even as they drive to strip malls and jobs as bankers. Others turn to guns. That becomes potentially lethal.
When I worked on a ranch, I drove a pickup to haul hay, and fence posts, and cattle. I listened to country music to reflect my environment. I carried a gun to protect against wildlife and intruders in a place that didn’t have a 911 system...
We always rolled our eyes at the ‘poser’ hicks in the suburbs who never had a connection to country life but loved to cling to the image of country life as an identity. That’s fine. Clinging to guns as an identity is not.
I always say “I love shooting but I hate guns”. It’s true. No one should ‘like’ guns. The most responsible gun owners and marksmen know that. Certainly, no one should like guns as a proxy to like themselves.
Do I have a solution here? Sadly, no. Just observations. However, our politicians must engage our gun culture problem. We need to show empathy for those who engage in gun culture in order to solve for that as well.
Most people who fetishize guns aren’t bad people. I have friends and family who do. However, fetishization desensitizes one to guns - not just for that person but for those around them. That’s what’s dangerous. It lowers a cognitive barrier between a person and violent use.
This guy almost certainly isn’t violent. I’m talking about a systemic, cultural problem. Check out his Twitter. Dude has a knack for sports and is a budding sports commentator. As a former sports journalist, I’m geeking out. That’s an awesome identity to have. Chill w/ the guns.
