Guns Haven't Changed
They hung in racks in the backs of pickup trucks. They stood in closet corners in unlocked homes. On winter days they rode in the truck windows to school and then carried into the field afterward. They were useful. They helped us fill the freezer. Nobody felt unsafe because one was nearby. They never walked into a classroom. They never became instruments of public spectacle.
Guns have not changed. What changed is us.
Somewhere along the way we began losing responsibility, respect for human life, and a sense of honor. We allowed violence to be sensationalized. We handed children video games that award points for murder and rape. We treated mental illness as something to be celebrated rather than confronted.
The authority of parents has steadily diminished, and with it the willingness to actually parent. There was a time when the threat of calling a parent carried weight. Now it is the parent who shields the child from consequences instead of addressing the problem—ask any teacher. Many kids are isolated in their rooms, living in the blue light of simulated violence rather than in the real world and we wonder why they have no respect for life. We elevated fame into a form of currency, then acted surprised when some people decided that horror was the fastest way to be seen.
Guns have not changed. The desire to use them for destruction has. Culture shapes that desire. The stories we tell shape it. The values we reward—and the ones we quietly abandon—shape it.
If we want fewer of these tragedies, we cannot keep pretending any object is the problem. We have to look at what we have been cultivating: what we reward, what we excuse, and what we normalize.
The guns are no different than they were sixty years ago.
We are.
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