Opinion | Maybe it’s not the guns

Last month, when my wife and I, along with all the other parents, accompanied our daughter to school orientation at her public school, we saw a lot of great things, met her very capable teacher, talked with the administrators and walked through a very, very good elementary school. 

But on the way out, there was a nagging thought. Something that bothered us – me, my wife, some of our friends whose kids were also in my daughter’s class. 

The classroom was on the corner, near the entrance doors. And there were lots of windows. 

When you have such thoughts, you immediately wonder if you’re crazy. If you’re worrying about something that’s statistically a lightning strike. 

Except, that lightning just keeps striking. Forty-five times so far this year someone has opened fire at an American school. The latest came on Wednesday, when a 14-year-old – FOURTEEN – took an assault rifle into a Georgia school and shot dead four people. 

It’s the latest in a long line of senseless, disgusting school shootings – shootings that pretty much every parent thinks about as they watch their entire worlds go be-bopping down a sidewalk, backpack bouncing up and down, as they walk into their schools each morning. Some days, it’s almost too much to bear. 

And you know what? We shouldn’t have to, dammit. 

We don’t have to live like this. 

The only reason we do – the absolute only reason – is politics. We’ve allowed the firearm industry to turn gun regulations into a white-and-black political issue, divide us up and then gridlock our spineless, hopeless lawmakers into doing absolutely nothing. Ever. 

Guns are the number one killer of kids. 

More than car accidents. More than illnesses. More than accidents. 

Number one. 

If literally anything else killed kids at such a rate, we’d regulate the hell out of it. I can’t buy two boxes of Sudafed at the same time, and I have to give my ID to get one, because meth kills a lot of people. But I can buy unlimited amounts of firearms and bullets without anyone reporting anything. 

Because that’s how dumb we are with this. 

And it’s not like this anywhere else. 

Really, that’s the counter to all of your “it’s not the guns” arguments. Because it’s not the video games or the movies or the violent culture or the mental illnesses or the medications or the lax parenting or the gangs or that darned ol’ rap music. 

You know how I know it’s not any of those things? 

Because all of those things exist in places like Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Australia. They watch the same movies, play the same video games, take the same meds, deal with the same mental illnesses. 

But their firearm mortality rates are a fraction of ours. They have almost zero school shootings. They have almost zero mass shootings. 

You know why that is? 

Because they don’t have our idiotic gun laws, or our perverse love affair with guns. 

They actually had the good sense to regulate firearms as if they are nothing more than a dangerous tool designed to do a job, and therefore the user should be adequately trained, responsible and required to store and handle that tool with care. 

Such regulations have removed the infatuation with guns. They have prevented firearms manufacturers from transforming that simple tool of death into a status symbol that owners pose with in social media pics or wear t-shirts promoting. They have prevented turning guns into this absurd, magical tool whose purchase instantly makes you safer, more manly and more confident. 

Because that’s all as dumb as posing with a chainsaw. Or slapping a sticker on your truck declaring that they can pry your socket wrench from your cold, dead hands. 

But here, in this country, a whole lot of people value those tools more than they value our children. 

How else to explain that we can’t get pretty simple, common sense gun regulations passed? Regulations such as red flag laws that would prevent those with documented mental illnesses from obtaining firearms. Or expanded background checks. Or required firearms training. Or smart weapons requirements. Or an assault weapons ban. Or just banning things that turn semi-auto weapons into full-auto weapons. 

All of those things would go a long way towards restoring a proper perspective on firearms, towards gun owners treating weapons like we used to – as tools designed to do a job and nothing more. 

But here we sit, buying bulletproof backpacks for 7-year-olds and spending millions on active shooter alert systems for kindergarten classes.

Acting like that’s all normal. And acting like there’s anywhere else in the world where all of this could ever be considered, or accepted, as normal. 

So, you know, maybe all of those people are right – maybe it’s not the guns. Maybe it’s our idiotic refusal to properly regulate a tool, even when it’s quite literally killing our kids by the thousands.