Let’s Talk Guns

Let’s talk guns – and more-about smart policy, an approach that respects the Second Amendment, reinvigorates citizen security and self-reliance, reduces crime, and restores trust.

In the mid-1970s, more than half of all Americans owned a gun. Americans were not afraid of guns. They knew how to use them, trained on them, taught their kids to use them, and understood their value – to protect self and family, keep the government in check, hunt, and target practice on clays, bottles, or targets. Young Americans were trained by parents, local hunting groups, gun clubs, and NRA’s safe hunter training.

Interestingly, if one scrolls back to the start of WWII, leading generals – Bradley, Patton, Eisenhower, and Marshall – knew the value of a gun-savvy citizenry. Americans were comfortable with guns, allowing us to train fast. When the Nazis had 60 divisions, we had one. American kids, good with rifles, trained on clays and squirrels, closed that gap fast. 

But gun ownership is more about society, security through confidence, domestic peace through awareness, competence through training, and responsibility built on trust, teaching, and peer policing.

Two generations ago, most knew guns. When ownership was wider, training higher, comfort same as with cars, crime was lower, responsible management by kids assumed, safety understood, deterrence obvious, way less murder – mass or otherwise – and less drug trafficking, fewer gangs, more respect for how order was really kept.

Some will read this in disbelief. Put aside your misconceptions, believe. Gun ownership in the 1960s and 1970s was high, training common, and use wise. Murders were low, despite the disorder. Every Boy Scout – an institution properly-revered, knew life skills – and how to use a .22 rifle. 

When gun ownership was high in 1960, murders were below 10,000; today, with fewer households owning guns, murders are near 20,000. Violent crimes in 1960 tallied about 288,000. Today they top 1,245,000. In rural states – with higher per capita gun ownership – crime was even lower.

Skeptics ask about mass murders, a question worth asking. Tracking human behavior is always about independent variables, seeing what affects what. When legal gun ownership was higher, mass murders were minimal.

What? Yes – a fact. In the entire 1960s decade, we saw seven mass shootings, with an average of six dead.  This was a nation with hundreds of millions of legal firearms and no gun control legislation.  

Today, mass murders run up due to a dystopian society that encourages dismissal of traditions and trust, coddles teens into their 40s, expects little, offers dependence, and revels in leftist fear, dysfunction, alienation, and disrespect – for guns and others. Rather than seven in a decade, we get 12 in the first five months of 2022. 

See the issue? Here is some living history. When I was 12, we were all taught – in a rural classroom – how to use a rifle, training films, and a teacher. All families had firearms. The idea was, as with driver education, to know how to use them wisely, as you are expected to do so.

We learned safety, responsibility, and accuracy from the NRA safe hunter course. All boys were Boy Scouts, went to scout camps, and learned to manage firearms responsibly, chiefly .22 rifles – which we loved because we could compete and see who was better at this life skill.

In all the years after, I have not known one person who went through those courses and was less than respectful, responsible, and circumspect in managing firearms – not one. 

We learned these skills with humility, long before we learned to drive a car, which we also learned young. Adults held us to standards, instilled trust and responsibility, including for guns.

Later in the Navy, while young, we were serious-minded. We wanted to do well and live to the trust of those who believed we could. We learned to respect, manage, and get proficient with a 9mm handgun. At no time has anyone with whom I trained ever misused or betrayed that trust.

Recently, in an urban class filled with all races, ages, life purposes, and both genders, I reacquainted myself with proficiency in the 9mm, 40 hours. Not one person in that class, not for one day, hour, or minute, did less than their best at safety, drawing, shooting, and living to trust.

So, what is the point? What is the policy recommendation? How can we get back to a society that understands – and teaches – that trust is critical, gun ownership, use, storage, and proficiency are not just a privilege but arguably a 2nd Amendment duty?

How can we reeducate ourselves and the next generation to understand firearms are good, not something to be feared but respected, not misused but properly used, and how to keep perspective?

Firearms are, in the end, just tools, sources of personal and social security, deterring crime, encouraging public accountability, providing recreation, sustenance, herd husbandry. They offer a sense of proficiency, self-sufficiency, and self-respect. 

Like training America’s youth to drive properly, respect others on the road, work hard, pay bills, build things, honor life, give as they can, live with gratitude, and stand by their word, we must think about the value of having a citizenry well-armed, well trained, ready to keep the peace.

History teaches us that – whether in our own past, modern Ukraine, or somewhere else if we are aware of our rights and teach the young to honor them, along with duties, we thrive. Done right, without paranoia, hysteria, fear, or friction, we are well served by teaching comfort with guns.