I completed the hunters safety course back when I was about 12 years old in the late 1960’s. I got a kick out of target practice and plinking tin cans or watermelons just like everyone else. I remember stalking imaginary prey in the countryside along Lizard Creek in Iowa, just itching for a reason to fire the .22 caliber rifle at it. I might have actually hit a bullhead in the creek (properly pronounced ‘crick’) but it got away. In retrospect, shooting at a fish was cruel and pointless. As a high schooler I went elk hunting in the mountains of northern Colorado. We never saw an elk.

Shooting is something that I never latched on to for some reason. Probably because guns weren’t a big thing in my family. My farming parents and grandparents in Iowa never fought in the world wars because of the accident of their birthdates. My father served in Korea, but just after the war. I saw my grandfather shoot a badger once, but only because he was afraid we’d stumble upon it. Today I have a .22 caliber antique Ruger revolver somewhere in storage that I inherited. That is my arsenal.

I guess I’ve been lucky. I’ve never had the fear of foreign invaders taking over North America by anything less than global nuclear war. I’ve never had a fear of a tyrannical government, at least until Trump and his motley band of demented idiots came along. I have never lived where I felt I needed to keep a gun at the ready. And I’ve never had the need to strut around like a peacock in tactical gear packing pseudo-militaristic weapons.

Guns are too deeply imbedded in American culture and in the basements of citizens to ever be gotten rid of by a government ban. There would be a civil war before guns could be confiscated, which I doubt will come to pass.

The great advantage guns give you is the ability to commit severe and instantaneous violence from a safe distance. Since the invention of gunpowder in China, the utility of blasting things at people has been lost on no one. The firearm has long been popular as an enabler of protection, conflict and crime. So popular, in fact, that most Americans are stuck between the brick walls of gun violence and second amendment arguments with no resolution to the conflict coming anytime soon.

There is one thing we can do, however. Something that a civilized citizen of this amazing democracy can easily do. We can urge fellow citizens to simmer down a little. We can show some restraint in the reflex to use, carry or flaunt our firearms in public, especially as a half-hidden means of intimidation, as a first step. On the streets and in the movies.

In American entertainment, guns wielded by attractive actors and actresses are the usual tool for the resolution of conflict. The accurate portrayal of shooting technique and the highly realistic effects of a bullet on the human body have become an art form in US entertainment. Not so in British television I have noticed. There is generally very little gunplay in Brit TV entertainment. And they still manage to tell a great story through well crafted writing. How can a kid grow up in America and NOT come to the conclusion that pointing a gun or shooting someone is the most effective way to settle a dispute?

It has been said jokingly that the second amendment has become the founding document of the angry white male gun club. This may be an exaggeration but we cannot forget that the amendment defines a right, not an obligation to use. It is not an invitation to aggressive, belligerent behavior with weapons. It does not give the person pointing the weapon the right to be judge, jury, and executioner unless in self defense.

There will always be people, some of them fearful, who harbor an unusually large fascination with weapons. Realistically, these folks are probably beyond reasoned persuasion to a lifestyle less oriented to paranoia mixed with weaponry. But we can try to improve this American civilization around them overall to one that more substantially values non-violent means of conflict resolution, either in reality or in the movies. Plenty of other countries can do it, why can’t we?