I love my brother. He thinks I’m one of the bad guys. I want to change minds about guns to help me and the millions of other Americans that have lost relationships to gun culture.
My brother is a proud gun owner. I am the Executive Director of Guns Down America.
I love my brother. He thinks I’m one of the bad guys.
He told me this over dinner recently. I knew he was a hunter, I knew he owned guns, and I knew he bought into the misconception that guns make you safer. But as our conversation progressed, he showed me that while he may have been spurred into gun ownership by notions of safety, he’s now a man held hostage by gun culture.
He's now a man held hostage by gun culture
“I have guns everywhere. In the house, in the car. Don’t mess with them,” he said.
“You’re one of the bad guys who wants to take them away.”
Jokingly, I asked if he was packing heat at the pizzeria. He told me not to worry about it.
It struck me then that we lived in two different worlds.
I obviously appreciate the very real threat posed by gun violence in this country, but, unlike my brother, I don’t let that fear run my life. Instead, I actively choose to believe in my community and look for the good in the people around me. That choice has led naturally into a career of working with others to find solutions.
That night I was laid back, eating my pizza, and glad to be sharing this beautiful day with my brother. I choose to feel free. Weaponless, yet fiercely secure.
Weaponless, yet fiercely secure.
Across from me, my brother was visibly tense and anxious the entire meal. His mind wasn’t on the meal, the beautiful weather, or me — he was searching for a threat. Armed and ready to defend himself from some unseen attacker, an agent of our tyrannical government or, I guess, anything else that happened to stoke his perpetual paranoia.
He told me he was thinking of moving to Idaho to protect “his” guns. Moving his family, his home, his career — moving away from me — for guns. I was baffled.
Gun culture instilled fear in my brother. The gun industry translated that fear into the sale of one gun, then more. Now he wants to be left alone with them.
The gun industry translated that fear into the sale of one gun, then more. Now he wants to be left alone with them.
He claims guns protect liberty, but he does not seem very free to me.
To be clear: there are dangers in the world and problems in society. But while the gun debate is often reduced to gun owners vs. gun grabbers, those are simply proxies for what it really is: me vs. we.
I choose collective action, community, and the belief that we all participate in maintaining our own safety and freedom by fighting for each other’s.
My brother has chosen a “culture,” built by industry, that values the individual above all. This culture burdens him with constant anxiety, ultimately leading him to a life where he surrounds himself with hunks of metal instead of participating in a free and safe society.
I won’t give up on my brother, not just because I love him, but because as long as he is a victim of this culture, the rest of us are, too.
I choose collective action, community, and the belief that we all participate in maintaining our own safety and freedom by fighting for each other's.
I’m losing my brother to gun culture. I’m rewriting it to get him back.
The characterization of common sense approaches to gun violence reduction as a political issue is a by-product of gun culture. You may not engage with this post regardless of how much you agree or disagree, because you’re afraid of your network seeing it as an expression of your political viewpoint. It’s valid, but exactly the type of symptom of gun culture that prevents us from advancing the conversation, which is very much a personal, social, and consumer issue over all else.
The organization I lead, Guns Down America, exists to fight back against the constant toxicity of the gun industry — a toxicity that infects our lives, our freedom, and even our relationships.
When we truly see that gun violence is not inevitable, we'll see progress.
