Don’t paint firearm-rights advocates with a broad brush; listen to their points of view about today’s problems
On May 18, at around 8:30 a.m., I checked my phone. I saw a notification alerting me of a shooting at Santa Fe High School, a school just 40 minutes from my own. My heart sank. I hurt for the dead, the injured and the grieving. I muttered a prayer under my breath.
Instinctively, I opened Facebook to learn more about the situation. Instead of finding news reports or comforting messages, I found posts condemning anybody who opposed “strengthening” gun control laws as “disgusting.” I found posts suggesting that those who stood politically opposite them are complicit in the horrid crime that transpired. My Facebook feed was representative of a larger cultural reaction. Cable news, celebrities and much of the media played to the same narrative. In the immediate aftermath of the Sante Fe Shooting, so many people turned to demonizing the other side.
Unfortunately, the worst response came from Houston’s police chief who posted on Facebook that people could unfriend him if they thought guns weren’t a problem. Beyond vilifying, this action polarizes and creates echo chambers. It forgoes a deeply American idea that those with opposing views are similarly striving toward a common goal. By defriending self-proclaimed supporters of gun rights, how will one ever learn why people believe what they do in order to progress dialogue? Furthermore, how will one ever learn that they care?
I care about the lives that were taken in Santa Fe High School, in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and in every other school shooting. I also do not stand fully on board with the platform of the “March for Our Lives” movement. In this, there is no contradiction. These are positions held by very many students — even if we are not the most vocal.
I have interacted with many students who are skeptical of a one-size fits all approach to a problem that comes in various forms, sizes and colors. I know many students who look toward history, at armed populations that have resisted tyranny and at the recent spike in school shootings despite a plateau in gun ownership, for answers on gun-related questions. Many of my fellow students have seen solutions in particular federal legislation, like Cruz-Grassley, introduced by our own Texas senator, Ted Cruz. The legislation would have prevented previous mass shootings, keeping guns from violent criminals by mandating that felonies must be reported to the background check database and by prosecuting those who try to illegally purchase firearms, However, Cruz-Grassley was filibustered by Democrats for political gain. Ultimately, though, we turn to the American tradition of self-reliance. We believe in our natural right to defend ourselves.
These attitudes may seem out of step with today’s populace. Gun-control advocates and “March for Our Lives” organizers Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg may be the faces of school shooting survivors, but this is only a result of a one-sided narrative. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School also includes voices such as Kyle Kashuv, a self-proclaimed gun rights supporter who has stated he does not believe a ban on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines would prevent school shootings. Other survivors of mass shootings, such as those in Sutherland Springs, Texas, have also expressed skepticism over the effectiveness of and motivation behind expansive gun-control laws. An equal and fairer examination would reveal that the people most intimately affected by guns harbor a variety of opinions on the topic.
To my Facebook friends, Houston’s police chief and others who may shy from engaging with the other side but are aggressive in their judgments, I have this message: Understand that those who seek a different path to school safety care as much about it as you do. For a politician like Gov. Greg Abbott to believe in a different method than yours does not necessarily mean, as was recently asserted in an advertisement published in this very paper, that they are “cozy with the NRA.”
In short, I care about lives lost in school shootings, yet I also care about my gun rights.