Let’s stop wearing our guns on our sleeves

When students in Colorado and across the nation walked out of school this month to protest our contentious gun laws, The Denver Post editorial board weighed in, saying: “What’s truly needed is culture change, and that’s what makes Wednesday’s demonstrations so important. The next generation is sick to death of the status quo.”

It’s a bold claim offered during a day of profound emotion. Will it hold? And if it does, how might such a cultural change look?

Here’s a stab at an answer offered from someone who considers himself an oldschool gun owner; someone, like a lot of people I talk to, who shrinks away from the too-often militant pronouncements of too many of our peers. (And a happy hat tip to Mario Nicolais for his recent column in these pages: “The NRA waves the white flag on responsible gun ownership.”)

We will know we are there when those of us who own guns stop wearing them on our sleeves.

In a culture too often defined by our excesses, from drinks served in fishbowls to big-screen TVS everywhere to, well, the Trump presidency, it’s time to remember what our gun heritage looked like not that long ago.

Most generations of gun owners grew up teaching their children how to properly handle and shoot long guns and pistols that

held far less ammunition than today’s popular models.

If you went hunting, you were praised for how few rounds you shot. My grandfather bragged that he hunted wild turkey by setting dried corn in a narrow row. As the big birds pecked away, a single shot could bring down two or more.

It doesn’t matter if Granddad was telling a tall tale. The point is that kind of waste-not, want-not thinking carried the day.

For generations, a bout of plinking cans in the woods rarely resulted in more than a box of cartridges or two.

How times have changed. Highcapacity magazines and assault rifles have become the opioids of gun culture.

My first real glimpse of how widespread our love affair with overwhelming firepower had become arrived in 2013, during the political battles pitched over gun-control measures at the Colorado Capitol.

Then The Post’s politics editor, I got a call from a gun owner who demanded to know: “Why are you calling them ‘high-capacity magazines?’ ”

Semi-automatic rifles and some pistols are commonly sold standard with ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds (the number of rounds Colorado lawmakers managed to make the limit).

I felt that awful sickness that comes when you think you are getting something wrong as a journalist. His point made perfect sense for several seconds.

I’d have been happy to concede, but for the fact in journalism we strive to describe things clearly and accurately, and it’s in no way over-doing it to call an ammunition magazine that holds more than 15 rounds “high-capacity.”

“Because that’s a lot of bullets!” I said.

The pressure from such callers increased. We soon buckled, opting for the specific, like “magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds.” Defensible, but really, so is “high-capacity.”

Gun ownership didn’t use to be this way, but now it’s in our faces everywhere. On hats and Tshirts, bumper stickers and flags and social media profiles. It’s become a religion, too often a central component of an owner’s identity and a near requirement among too many social circles.

We’re asked to believe that 30-round magazines are as American as after-church potlucks.

Even if we like shooting and admit it to our zealous gun-control friends, we know to endure withering attacks if we criticize the gun lobby or call for moderation.

I get it that since at least 2001 Americans have had extra cause for fear. And the desire to protect one’s family in these days of ubiquitous hyper-weapons certainly isn’t misplaced or wrongheaded.

But look at the result. How can you arm yourself out of the present state of things?

If we’re ever to return to what we talk about when we talk about responsible gun ownership, we’ve got to be realistic in our expectations.

We’ll know the next generation is serious about change if most of its members find prevailing gunownership values as embarrassing as our grandparents would have.

A little moderation in all things and whatnot. A touch of modesty.

Hey, a lot of the kids now prefer bikes with one gear. It could happen.