Before I was tall enough to ride the biggest rollercoasters at Six Flags, my parents bought me a Red Ryder BB gun. Not exactly a weapon of mass destruction, but a gun nonetheless, and I loved it. I remember taking it everywhere I went, popping snapping turtles at the lake, putting dents in root beer cans at 50 paces: from the time I was very young, I was never afraid of guns. My dad had guns. I knew where they were, and I knew how to use them, should I need to. I come from a family of people who hunt avidly, people who keep guns of all shapes and sizes in their homes, people who bring their newest rifles to Christmas events and pass them around like a flask. For me, they are familiar.
I'm afraid now, looking out on a very unfamiliar and unfriendly landscape. Because not even a week ago, a man walked into a public place, a place filled with people reveling in one of the only places they can feel safe, with a semi-automatic rifle that he purchased legally, and killed 50 of those people. He wounded 53 more.
And I'm tired. So tired.
I remember being younger, when the words mass shooting first started to mean something to me. I remember being one of those people who spouted guns don't kill people, people kill people, and if he's going to kill someone, he'll find a way to do it regardless, because that was simply what I'd heard, and what I wanted to believe. I know, logically, that those things are true. And yet, that man, that man who was on a watch list, who walked into a public place and killed 50 people in cold blood, did it with a gun. A gun he purchased legally. While on an FBI Watch List.
I can't defend the unfettered right to bear arms anymore. Because when our forefathers wrote that second amendment, there were no semi-automatic rifles. There was no possible way to get off 30 rounds in seconds. There was no way to get off even a single shot in seconds. With the development of guns, we must also develop the laws we have that surround them. We cannot have a law created for a world full of musket-loaders and apply it to AR-15s and AK-47s.
Am I pro-Second Amendment? Absolutely. Will I own guns as an adult? Most likely. Do I know the solution to America's gun problem? Certainly not. All I know is that 50 people are dead. Fifty LGBT people living their lives with pride, 50 families mourning. And it's time we, as law-abiding gun owners, did something about it.
