As a response to the shootings in Perry, Iowa, a Republican bill in the House is headed to the Senate to allow teachers to carry guns into classrooms. More guns are not the answer.
My husband John Hogeland—a man who grew up hunting and owning guns—has a thing or two to say about gun ownership in the United States. It felt like a good time to “reprint” his blog post from 2022, when he wrote just after the Uvalde, Texas shootings.
The more time passes, sadly, the more things stay the same.
I grew up on a farm outside of Lovilia, helping my family raise crops and livestock. I hunted and fished in the surrounding country. My father taught me early about gun safety and how to be responsible with a gun, lessons that I have tried to instill in my own sons. I owned guns then, and I own guns now. I am a patriot. I love my country and my fellow Americans. I don't believe our country is always the best, but I do believe that at times we can be, which is why I am writing this letter.
On Tuesday, May 24th, 2022 a young man walked into a school in Uvalde, Texas and shot 19 children and two teachers with an AR-15 style assault rifle, killing them all. We have all heard this story, unfortunately, over and over for years.
This recent event, along with every other like it, has ignited a firestorm of dissenting opinions about how to deal with these tragedies. I have some thoughts that I would like you to consider.
The concept of "I want" is one that children are born with before their parents teach them to consider the needs of others. “I want” epitomizes selfishness; as adults we understand it is not an emotion that should ever override the needs of another human. As many of us learned in Sunday school, when becoming an adult "(we) put away childish things," because we learned that our actions impact others. We are taught to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
—1 Corinthians 13:11
Let's be clear, no one needs an AR-15. There is no useful place for this gun that isn’t filled by a more specific weapon. Can you hunt deer with an AR-15? Of course. But there are a multitude of guns designed for hunting which are far superior and far safer for our friends and neighbors. Can you protect your home with an AR-15? Again, the answer is yes, and again, there are any number of guns that are far better suited to the job, guns that would be even more effective and far less likely to accidentally kill innocents in the next room, the next building or a half mile away.
But “wanting” any gun—even the handgun the Perry shooter used—does not entitle everyone to have one. What we want, we learn as adults, is not always what we get. Nor is it what is often best for communities.
The assertion that owning a gun should be a constitutional right makes them available to everyone, including the child-murdering sociopath who potentially lives down the street.
The children in the school in Uvalde, Texas had a right to life that was stolen from them. Most adults would agree that these children had MORE of a right to live because there was so much in front of them. Most adults would give their lives to save a child.
And yet, we haven’t been able to place the lives of these children before the desire for a gun.
Americans have rightly been proud that we value each individual’s rights, it is one of the things that has set our country apart. However, in recent decades, our view of our individual rights has become monstrously warped. We have slowly forgotten that rights come with the responsibility to consider what is best for our families, our communities, and our nation. Now many of us only want to see our own rights. These 19 children died because their fellow citizens “want” to own assault weapons and have decided it is their “right,” they are unwilling to consider the effects their insistence on this right has on others.
And so I ask you to think, at what point does a gun owner's “I want” become more important than the rights of an American child to live a full life?
The AR-15 is a weapon of war and should be regulated as such. To refuse to do so makes every one of us culpable in the mass murders so regularly visited upon our nation since Columbine in 1999.
Granted, an assault weapons ban is only part of the solution, and might not have stopped the Perry shooting. Good laws will require responsible adult decision-making, laws that control who can acquire a gun, how it will be stored, and whether a child should be allowed to handle it.
But the idea of putting more guns into schools—the one place kids currently cannot access a gun—to make kids safer is ridiculous.
Heed the verse: We can no longer be children when it comes to guns.
Iowa Writers’ Collaborative Roster
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Thank you, Beth. Thank you, John. We are in dire need of more responsible discussion around guns and gun ownership. I have to say, though, when 20 first graders and 7 teachers were slaughtered in their classrooms 10 days before Christmas in 2012 at Sandy Hook elementary school and the Congress could not pass something as innocuous as background checks I lost hope that anything would ever be done. Uvalde proved that a good guy with a gun was no protection against a bad guy with a gun. More’s the pity.
It is still my greatest fear when our grandchildren are practicing active shooter drills in their 1st grade and pre-school classrooms. God help us.
Thank you for your words and your work.
Thank you so much for this. Yes, rights (should) come with responsibilities. It truly boggles my mind and saddens my heart at the lack of responsibility shown by people who deep in their souls should know better. Sadly, you will probably be reposting this for years to come. We all need to keep calling out lawmakers on this thing that is beyond important.