Dirty Boots: Irregular Attempts at Critical Thinking and Border Crossing offers a Deep Southern, Generation X perspective on the culture, politics, and general milieu of the 21st century.

From my porch and sometimes even inside my house, I hear gunshots several nights a week, though I never know who is shooting or why. Our street is a quiet one, but our neighborhood is bordered on all four sides by main thoroughfares that people travel all hours of the day and night. News reports relay that some of the shooting is coming from those cars. We also have a lot of trees, which makes sound bounce around in odd ways, so the direction of the pop-pop-pop-pop is hard to discern. It comes and is sometimes followed by the roar of a car engine, which could be the shooter speeding away. Other times, a heavy pause hangs in the air after the first shots, then another flurry of pop-pop-pops follows. I guess that’s when the intended target fires back. But people are definitely shooting at each other, near us but without regard for us, and I suppose that they’re doing it because they believe it will solve a problem.

I am a life-long Southerner, but I don’t own a gun. That means that I live within gun culture but don’t participate in it. Most men and some women I know own a gun. Some leave it at the house, while others keep it in their console or glove box. A few carry one on their person. My father, in his latter years, used to carry a .38 snub-nose in his front pants pocket. The explanation that I hear most often is that a gun is for protection. I believe that some people have them for that reason. For others, I believe that it’s about feeling strong or empowered. Some probably own one in an effort to fit in with the crowd, not wanting to be ridiculed as weak or, worse, as foolish. Sadly, a handful of gun owners enjoy the ability to be unnecessarily aggressive any time they please. Those are the ones that none of us are safe from. In total, they all seem to believe that guns solve problems.

I would argue that the violence – actual and potential – enabled by guns is a problem. I was a teacher for almost twenty years, during the era of school shootings, and I always knew that if a student (or a parent) came at me with fists or even with baseball bat or a knife, I could at least defend myself. But if someone had a gun, I wouldn’t stand a chance. I left my job as a public school teacher two years ago, and with that departure, the potential for a school shooting is no longer part of my everyday life. Nonetheless, I still think about guns and their effects, most recently since Easter when I listened to Pope Francis’s Easter message “Urbi et Orbi.” He said this, which caught my attention: “Peace is never made with arms, but with outstretched hands and open hearts.” Guns may feel like protection, but they don’t create peace; they disturb it. The “good guys with guns” may prevent some disgruntled shooter from starting or from continuing, but that prevention is not peace. 

Peace is when there is no shooting and when there will be no shooting. That second one is easier said than done, in large part due to the fear and pride that lead people to shoot. In the collection Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton wrote about the common belief that we somehow become the “loser” in a conflict by having a dialogue with our enemies. By contrast, Merton believed that one must have “not only the willingness to discuss, but the readiness to meet one’s adversary as an equal and as a brother. The moment one does this, he ceases to be an adversary.” I agree with Merton. To stop someone from shooting me is good. To stop him from wanting to shoot me is even better. 

I’m not against guns so much as I am against bad ideas for problem-solving. Whatever the problem is, firing a gun with the intention of hurting or killing someone is a very limited solution, and it will likely lead to other, more severe problems: injuries, death, criminal charges, or all three. A shooter may win the initial battle with his bullets, but he has to know that a response is coming. The better idea would be to solve the actual problem and rid one’s self of the tensions that lead people to shoot. 

It may seem, from this, like I am an idealist. I’m not. I’m actually very, very pragmatic. The world has many violent people, antagonistic people, selfish people, cruel people, and I can’t ignore them. I am also reminded several nights a week about guns and the people who favor them. But that omnipresence doesn’t stop me from knowing the truth: we would be better off solving our problems than resorting to gunfire instead. Sadly, I will never live in a world without gunfire, but I still believe that such a world sure would be nice.