Gun Owners vs. Gun Nuts

To get leverage over mass-shooters, start with stigmatizing infantile attitudes toward firearms.

Wonder Land: When we began to devalue conscience, blurring a pragmatic understanding of right from wrong, we unleashed the whirlwind that engulfs us now. Images: Margaret Small/Reuter/Zuma Press Composite: Mark Kelly

Interspersed among mass shootings in Texas and elsewhere, descriptions have emerged from prosecutors of the alleged Massachusetts National Guard intelligence leaker, Jack Teixeira. He is reported to have participated in a pestilential online gun culture, replete with tasteless japing about mass shootings.

When Democrats have drummed up the votes to disarm Americans or significantly impede their ability to buy guns, text me. But we live in a society where speech is also free, including freedom to organize campaigns against a pernicious strain in the mass-shooter phenomenon. I’m referring of the fetishization of guns that has left so much of the gun culture—once personified in Charlton Heston—in its dust. Representative in reality but increasingly less so in public perception are the majority of capable, responsible gun owners who keep guns for legitimate reasons, use them in disciplined fashion, handle them safely with respect for the people around them.

Opinion

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