Maine gun owner opinion: 'The only people capable of shifting the gun conversation are the people who buy them'

Smith & Wesson rifles civilian versions of the AR-15 for sale
at a gun show. (Photo by Luke Sharrett, The New York Times)

The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives all Americans "the right to keep and bear arms," but the amendment's scope did not envision the AR-15 or a society that would tolerate hundreds of mass shootings. In his opinion for The Atlantic, Mainer and gun owner Tyler Austin Harper writes about why many American love their guns and asks, "How Much Blood Is Your Fun Worth?"

"During my first semester of teaching while in grad school, I made a habit of showing up to my classroom half an hour early. . . . The second week of classes, coffee in hand, I arrived to find an undergrad crouched in front of a half-open window. He was taking a photo with his phone, and when he saw me, he jumped. . . .When I asked if everything was all right, he said he was making sure the windows opened. 'My mom told me to always check to make sure they work, just in case, you know.' . . . . I must have looked confused because he continued: 'In case some gun nut with an AR-15 tries to shoot up the place. When a new semester starts, my mother makes me send her a photo of the open windows in each of my classrooms.' I tried to come up with something to say and found I could not.

"Last night, as I sat on my couch watching CNN anchors discuss a mass shooting that left 18 dead and 13 injured in Lewiston, Maine — the little city where I teach at Bates College and where I lived until recently — I thought about my terrified students who were sheltering in place. About my colleagues who live in town who could have been at the bar or bowling alley where the violence unfolded. . . . I thought about the hospital workers who were in the middle of the worst night of their life, I thought about all the people waiting for news, or getting news.

"As the night wore on and surreality gave way to cold reality, my grief also slowly gave way to guilt. I felt guilty and complicit. . . . I felt guilty because gun nuts are, whether I like it or not, my people: I grew up in gun country. I spent my teenage years working at a Pennsylvania gun club. I’ve been a gun owner nearly my entire life. . . . I am embarrassed to say that this is what it took — a place I love to become somewhere that a uniquely American tragedy has taken place — for me to fully understand our country’s mass-shooting problem.

"I am filled with nothing so much as rage. Rage at my gun-nut friends from home who will see this tragedy as a reason for less gun control, rather than more of it. . . . Rage at the politicians here and beyond who have refused to solve a problem for which solutions readily exist. Rage at myself for being so blind. . . . But it is only now that gun violence has visited my little corner of the world that I have been forced to confront reality, a truth that has been there all along but that I have refused to admit: I own guns because I like them and because I am an American and I’m allowed to and no one stops me.

"The inescapable fact is that the only people capable of shifting the gun conversation in this country are the people who buy them. . . . Yesterday’s events haven’t made me change my mind about being a gun owner. . . . . The shooting in Lewiston changed my mind about being a quiet gun owner. I have spent years of my life making apologies on behalf of my gun-nut acquaintances. Staying silent when friends bring up the National Rifle Association despite my fierce opposition to that organization. Not pushing back when they call minor reforms such as mandatory waiting periods 'totalitarian.' Changing the subject rather than asking 'Why do you need a military-style rifle?'

Read Harper's full essay here.