Guest Opinion: Guns Have Changed Everything, Especially Childhood

I learned to shoot on the family ranch, as ranch kids are wont to do. My gun education was furthered at a Catholic summer camp, and I still have my paper target proving my marksmanship. It was hunter safety classes, and calm, clear-eyed common sense; this was the rural approach to guns I grew up with.

Then it’s a story we all know: Guns became politicized. Polarized. Lobby-ized. Humans are good at inventing things, so guns got more militarized as they turned into weapons of mass destruction. Our laws, sadly, didn’t keep up, because humans can also move quite slowly.

Then, I had children, and s...