Cultured

I learned a creepy term over the holidays – gun influencers. Worse, there are KID gun influencers. These are folks that like to shoot and show off weapons on the socials. While I have real issue with people doing that – it’s akin to watching people race or drive fast cars that I’ll never own – the whole KID part really starts to bother me. 

A lot. 

These are young people, very young in some cases, who have social channels that show them shooting guns and showing how great gun ownership and use is. Here’s where you get onto a very slippery slope because many of these kids can’t even legally OWN this stuff and shouldn’t be NEAR it until they are grown. 

If at all. 

We have a problem right now that’s starting to grow and that’s kids using guns on one another. We’ve created a culture where not only do the kids know where the guns are but they know how to use them and have their own reasons on when to use them. It’s horrifying to read a story about a kid that was upset with another kid and went to his dad’s car, grabbed his (loaded, because why have a gun if it isn’t loaded?) gun, and then went and shot the person he was mad at. He killed a kid and changed the course of his own life forever because he was mad. 

There’s something to be said on this as well, how Covid has changed us and made all of us a littler angrier and a lot less polite, but the issue isn’t that these kids fought, but that one killed the other out of anger. 

How does a kid, a ten year old in this case, know 1. Where a gun is and 2. How to fire it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, THE MOVIES!

GAMES!

TELEVISION!

Those are easy scapegoats that put the onus on a faceless Hollywood that isn’t there to babysit your kid. We are letting kids watch and play with things that aren’t for them so we can’t get mad and blame the people telling us this content isn’t for children that it’s their fault. Maybe we shouldn’t glorify death and violence if you want to take that stance but then you have to absolutely be on it when your kid is playing violent games or watching violent shows. 

So, sure, maybe they learn it from TV and games. 

Or maybe they learn it from us. 

We have become WAY too comfortable with weaponizing kids. 

Literally and figuratively. 

We want to scream to the heavens WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN and claim that kids are being indoctrinated at schools while we’re handing them an AK-47 to shoot. 

What?

We’re worried about people grooming them while we’re monetizing their social media status for our benefit. 

Outside of rifles for hunting, kids shouldn’t be touching guns. 

AT ALL. 

This isn’t a political statement, it’s a statement that a kid is still figuring things out and doesn’t need to think that a gun is a solution to any problem save for helping put food on the table during hunting season. This is not the wild west. We Americans are not in a war-torn country. Kids don’t need to be forced to grow up this fast. 

We don’t need to put weapons in their hands. 

In a country with as many school shootings as we’re seeing time and again they find that the people had access to guns they shouldn’t have. Adults are too careless with their toys and leave them so the kids can find them. 

People are SO afraid of one another that they have to have a gun in the car, or in the bedside table, or on a dining room table. They have to have guns immediately accessible JUST IN CASE. 

I pity these people because I cannot imagine what it must be like to live in such fear. 

I also sorta hate them though for putting all of us in danger by leaving their guns out. 

I remember being at a kid’s birthday party someone I knew was throwing and how shocked I was to see a bottle of whiskey out and uncapped and how the adults were drinking and getting stoned in front of the kids. I was grossed out and left. Not out of prudishness but because there was no thought to the safety of the kids. The adults were living their best lives and the kids were just there doing their own thing. 

As soon as there was a movement to limit gun ownership and to curtail the ownership of weapons that serve little purpose outside of a war people became children. 

BUT I WANT IT!
IT’S MINE!

YOU CAN’T HAVE IT!

I WANT MORE!

They were like Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

They were spoiled kids and wouldn’t be told what they could do. 

They don’t NEED the guns. 

They want them. 

All while telling the poor that they can’t have assistance to feed themselves. 

You can’t have that but I want what I want. 

All of this makes sense for a country that prioritizes the ability for a man to get an erection over a woman’s right to sexual health care.

It makes sense in a country where we force ourselves into one another’s bedrooms so we can outlaw whatever it is we do in there with whomever it is we do it because WE don’t like it. 

We are gun obsessed and while we like to point to Hollywood to blame them for the violence in the world it’s us that are obsessed with having arsenals…just in case. 

As if we were action heroes or going to go to some imaginary war. 

And the kids are suffering. 

They are learning that guns solve problems. 

They are learning that guns make you tough. 

Guns make people fear you. 

Guns make people respect you – HA!

We are raising kids and teens who turn to a gun to solve a problem that doesn’t even require fists. We aren’t teaching them conflict resolution, we are teaching them that they are right, they are always right, and they have to do whatever it takes to get respect or revenge. 

We don’t treat guns with reverence and care. 

We treat them like toys and want more toys to modify the toys we have. 

We show them off.
We post photos posing with them.

We dare people to come and take them. 

We go out to the store with a gun on our hip…just in case. 

And kids see all of this. 

They watch us to see how to act and we’re shaming ourselves with how we act. 

We scream at the television.
We scream at one another. 

We act as if we are the most important person on earth and people need to respect and fear us. 

We deserve…whatever it is we deserve. 

We are breeding monsters and we just don’t care because they’re someone else’s kids and darn it, if someone comes for me…I’ll just shoot them. 

What do I care?

…c…

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