Don’t Shoot!

About 15 years ago, we were sitting in the family room of our little rabbit hutch at BYU watching TV. Clayton was about 2, I would guess. TNT or TBS or one of those was showing Air Force 1—you know, the show where President Harrison Ford’s plane is hijacked by some Russian terrorist types. And President Harrison Ford kicks their Commie butts and then narrowly escapes before the plane goes crashing down into the ocean.

Oh, sorry. SPOILER ALERT! I suppose I should have said that before the previous paragraph. My bad.

Anyway, as with any good cold war movie, there was a lot of gunplay in Air Force 1. Edited for TV, of course.

Clayton wandered into the room and saw what was on TV. Well, he didn’t see what was on. He didn’t comprehend what was on. It wasn’t “hey Dad, whatcha watching?” We weren’t hanging out, eating popcorn and discussing the finer points of aviation-based anti-terrorism. He was 2. He walked into the family room and saw something on TV, and then he ran back to his room.

Within seconds, he came back out to the family room. I forget what toy he was holding—maybe a hammer (plastic) or golf club (also plastic) or something like that, but whatever the toy was, it had two distinct characteristics: (i) it was not a gun, but (ii) it was a gun to Clayton. He came running to the family room and started shooting everything and everybody. He was acting out exactly what he was watching on TV, without the plane or the Commies or a wife and daughter in peril.

Clorinda and I looked at each other with some measure of surprise. Clayton didn’t have any toy guns. I’m sure my card-carrying-NRA-member friends and family are questioning my parenting skills at this point, but really, why would a 2 year old need a gun? His aim was sure to be terrible and it seems like it would be an accident waiting to happen. He probably couldn’t even load it correctly.

But really, no guns. We hadn’t made any formal decision that our son would never have guns. To the contrary, he’s had all sorts of guns (nerf, super-soaker, and paint-ball all come to mind) throughout his childhood and youth (after age 2), and has gone shooting on numerous occasions with friends and leaders that are gun enthusiasts. His grandfather was career Army and three of his uncles have served or are currently serving in the Army and/or Air Force. No, we certainly weren’t (aren’t) anti-gun.

The remarkable thing to me, though, was JUST HOW READILY INFLUENCED HE WAS BY THE GUNS ON TV.

So why all this gun-speak tonight? I majored in Sociology (the communications classes were all full). I know that most social researchers opine that what we watch on TV does not correlate with our future behavior. I call bull.

Last Friday afternoon, just a couple hours after Clayton had walked home from school, and several minutes after I had picked up my FOURTEEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER from right outside the school (she attends a magnet school and her bus drops her at Mojave), there was a shooting right off of campus. A 16 year old boy was killed. Dead. Gone. Life over at 16 years old.

When I was 16 l spent most of my time drooling internally about girls in my high school. The closest thing to getting shot was that one time several of us got in a milk war during lunch (ooh, that’s a story—those little ½ pint cartons of milk stored outside for several days get really nasty, and people don’t really appreciate having them thrown at them. Turns out, Vice Principals don’t look too kindly on that behavior, either. Lesson learned.)

This 16 year old is dead.

We learned about the shooting as we were driving out of town to go visit Marien at school. Clayton had texted a friend who responded that she was still at school, and the school was on lock down because of the shooting. On the way out of town, we had been passed by police and ambulance with lights flashing and sirens blaring, heading the opposite direction. Turns out they were on their way to Mojave. My phone and Facebook messenger were buzzing with messages from friends worried about our kids, and I was scouring the internet for any news I could find on the shooting.

The most sobering part of the whole thing to me was that my kids just treated it like it was no. big. deal. Like it happened everyday. Just another neighborhood homicide.

The more I think on this the more I’ve come to conclude that there is too much celebration of guns in our society. I doubt the shooter had just watched Air Force 1 and decided “hey, I should go shoot someone!” No, the press has reported that it was probably gang-related. I can’t say whether the shooter ever watched any gunplay on TV or in a movie, but I see it everywhere. And it’s not a new thing. I was just visiting a client in the hospital yesterday and her brother was watching Bonanza on TV. Nobody questions the morality of Bonanza, but there they were, shooting at each other. Point is, we have embraced gun culture for a long, long time in our society, and it’s coming home to roost.

I am not anti-gun, and this isn’t intended as a gun-control piece. I recognize the futility in any plan that takes guns from law abiding citizens, not to mention the rights protected by the Constitution to keep and bear arms. I don’t think that gets us anywhere productive.

At the same time, the argument that more guns in the hands of citizens will decrease gun violence is silly. Oh, that is the case in some situations—if someone breaks into your house you are definitely in the right to defend yourself, including by deadly force (gunfire) if necessary. One of my dearest friends saved his own and his wife’s life in just such a manner. But the shooting on Friday—what are you going to do, arm a bunch of high school kids so that if one of them shows up with a gun the rest can shoot him or her? I don’t want to live in that society.

I don’t know the answer, but I’m pretty sure that like what it did to my 2 year old all those years ago, media that celebrates guns leads to kids that emulate what they see on TV or in the movies. I don’t think the arguments of either the left or right address that problem: the right exascerbates it by constantly arguing against anything that looks like gun control, and the left simultaneously (and hypocritcally) argues for strict gun laws AND puts out the very movies and TV shows that celebrate the guns they decry on the evening news.

Mostly though, I’m just still in shock that my kids narrowly missed being right there in the middle of a gunfight. At school.