Thanks for taking the time to comment, Chris. I do understand your perspective, and perhaps I unfairly singled out your piece in my story. Yours was just top of mind because it was featured as I was writing, and the racism implications struck home given I’m half of a happily married interracial couple.

Look, guns are a divisive issue. There’s no making everyone happy when it comes to guns. There’s a case to be made that non-military personnel shouldn’t have access to them at all, but there’s also a case to be made that every citizen is guaranteed access under the constitution. That’s not a chasm we’re going to bridge easily.

I guess what I’d like to see is more respectful societal dialog with less antagonism on both sides, as exemplified in your response here. Guns aren’t intrinsically bad, nor are people.

What often comes to my mind in the context of mass shootings is that correlation doesn’t imply causation. I do think it’s possible that society makes the mistake of implicating guns as causal agents in horrific events and subsequently assumes that elimination of guns would eliminate the horrific events. I don’t think that’s the case. Bad people will always be able to find ways to hurt other people.

All I ask is that people who are able to write or otherwise communicate eloquently about the issue, like yourself, don’t use their rhetorical talent to instigate divisive passions. That will only serve to make divides broader.