Bigger Guns?

 

About six years ago, in a Southern herbalist class, I was talking with a police officer. We were on the subject of violence, escalation. I asked her, if there are Uzis on the street, is the answer really to get a bigger gun?

She said yes. Just like that. Serious. She could not see another way.

And if even the police see it this way, then who is doing the systemic thinking? That’s the crock. No one is. Everyone is stuck in self-protection. Or profit — sell the guns, sell the protection, sell the ideas, more regulation or less, doesn’t matter. There is always money in fear.

And peace — well, peace just disappears in that economy.

Schools now are a multimillion-dollar protection industry. Lockdown drills, bulletproof doors, security contracts. Churches too. Pastors boasting that their congregations have armed men ready during worship. The idea of “bigger guns” is not fringe anymore. It’s normal.

And then Charlie Kirk died. I posted something to a small group of young people — some left, some right. I wrote: don’t speculate who did it, don’t attack him for what he stood for, don’t make this about politics. Just say we are sad. His children, his family, they matter now.

The right-leaning ones gave it a thumbs up. The left ones stayed silent. No one listened, really. Both sides already doing the math, where to gain, where to hit next.

Later one of the left-leaning ones asked me, why did you write that? I said it was my experiment with peace. Because my instinct was already firing, my emotions already there, but I wanted to see if I could do something else. My journey is full of failure. Boulders of failure everywhere. But they are not wasted. Each one wears down the war inside me, just a little. Each one takes me closer to a deeper peace. So yes, failure after failure, but they are the path.

Still, where is the place for peace now? Gandhi didn’t bring peace. Jesus didn’t either. But they stood for it. At least they stood. Today even that seems impossible. The space for it is gone.

In the middle of violence, we look for the truffle of peace in our soul.

And look at how it feels, trying anyway. Left, right, it doesn’t matter. Both sides transactional, already thinking of tomorrow’s gains. Words vanish in the roar. It’s like standing at the shore and asking a tsunami to stop because a child is playing there. That’s how personal efforts for peace feel. Tender, but useless.

So where do I stand? Instinct says fight. Retaliate. But I can see where that road leads. Do I have another choice? Can I wake up, step aside, not feed the instinct?

And then I remember April 20, 1999. Columbine. A close friend came to me crying, did you hear? I said yes. And then I said, I wonder if I could have been the killer. She said no, loud, certain. I understood her, but she missed what I meant.

What I meant is this: we carry all seeds of all nature inside us. Under different circumstances, I could have been a murderer, or a saint. A serial killer, or Mother Teresa. In reality we are neither. We are something in between. The point is, the seed we water grows.

That is why “thoughts and prayers” make me furious. That is why guns, or more laws, never go deep enough. The deeper task is to pause. To look inside. To see which seed we are watering. To let the cortex rise above the amygdala.

And maybe that is the only guide we can have: to choose for the greatest good, for the greatest number, for the longest time.

I’d genuinely welcome your thoughts — whether you agree or disagree. But if you feel like sharing, I’m especially interested in your personal reflections… how you navigate these questions, if they matter to you. And if this resonates, feel free to share it with others who think or wonder along similar lines.