Opinion | I’m a hunter and gun owner, and for the first time I’m wondering if guns are part of the problem

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On Aug. 27, I attended the vigil at Lynnhurst Park in Minneapolis with my 8-year-old son following the Annunciation Church shooting. My intention was to go there to stand in solidarity with the residents of Minneapolis and pay my respects to the fallen and those grieving.

I wasn’t there waving a sign about gun laws. Growing up in western Minnesota, hunting and gun ownership have been a way of life and a rite of passage for me. I’ve been shooting since I was 5 or 6 years old. I have always been a strong supporter of the Second Amendment and believe that people should have the right to defend themselves. Our Constitution was designed that way, and that is the law of the land. I have no qualms with that. In fact, I own a carry gun, a Glock 43x.

But right now, as a father, I am beginning to understand the argument for a ban on the kind of weapon used in the shooting at Annunciation.

I have hunted just about every corner of the state, from up near the Canadian border in the Beltrami Island State Forest all the way down to Worthington in the southwestern corner of the state and everywhere in between. Last year, I was able to take my son to the woods for deer hunting for the first time, a moment I treasured.

Like any other time in my life, when it comes to mass shootings, I always look at the root cause and say, “Yep, that is the problem.” In almost every scenario, it is some type of mental health issue that is the root cause for someone to commit such a horrific act, and I have always landed there and left it there.

It became very real to my son that those drills are for a very specific reason, and we talked about it. He described how they lock the door and all run and huddle behind the teacher’s desk and hope they do not get shot. My heart sunk and my eyes opened to what kids today are conditioned to, and I just thought to myself how we have failed as a society to where our kids are practicing mass shooting drills as part of their routine in school. He asked if we did that when I was in school, and I said no, we didn’t. School shootings just didn’t happen then. We practiced fire and tornado drills, and that was it.

So, what has changed since I was in school? For one thing, when I was a kid there was a federal assault weapons ban. As I stood at the vigil with my son, I had to concede to myself for the first time in my life that maybe, just maybe, guns are a part of this problem. Obviously, they are not the whole problem and not the core problem, but denying that they are part of the problem is just senseless and unreasonable.

The kind of rifle used in this and so many other mass shootings have characteristics that make it really good for shooting lots of people. An assault rifle has a high muzzle velocity, which creates more damage to whatever it hits. A clip-fed assault rifle also has little recoil and sends a lot of ammo downrange in a short period of time accurately. That means that the shooter at Annunciation could put 116 rounds from a single assault rifle into the church in a matter of moments. (His handgun jammed, and he fired three shotgun rounds as well.)

This real-world example highlights the difference between three types of guns and what they are capable of. No hunter wants to send 116 rounds into the open air knowing it is far too dangerous and irresponsible to do so. ARs are certainly great sellers, maybe the top sellers nationwide, but for hunting purposes there are better applications for big game such as the popular 30-06 rifle. For small game, it’s a 22. A Glock 19, 9mm is widely considered the best gun for self-defense. So we must ask ourselves, if an AR is not a top choice for hunters or for self-defense, what is its intended purpose and what is it good for?

I am not saying a ban is the answer; I am also not saying it’s not an answer. What I am saying is it’s time that we as a society take a long, hard look and search deep down in our gut and ask ourselves if it was my kid that was shot, if it were the students in our school who are going to have PTSD for the rest of their lives, did the type of gun used play a role in the death and injury of these children?

We remember these children, realize keeping children safe is not a partisan issue and work together to ensure this doesn’t happen again.