DispositionMatrix
NES Member
Opinion | Why I Didn’t Join My School’s Walkout
HANOVER, N.H. — I am a junior in high school, and I regularly shoot guns, for target practice and hunting. Going to school can be hard because most kids don’t understand how I live. It can be uncomfortable to be a gun-owning teenager right now, when high schools have become the centers of gun control protests. But there are many of us around the country.
I own firearms not only because I think they are cool, but also because they are considered a tool in my family. I have been brought up around guns all my life. Yes, I have used AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, and old Civil War rifles, too. I live on a farm where I hunt wild game and butcher animals humanely. Some kids at my school don’t understand why I hunt; they think that it is cruel and that raising beef cattle and chickens is bad. Sometimes I get the feeling these kids are afraid of me because I own firearms.
There was a walkout at my school last week. It was meant to honor the students who died in the school shooting in Florida, but it was also about protesting firearms. I didn’t join in. I feel horrible about the kids who were killed or hurt, but firearms aren’t the problem — people are.