My parents’ home was never locked. Nor was the family car. Not ever. When I took my bicycle for a ride as a child, I would sometimes be gone for hours, sometimes miles away, yet I never felt to be in any danger. As a child, I walked two miles to the local movie theatre with no fear. For a Boy Scout badge, I hiked five miles into a wooded area, again with no problems or fear. As a teenager, I would walk two miles home after 10 pm, again with no fear. With a bicycle at age 12, I rode throughout the city and never felt in danger, regardless of the neighborhood. People did not hurt other people. They just didn’t. Today, would I leave my house unlocked, not just for a day but for years? Obviously not. Would I allow a child today to roam freely throughout a large city? Clearly not.

Guns? They weren’t generally locked up because people already knew they were dangerous. People who owned guns were hunters or otherwise engaged in sporting activities with guns. Shooting a group of people because one felt envy or anger? It did not happen. Assault people on airplanes or in other public places? The very thought was unimaginable. Do I want gun control today? Without a doubt, YES, I DO! People argue that guns don’t kill people, but something is putting bullets into people’s bodies, and I think that it is done by guns. (As an aside, as of December 2022, there were more than 393 million guns owned by civilians in the United States, more than one per person.)

What especially troubles me about our attitude towards guns is that so many now believe that having MORE guns will improve the situation, the idea being that if more of us carried guns that it would frighten people into compliance. Regrettably, statistics show that with more guns, there is more violence and more deaths. On that same thought, some states now endorse a ‘stand your ground’ attitude, endorsing the use of force, even when there are other options, such as retreating from the situation. Senseless, truly senseless.

As a young adult, while courting my dear future wife, I walked four miles from her house back to my residence, many times at two a.m., with no thought of danger, even though the walk was through a high-residence, low-income section of town. And decades before cell phones were available. Guns were not a concern then. No, today I would not take that walk.

When our son was just four years old, we let him walk several blocks alone to a grocery store occasionally. No, we would not let that happen today because children today sometimes do not return safely home. When he was six, we offered to let him stay with my parents out of state for a week. No, we would not do that today.

People tell me that nothing has changed, that crimes we read about were always with us, but are now just more publicly known. I cannot accept that. I also cannot accept simplistic solutions, such as the belief that if mothers stayed as homemakers, these dangers would not exist. Our society is slowly changing, and not for the good. We do not fix this because we continue to rationalize that nothing has changed. Downward we spiral.

Will we ever recover that earlier time of innocence and trust? I doubt it, mostly because people today do not believe such a world ever existed. We have become so accustomed to the events of today that a more trusting time is beyond imagination. Until we begin looking at our country as a whole, and not just at the individual instances of crimes, our world will continue this decay that will ultimately destroy us.