I'm Major Jackson and this is the Slowdown.

The most recent mass shootings in America have me recall a conversation some years ago.

A single mother and fellow graduate student shared the difficulty of raising her young son.

She did not want him to play at violence.

She wasn't necessarily a pacifist, but knew intimately the dangers of violent boys who become

violent men.

Between the ages of five and eight, his holiday wish list was filled with sorts, comeback

figures and toy guns.

She didn't understand why, until she realized that play dates with friends met encounters

with everything from toy rocket launchers to gun-toting cowboys.

One morning, watching him in their front yard construct his own gun out of sticks and blades

of grass, she decided to take him to toys or us.

Is it this overwhelming sense that fighting is an irreducibly encoded fact of human biology

the thing that prevents us from working toward a society free of guns and conflicts?

This perception of ourselves prevents us from building communities that are guided by

love, decency, human regard, trust, and respect for life.

Those seems inevitable, and violence is painted as its antidote.

Guns, it is argued, deter criminal intentions and protect lives, and thus we need more

weapons in order to eradicate gun violence.

We are urged to arm teachers and to pass carry free laws, otherwise we open up ourselves

to the worst in society.

If that bit of reasoning sounds like a aura borrows, you're not alone.

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