I am actually from developing country in South America, tiny Uruguay. Growing up we had the Tupamaro War, which involved constant terror attacks in my neighborhood for 6 years. Saw a lot of suffering during the war, and went through my own. That's when I was carbombed.

Followed by a despotic military dictatorship for 12 years. Lots of suffering under that regime, again some of it my own. I got tortured then. I got PTSD in what we used to call a "third world dictatroship."

So living here in the USA has been great. Now southern South America has achieved a lasting peace for 3 decades. I just visited there last month. I really enjoyed the peace there. Coming back, I find there's more violence here now than there. That is truly a shame.

Trigger alert ahead, no puns intended.... My BFF teaches high school and after Columbine, she got the school board's permission to carry a gun in her purse. Sure she could "stop" the next bad thing. Then one student accidentally saw the gun in her purse, and let's just say it took a few years for her reputation to recover. The kids were *terrified* of her, and started talking about how to stop the crazy gun-toting teacher, and a few began sneaking firearms to school. Memorably, a sawed-off shotgun in the gym bag that went to every class. That's when she understood that a gun does not necessarily stop a shooting. (OK, that sentence sounded all weird.) Or fear.

For me, guns are tools, like hammers, to be used, then put away safely. Don't need one, so don't own one. Just like I don't own a table saw. Not required, not in the house.

That said, other countries with strict gun control laws still have violence issues, but guns do seem to somehow make it "easier".... not to my thinking, but they have come to represent "power" and "freedom" in the US, at least. (Think Rambo, John Wayne, etc.)

Complex and complicated dynamics at work, on many levels, but in all the shouting, so easy to forget that the basic problem is human nature.

Thanks for that story, Leo. It supports what I think of the idea of my carrying a gun as a teacher, too. I was a gun owner in Uruguay's war from the age of 14. In a second I'd shoot an intruder to save my kids.

It would not be meaningless at all to have such blood on my hands. Yet what I learned about myself protecting my family as the man of the house in combat as a boy while my father was away was that I could face doing that. It would be a burden forever, but the alternative would be worse if I could not. So it's not a heroic thought, just one born out of necessity in a combat incident involving an intruder in my home I won't go into here.

But to shoot one of my own students, even if the situation raised the question? I can't think that way as a teacher, not the kind I want to be.

I discussed this with one of my students after class today. We talked not about the fear and the anger US school shooting cause us as much as how sad it is for us all at school. School was my safe place even in war. We once had a gun battle break out near my school, a big one after 110 rebels escaped from a near by prison. My school bus was caught in the cross fire. It was awful.

But in six years of war in our city our school grounds themselves were never invaded by soldiers. Not so my home; it was taken over by soldiers in combat. Not my school, though. So that miracle is one of the reasons I became a teacher so I could work on creating safe places for students.

My student today never has lived anywhere but the USA. He's from a small rural town and he's just coming out as a gay man. He's taking my psych class to learn and because he feels safe there. That sense of safety is important to him, too.