Blake, I enjoyed and appreciated this, thank you for writing it. I find spots where I disagree — particularly your assertion that my view on guns is a product of “the media,” and implication that it’s somehow less valid — but I don’t want to argue.

What I do want to make clear is that I don’t label every single gun owner a racist. My own piece was addressing the “gun culture,” which is very clearly shaped by a minority of gun owners in this country. It’s pretty clear from the life experience you share that your motivation to own a gun is not fear of some impending race war — but the fact is that’s a motive that drives gun sales, and that therefore informs the NRA, which shapes the debate for pro-gun folks in the US. You don’t have to look further than the broadcasts on NRA-TV to see that clearly.

For what it’s worth, I grew up in a fairly rural suburb in upstate New York, and for almost all of my life we had two guns in the house — a rifle and a shotgun. I’ve shot both. In my early childhood, my dad and many of my neighbors hunted deer. I quite enjoy skeet-shooting, though I’ve only done it a handful of times. I’ve even considered buying a pistol, because I’m a backpacker and don’t think I’d feel comfortable camping in brown bear country without one — but I also live in New York City right now, so that’s pretty much impossible.

In short, it’s not as foreign a concept to me as you might think. I’ll even agree that guns are fun to shoot — but that doesn’t much change the reality I see around guns as a larger cultural phenomenon in our nation. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but in my humble opinion, people like you need to speak up MORE, because a conversation and debate dominated by reasonable gun enthusiasts, instead of doomsday survivalists and gun merchant lobbyists, would be much healthier for this country.

Either way, thanks for writing.