Yes and no. There’s anger, hate, despair, and mental illness everywhere. There aren’t mass shootings happening on a daily basis everywhere. Just in places where guns are easy to get.

And the AR-15 isn’t the whole problem. But it is part of the problem. And not just because it makes it ridiculously easy to kill lots of people really quickly. But also because of what it has come to symbolize, as I tried to explain in this piece.

I’m not against all gun ownership. I grew up in a small town where most people owned guns. But the culture has shifted dramatically since I was a kid. Before, people owned hunting rifles and shotguns. Now they want pistols and assault rifles. That’s not a trivial difference. The first two are for hunting animals, a sport that men (and sometimes women) would take up often as an excuse to hang out together. The last two are for killing people, people you’re afraid of because you’ve been taught by the media that you have to protect your home from invasion. That seeps into the subconscious.

Guns today are at once a symptom and a vector of the larger cultural sickness that is undermining faith in social institutions. That is why more gun control is needed. It won’t cure the illness completely, but it will contain it, allow us to get it under control.