First hearing of the Apalachee High School shooting earlier this month, it didn’t particularly register. It’s difficult to live in America and not be numb to a mass shooting.

It’s a bit like America’s foremost hillbilly and Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, put it to a campaign crowd in Arizona shortly after: “I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets.” 

I’ve not gotten the impression that mass shootings at schools occur because the shooter simply sees schools as “soft targets.” The shooters wanting “to make headlines” seem much better off at a concert or nightclub. Kids shooting their classmates and teachers, on the other hand, seems particularly tied to adolescent mental health issues — and absurdly easy access to incredibly deadly firearms.

After a few more reports of this latest school shooting — fingers crossed there’s not a more recent massacre by the time this posts — the school’s location, Winder, caught my attention. I’ve not been to Winder, but that little Georgia town has been part of my family’s culture since my stepfather came on the scene, when I was about 10. My mother was Ed’s third wife.

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His first, who died far too young of cancer, was from Winder. At least, her sister Jean, whom I met by the time I was high school, hailed from Winder. My mother once visited as Jean’s guest. I heard plenty of stories about Winder. It might be a blessing that Jean died several months ago and did not have to dwell on this shooting as one of her last memories. 

While I grew up with Winder, I didn’t really grow up with guns. At least, not that I knew of. My stepfather, too, got cancer. As his illness and the toxic treatments to fight it sapped his mind and body, he made the decision to end his life with a handgun. He was possibly nearing the end of when it would be his choice to make, and fading away without agency would not appeal to Ed.

He was a Goldwater Republican who embraced his sense of duty and personal responsibility at all times. His choice to end his life, as there was no state-sanctioned alternative, did not surprise me. I was, however, a tiny bit surprised to learn there had been a gun in the house. I never saw it. Possibly, it would have been more surprising if I’d discovered my stepfather didn’t have a gun.

I did once see a shotgun that belonged to my father. I’m told he hunted a few times. His own father spent years working at the Remington Arms factory in Herkimer — or Ilion, if you want to get nitpicky — N.Y. 

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With my mother’s Swiss roots, despite her being a Bal’mer girl, I learned of Swiss rules for conscripts keeping their firearms at home, part of the national defense. The Swiss are big on guns. Not like Americans, of course. Nobody’s as big on guns as Americans.

It’s unlikely I ever would have handled a gun myself, were it not for my journalism career. Roughly 20 years ago, I was profiling the Pink Pistols community group. With chapters around the country operating under the banner, “Armed Queers Don’t Get Bashed,” a few locals took me to the belly of the beast: the shooting range in the Fairfax, Va., headquarters of the National Rifle Association. There, with some kind of handgun, I took shots at a paper target, Sabrina Duncan-style, earning kudos for my “grouping.” 

That was the only time I’ve held a gun, and I’m fairly certain I’ll exit this earthly plane without picking up another. I could see, however, why some might get a thrill from holding this powerful, mechanical evolution of sticks and stones literally in the palm of one’s hands.

While my journalism career introduced me to guns, it also introduced me to fetishes. Writing countless stories about the Centaur MC’s Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend alone has given me insights into loads of fetishes. If you’re looking for it, you certainly can’t miss the breadth of gun fetishization in America. 

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Let’s use Merriam-Webster’s 1.b. definition of “fetish”: “an object of irrational reverence or obsessive devotion.” I can’t look at the heat-packin’ family photos from the likes of Reps. Thomas Massie or Lauren Boebert and not think “obsessive devotion.” What are you trying to tell us with these photos of you and yours brandishing massive weaponry? That you are very, very afraid?

How about infamous George Santos, who, like some of his peculiar congressional colleagues, donned a lapel pin in the style of an assault rifle? If you want your jewelry to make a signature statement, that will do it.

It’s baffling to imagine this all hangs on a single sentence in our inarguably flawed founding documents, the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. (“Inarguably flawed” in that, for starters, the seemingly sacred founders had to return to the Constitution to add the Bill of Rights a couple years after the former was ratified.) 

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That’s it. How about a little more regulation, please? What’s the lethality limit on weapons owned by civilians? While I’ve just gotten a primer in .50-caliber weapons, which are legal, the AR-style rifle used in Winder, makes a mockery of civilization. Easy to obtain, great at destroying bodies, popular with sociopathic shooters. What’s not to hate? 

We’ve already taken the prize for the number of guns per capita. It’s no contest. But I’m hardly ready to throw in the towel, Vance-style, and say schools need to be turned into fortresses — and every public space, by that logic — because mass shootings are “a fact of life.”

Instead, I’ll listen to wiser leaders. Gov. Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate as she sits atop the Democratic ticket for the White House, is an outstanding choice. He brought up this sinister status quo while offering the keynote address Sept. 7 at the Human Rights Campaign’s National Dinner.

“It’s a fact of life some people are gay,” Walz told the crowd, countering right-wing efforts to ban books. “But you know what’s not a fact of life? That our children need to be shot dead in schools. That’s not a fact of life. Folks are banning books, but they’re okay with weapons of war being in our schools. Look, that’s not this country. It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t happen elsewhere.” 

This country is the responsibility of every American citizen. It’s a democracy. And, according to the Pew Research Center, most of us think it’s too easy to get a gun and want tougher gun restrictions. It’s a commonsense position. 

Certainly, I don’t want to get between folks and their fetishes. But most of us have given too little consent to allow for all this carnage. Whatever the “open carry” laws in your locale, please don’t wave your lethal lifestyle in our faces.

Will O’Bryan is a former Metro Weekly managing editor, living in D.C. with his husband. He is online at www.LifeInFlights.com.