We Need to Talk About Guns, Mass Shootings, and War
We’ve ignored our embrace of violence as fun and how mass shootings became commonplace
I returned home from Iraq before Christmas 2007. The PlayStation 3 had dropped during my time in combat, but became a hard commodity to come by, so I assumed I’d grab one for Christmas. As with any product around the holidays, it became impossible to find, but a few friends had got their hands on one. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare had released a few months prior, so everyone was amped to have a new first-person shooter for the holidays.
Throughout most of my life, I’ve enjoyed video games, spending evenings with friends playing 007’s Goldeneye or Halo. When I sat down to play Call of Duty, however, I struggled to play. The game felt real. Too real considering the environment I’d just returned home from. I remember staring at the screen and thinking, “That’s the same EoTech red dot sight I used on my rifle in Iraq. That’s the Beretta 9mm I carried in my drop holster. The rifle even has an AN/PEQ-2 on the side for night vision capabilities like mine did!”
From the gloves the first-person shooter wore to the weapons and uniforms, it got really real, really quick. I set the controller down and stopped playing. People were capitalizing on an experience they knew…
