Carrying a gun means carrying huge responsibility. While we in Germany did have a number of public shooting incidents in the past 25 years and have around 12,000 gun related incidents on a population of roughly 81 million per year, we seem way off the level in the US while having approximately one third of the numbers of guns in circulation (per capita) as the US.

In Germany arms are largely of a nature for hunting and shooting within shooting clubs in which the country has a huge tradition for several hundred years. While these guns are no match for semi-automatic rifles or machine pistols or machine guns, they are still of deadly nature.

So I personally attribute the lower number of shootings we have here to education about arms and educating towards understanding the responsibility that comes with holding one and knowing how to use it, an education and spirit provided here in Germany within shooting clubs and hunting associations.

While I would assume that the 1966 Texas shooting had less victims due to the sniper having to take cover, too, I think that the discussion about leagal gun carriage and the pros and cons falls short of the fact that the US does have a huge tradition in gun ownership and the current interpretation of the Second Amendment. So what I miss in every article on the topic is the discussion about the educational environment provided alongside with guns, an environment focused on the huge responsibility of gun possession.

While I do understand that Americans do not like government to interfere with their lives, I also believe that teaching people about the nature of inner conflicts and interpersonal conflicts is not an interference with personal rights.

The gun use at UT in 1966 was probably inefficient given that a handful of young men might have moved into the tower after organizing enough coverage. That might have reduced the length of the ordeal the injured went through. But such structured and thoughtfully coordinated behavior can only take place if people have learned more about gun use than just loading and firing like robots or soldiers serving in between the 15th and 19th century.

Understanding the nature conflict between individuals and/or groups and learning to deal with these as well as inner conflicts without considering a weapon to be a solution to a conflict in any way, seems key to me in giving weapons the nature they should have in a society: Hunting and sports out of traditions and self-defense and defence of those unarmed yet under attack.

Guns are not for entertainment. Their use in entertainment for entertainment purposes may have made forgotten the responsibility and discretion with which they should be owned and used. Such education and awareness should not be left to teaching within families of gun owners, for the ownership might be the result of a lack of insight about the nature of conflict and how to address it without the threat of a gun.

As much as gun advocates will contest me on their right to feel entertained by firing their guns, those lobbying for getting them out of society will contest me on them and their nature and role in conflict becoming a teaching topic. But where else than in a society built under the circumstance that owning a gun was a need, with a Sheriff or Marshall a day or two away, where else would there be the need to make the topic of conflicts a part of education and the civil spirit?

The article quotes UT in that they will introduce gun-free zones on the campus in accordance with the law, a law which can be broken by anybody wishing to create a conflict. The article does not quote UT on itself forming organized groups of students wishing to carry guns on campus. The Second Amendment idea of a campus militia, the responsibility of UT to provide education to and the shaping of the spirit and character of their students - armed or unarmed - through teaching insight beyond gun use, seems to disappear in the conflict between gun advocates and those lobbying for their ban in public.

Assuming that both sides wish to reduce the number of shootings and deaths in public places in the US with their approach to the topic, the very nature of the conflict between their positions (often voiced very radically) seems to stress the need for educating about the nature of inner and interpersonal conflicts, confrontation and the responsibility coming along with the carriage of arms.

Living in Germany I cannot rule out that I missed on the fact that dealing with the character of conflict is part of education in the US already. If yes, it never got mentioned in those articles I read about gun incidents in the US and what to do about them. If it is, then the focus and content of this education should be examined if it fits the actual requirements or is just a politically correct compromise between the positions of lobbyists!

Here each lobby group will always find an argument or scientific study supporting its position or undermining arguments of the other side. But since conflict is a natural occurrence (even in the US unarmed conflicts and non-violent conflicts heavily outnumber those involving arms), nobody can argue that teaching insight into conflict can be wrong.

And such teaching about conflict is not a question of teaching the possession or non-possession of firearms, unless you hold a lobbyist’s position that is. But probably both sides could agree that — to use geek-speak here — a Vulcan is an ideal gun-owner?

Maybe at UT and elsewhere in Texas they will learn to see the new law as a chance born out of the challenge to not only raise children safely but doing so in a country where guns are seen as a matter of conflict solution when they are not!

Even conflicts between countries, in the form of wars, are not ended by weapons but only appeased by them (similar to criminal shooters appeasing their minds). Armed conflicts between nations only end with lasting peace treaties being signed and former enemies becoming friends — just like the US and Germany or the US and Japan after WW2!

On a side-note I’d like to add that training people to respect their weapon and give them what it takes to responsibly handle it and its power could probably be an area where veterans would be of huge servitude to society. Because nowhere else the responsible and disciplined handling and use of weapons is taught as much as in the military for there, in the conflicts soldiers face, its skilled handling by all individuals decides about live of death of fellow soldiers as much as of oneself or the enemy combatant!