What's missing in the loud debate over guns? Listening.

Yahoo

20-03-2025

David Greene speaks with a gun shop owner in Owensboro, Kentucky, during filming of the documentary, "Louder than Guns." (Courtesy of Louder than Guns)
Whenever I hear a call to end gun violence, I'm all ears. But when the message comes from a frightened middle school student, it hits differently. I feel the full force of our collective inaction, as a society and — this may be giving us too much credit — as responsible grown-ups.
I heard it from Fiona, a 7th grader in Owensboro, Kentucky.
'As a kid myself, it's very hard for me to see kids who might be from other schools die and be in the news,' she said. 'I don't wanna be one of those kids. I don't wanna have one of my friends die. And nobody cares, it feels like, because nothing is going on about it. And it's very important that this has to stop.'
Then there was Cruz, sitting with his middle school classmates in Nashville, Tennessee.
'It's kind of difficult for most people sitting in this circle,' he said in a room full of 6th, 7th and 8th graders. 'It's not like we can really, easily, fend for ourselves. This is adults' problem.'
Cruz is right. And we're failing him.
I met Fiona, Cruz and other kids while working on a new documentary film called Louder Than Guns. (Both their last names are withheld in the film due to their age). The mission of the film is simple: Stop caving to our fears, stop playing politics, get our butts to the table no matter what we think about guns and find ways to keep our kids and communities safe.
If you think this is about to be a lecture on why we need excessively restrictive gun laws in our country, you're wrong. I once felt that way. I don't anymore, thanks in large part to this project.
I have never owned a gun. But growing up in Pennsylvania, where hunting is a cherished pastime in many families, and the first day of deer hunting is a celebrated part of Thanksgiving weekend every year, I never judged anyone who owned and loved firearms.
I fired my first guns with a friend on his Maryland farm a few years ago and felt the power, energy and camaraderie so many people enjoy for the first time. I've come to get it. I've come to respect people who love gun culture and are committed to owning firearms safely. And I've come to acknowledge that the ultimate solutions to reduce gun violence are more layered and nuanced than I once believed. But what's straightforward and clear is that nothing will ever happen if we can't communicate honestly with one another.
I have now spent nearly two years traveling the country, listening to people talk about gun rights, gun culture and gun violence.
Recently, we came to Lancaster County, which was special for a number of reasons. The Steinman Foundation in Lancaster generously supported production of the film. We also brought the conversation around the movie to J.P. McCaskey High School, where I graduated in 1994.
I sat on stage with four current students who have lost patience living every day with the belief that someone could walk into their school and take lives. They got so fed up with inaction that they launched their own organization, 'McCaskey Students for Gun Reform.' Their goal is to facilitate conversations that don't get stymied by political BS.
'When we try and have these conversations, we attack each other and don't try and come to something in the middle,' said sophomore Sofie Nesbitt. 'It's just, I don't like this, I don't like what you're doing, I don't like what you're doing. We can never find a middle because no one wants to agree. They are always so far this way that they refuse to believe anything on this side. Or the other way around. We need to find ways to have conversations that will keep people safer and keep people alive.'
Freshman Mary Schuler was more blunt in her plea to us: 'Don't be stupid.'
That day in Lancaster, I saw a community come together and put on a rare display of un-stupid.
McCaskey students performed as part of 'Music for Everyone,' a local non profit that leverages the power of music to improve our communities. They hoped to remind the audience of students and teachers that we share more than we sometimes care to remember — like a love of music. Too often, we forget shared values when the subject matter gets hard.
Leaders from the Lancaster County Safe Firearm Storage Initiative came on stage to emphasize that teaching safe gun storage is — or certainly should be — apolitical, non-judgmental and open to all. Keeping firearms secured and keeping our kids safe are priorities shared by the most vocal defenders of the Second Amendment and by people who've never touched a firearm.
What I witnessed at my high school that afternoon felt like a roadmap. Reducing gun violence in our country is not just about new laws, or new approaches to mental health, or better parenting or improving safety training. It's some combination of all of it. But we're not going to move the needle a centimeter unless we're willing to talk.
That's harder than it sounds. Our film's social impact producer, Courtney Spence, has pounded the message that a collective and meaningful response likely depends on identifying a common enemy. Let's be clear: It's not gun owners. It's also not advocates for tighter gun restrictions. We believe it's the individuals and forces in our politics who thrive on keeping us walled off by our fears and unable to join forces.
If we need to name check the people and organizations who seek to vilify and divide us — I will.
When former Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke told gun owners, 'Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,' he made clear he isn't interested in having the tough conversations.
When the NRA warns that any talk of incremental changes to law — like tougher penalties for parents who leave their firearms unlocked — are a slippery slope towards ending the Second Amendment, they too are entrenching on the issue.
Over two years, I've met AR-15 owners who desperately want to keep their schools safe and are walking encyclopedias of knowledge when it comes to safe gun storage practices. I've talked to dedicated warriors for school safety who will sit with gun owners and explore where their interests and agendas overlap. In the right settings, and given assurances that they will be heard and respected, people generally want to come together and talk.
But that's not happening nearly enough. As with so much in our politics, we live stubbornly in our fears.
How do we start overcoming this? My longtime friend, Ketch Secor, had some ideas that became the basis for our film.
Ketch is frontman for the Nashville string band, Old Crow Medicine Show, and is most famous for writing and performing the jukebox banger, 'Wagon Wheel.' (I sang the tune regularly at karaoke bars until that became truly embarrassing, having become close to the guy who sings it for real.)
Ketch is more than a musician. He's a father of two. He's the grandson of a man who used a gun to take his own life. He's a fierce advocate for safer communities who believes in music and storytelling as tools for societal good.
After the 2023 massacre at Covenant School in his hometown, Nashville, Ketch lost patience himself. He penned an essay in The New York Times calling on the country music industry to enter the gun conversation, whatever the risks to its brand.
'Nashville is called the Athens of the South because it is teeming with scholars at its many colleges — and by country singers who are tired of bending to the whims of fear mongers and who are ready to speak from their platforms to an impressionable audience,' Ketch wrote.
Ready to do his part, Ketch wrote a new song, Louder Than Guns, calling on communities to speak out about reducing gun violence with collective voices louder than the sound of firearms. Old Crow began performing the song in rural, gun-loving communities in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Montana and beyond.
Ketch admits he feared people who just wanted a night of beer-drinking and upbeat music could bristle at a song about gun violence — but the response has been positive, often energetically so, with emotional standing ovations.
Ketch also reflected on how, at every concert, there are different views on guns literally sharing space in the front row of the audience. If those fans come together to appreciate his music, his thinking went, why can't they come together at a table to speak openly about their differences, remember the values they share and work collaboratively towards solutions?
Ketch, along with me and our third partner, film director Doug Pray, began using Old Crow concerts and their music as opportunities — laboratories — to bring people with different perspectives together in that way.
Little by little, we hope our film, events like the one in Lancaster, and the conversations we vow to keep convening will begin to change the conversation. To take politics out. To escape our fears and listen. To seek solutions together and from a mutual desire to do good.
One of our more memorable gatherings took place at a Nashville restaurant. Shaundelle Brooks described the experience of losing her son, Akilah DaSilva, in a 2018 shooting at a local Waffle House. How some people reacted to the pain of this grieving mom is as stupid as it gets.
'I was being attacked,' she said. 'This is something that was so new to me, and people would come up to me and say, 'You want to take my guns.' What are you talking about? I don't want to take your guns. I want to be safe. I don't want to have to experience this again. I don't want another mom to have to experience this. It is the worst feeling ever. It's a nightmare.'
Bill Robeson, one of a half dozen gun owners at the table and probably the most vocal defender of gun rights, listened with empathy to Shaundelle. He also shared a painful story of his own.
'A friend of mine's brother, even though they grew up around [guns], decided it'd be a good idea to use them and play 'Cowboys and Indians,' and sure enough, there's a loaded bullet. And my buddy's older brother killed his younger brother who was only five years old accidentally. They weren't locked.'
Bill paused, before adding: 'Mine are locked.'
He argued that night that it's unfair to take firearms away from people like himself, who are committed to following the law and keeping their guns safely secured. He also spoke of his openness to so-called 'red flag laws' which would allow a family member to go to court to restrict his gun rights if he was, for example, suffering from mental illness.
The NRA likely doesn't want Bill anywhere near this conversation. They want him to believe that Shaundelle, in her grief, would immediately want to take his guns away. And Beto O'Rourke, for his part, gave Bill every reason to be suspicious.
But Bill was here on this night in Nashville. With Shaundelle. And with more than a dozen neighbors.
'I've never been opposed to doing things that make sense,' Bill said. 'And I think a lot of gun owners are the same way. They just feel attacked. And both sides feel attacked. Everyone feels attacked. Why do we have to be like that? Can we not just be adults and have a conversation?'
For our kids.
David Greene is a native Pennsylvanian and co-executive producer of the new documentary film, Louder than Guns. David currently hosts the public radio program, Left Right & Center, and for nearly a decade prior hosted NPR's Morning Edition.