The news added yet another to the long list of communities grieving the loss of children and beloved guardians at the hands of an unstable person who was shunned rather than provided help.

And while the funerals and grief continue, political leaders wring their hands and lament there is nothing they can or need to do to prevent the ease in which a person can walk into a store and obtain the weapons they need to vent their deluded frustrations.

I grew up in the woods of Western Pennsylvania where there was what I will call a hunting culture, note, not a gun culture. Game was plentiful and the first day of deer season each year extended the Thanksgiving holiday weekend through Monday. There were students who would go hunting after school for the day and stow their weapons in their hall locker until classes dismissed. People would be out in the wilds hunting the Thanksgiving turkey or venison to fill the freezer. My dad had a shotgun and a rifle hanging on a rack high on the wall in our home. I never fired either.

My high school had a rifle team, nationally ranked as I recall, and a bunker-like range where marksmanship was taught as an elective. This included gun safety as well as shooting. I took the NRA safety course as part of the Boy Scouts and earned the marksmanship merit badge. It has been more than 50 years since I’ve even handled a firearm, let alone shot one.

This provides you a feel for my mindset as I continue my thoughts on what has become the “gun culture” in the United States. There is the Second Amendment protection, which for the most part is a valid cornerstone of history. However, one argument I find particularly difficult to buy is the “Second Amendment solution,” as if the founders had written into law the right of people to revolt against their government if they felt threatened by tyranny. Somewhere along the line this may have been brought up as a valid reason for guaranteeing the right to bear arms. However, I really don’t believe this is what the founders had in mind when they wrote the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

For background, consider what was happening in the country at the time. In 1786 a group of Massachusetts farmers and Revolutionary War veterans began protests over high taxes, no script in circulation to pay debts and high taxes often collected by confiscation of property. The gangs shut down tax courts with few if any shots fired. But the situation eventually pushed them to march on an armory in winter 1787 in an attempt to obtain more weapons and ammunition. It was at that armory that the “well organized militia” of the state put down what was known as Shay’s Rebellion once and for all. This was just months before the founders gathered in Philadelphia to hammer out the U.S. Constitution.

In 1791 citizens in Western Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh began protests over a tax on whiskey, a beverage of choice at a time when drinking the water could lead to dysentery. The protests got out of hand and tax collectors were handled pretty roughly – tar and feather and such – but few if anyone was ever shot. President George Washington himself, along with his right-hand-man from the revolution, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, rounded up an army of militia from surrounding states and headed west toward the Whiskey Rebellion. After Washington met with leaders of the rebellion, giving them a few choice words, he returned to Philadelphia leaving Hamilton to quash the uprising with the caveat that no one was to die at the hands of the militia. A few of the leaders were arrested and the rebellion was quelled.

Leaders working on the Bill of Rights wrote the Second Amendment in 1791, the year the Whiskey Rebellion began. It did not end until 1794. Now, to my point, does anyone really believe that the founders wrote the Second Amendment to allow for citizens to overthrow the government, given the ongoing events as these documents were actually written?

More likely, it was important at that time that the United States continue to expand westward where settlers would encounter hostile resistance, European interlopers with mischief in mind and they needed to hunt game to feed themselves. These are far better reasons for guaranteeing the right to arms. Do we still need a hunting culture in the 21st Century? It is fine for sport, I suppose, but not necessary for survival – let’s pass and implement good regulations.