“Bam, you’re dead!”

At age seven I was thrilled by the Lone Ranger. We didn’t have a TV, but the family that rented above us did and invited me and my brothers up to watch on their black-and-white.

Years later, I looked forward to “Gunsmoke,” which my uncle would let us watch with him in the family room. Our hero was, of course, Marshall Matt Dillon, who kept the peace in Dodge City, along with his sidekick, Chester, Miss Kitty and Doc Adams.

Then came Wyatt Earp, Maverick, the Rifleman, Have Gun Will Travel and others. What all the characters had in common was they knew how to solve problems and settle disputes. They did this with their guns.

As did boys did across America, I imagined myself as a heroic keeper of the peace. Our parents didn’t allow us store-bought six-shooters, but we made our own versions out of wood. In my reverie, I was the quickest draw in town.

My fascination with Westerns was an early immersion in a culture wedded to guns. Guns represented power, and the destruction they caused was justified by the need to protect and establish order or to settle old scores.

If our heroes shot and killed other human beings, this was all right because they were clearly the bad guys. We enjoyed seeing their theatrical demise. “Bam, you’re dead,” one of us would yell. “You got me,” the other would respond, spinning and falling to the ground.

Over time, on TV and in movies, the weapons became more sophisticated. Colt 45s and Winchester rifles were followed by .44 Magnums and AR7s. Then came Glocks and M60 machine guns. Star Wars and Jurassic Park brought us Mauser pistols and SPAS-12 shotguns. Today, AK47s are the weapons of choice.

Beyond the arguments over gun proliferation and control in America, and whether our Constitution sanctions unfettered access, is the simple reality that we Americans are in love with our guns. We want them, we have them, and we use them— despite the horrendous suffering they inflict.

This is true on a national scale as well. Too often and too quickly we turn to our weapons—ever more sophisticated—in our cities and in the world. We choose war over defense, “death from above” over mediation and conflict resolution.

Accompanying our threats of violence to our perceived enemies is their dehumanization. Nowhere is this more evident than in the words and deeds of our current commander in chief and secretary of the War Department.

The president who labeled Somalians “garbage” and African nations “shithole countries,” has called Iranians “crazy bastards” and threatened to “bomb them back to the Stone Age.”

Hegseth has taunted Iranians as “barbaric savages” and called for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

When you deny your opponents their humanity, it’s much easier to destroy them. You can shoot protesters in the street. You can blow up boats in international waters, summarily executing suspects. You can conduct a “precision” strike into another nation to arrest its leaders, killing 80 people in the process.

And you can start an unprovoked war, unleashing missiles, bombs and drones that you know will kill and wound not only our own soldiers, but thousands of civilians—including children—their suffering out of sight and out of mind.

After 250 years, will we ever understand the true consequences of our violent impulses, combined with our love of weapons? Will we ever learn to holster our six-shooters and commit ourselves to making peace? God help us.