Gun Nation

Raised in a family of farmers, my experience of living in rural America is diametrically opposite to Danny Duncan Collum’s experience described in “Guns, Culture, and Sanity” (April 2013). There was little ownership of or talk of guns in my family. My uncle once took my 13-year-old cousin to show him how to shoot a gun. My cousin killed a rabbit, cried, and said he never wanted to shoot again. Times have changed since the ’50s and ’60s, and this country is far more prone to guns now. But Nebraska’s farmland felt quite different from the country Collum describes. I prefer my memories.

Linda Finley
Eugene, Oregon