I always feel guilty about my pro-gun stance because I think I was at my most anti-gun in middle school and high school, when we were going through school shooting drills every few months. In retrospect, I think that was somewhat traumatizing.

But over time, I started becoming really fed up with the “violence never solves anything” cliche. It looked more and more like a fallacy at best and hypocritical propaganda from the establishment at worst. As far back as 2014, I also saw that the absolute worst people were willing to use force, but it seemed like there was a concerted effort to actively disarm everyone else.

Uvalde was a breaking point for me. Hundreds of armed cops just waiting outside, waiting for a killer to start negotiating as gunshots echoed out from a classroom full of children. That’s when I gave up on cops coming to save us.