What is the proper role of guns in our community? 5 Minnesotans answer
"I don't see a world without firearms and without guns. I just want to seek a way of having them in a safe, responsible manner, where people don't have to be afraid, where people can feel safe."
Editor's note: This post includes mentions of multiple incidents of gun violence and threats. Please take care. If you are in crisis, call 988.
Project Optimist hosted a panel discussion on firearms, guns, and safety in March 2024. It was such a rich conversation between a diverse group of people, we wanted to share it with you.
It's an example of respectful discourse with insights from a range of people who have thought deeply about guns and safety.
Of the five panelists, three described themselves as hunters, four came from greater Minnesota, and four shared about threats or lost loved ones by firearms. They all agreed to be part of a public conversation focused on personal experiences from their own lives.
A trained moderator guided the conversation, maintained time limits and ground rules, and posed questions drafted by Project Optimist. This has been edited by Project Optimist for length.
Tell us about a life experience that shaped your beliefs about firearms and firearm issues?
La Vonte Thompson of Winona
What really formed my opinion around gun control would probably be the death of my cousin when I was younger. I didn't really understand that at the time. I didn't really get how everything happened. And then, along with that, having experiences with gun violence in or around my vicinity I've just come to have the opinion of, not "no one needs guns," but that there could be better controls to keep things that don't need to happen from happening.
In my younger years, of losing my cousin to gun violence, being around areas with gun violence, it formed my opinion I currently have that we could just do a lot better than what we do currently.
Christopher Keeler of Pine City
One of the things that shaped my life experience was a hunting trip with my dad. I was able to harvest my first goose. Honestly it was pretty exciting and to see how proud he was, and it just felt good and it was fun to do.
And then going home after that hunt, disassembling the gun to clean it and take it apart. And really, it became kind of the "mechanical wonder" as we started to work through it and to clean it, and then the kind of the bond that formed between us. And being a young kid, getting to use Dad’s tools and seeing how the mechanics worked inside, what the springs did, how to launch them across the room and have to go look for them (laughs). That just shaped my view on how they can bring a bond to me and my dad that I didn’t know we had, that wasn’t that close beforehand … and kind of drove this curiosity of: How does this work?
Cheryl Witt of Winona
My gun experience began beautifully, sharing hunting with both of my husbands. And then mental health issues, traumatic brain damage, and drug addiction changed (that) when the beloved hunting guns started being used against me. Battles of, “I'm going to shoot myself,” or “I'll shoot you unless you shoot me," type of thing. And my kids and I running from the home with a gun being shot above us.
But I still hunt. I still hunt. It’s emotional. I see both sides.
Sydney Bockelman of Winona
I didn't have a lot of direct exposure to firearms growing up outside of my dad, hunting, and hearing stories of other family members hunting and things like that.
But there was always a focus on safe and responsible usage of a firearm, and if you're out hunting, wearing orange. My great-grandfather was shot and killed in a hunting accident, so that was always in the back of my mind with firearms growing up.
But I would say today, the key experience and focus for myself with firearms has to do with my current profession.
I am a high school teacher, and we have regular trainings on how to handle active intruder situations. It’s really emotional when I have to think about what I and my students could face because it affects people in schools around our country on a regular basis. And (in) the trainings I've had to go through and think about: “What am I going to do to get my students to safety if that happens?”
Rolf Olson of Falcon Heights
I grew up hunting. I've been an outdoorsman all my life, camping, hunting, fishing, and canoeing in the Bounty Waters. All that. I've got a shotgun and a .22 in the basement, and I've used it often. I enjoy goose hunting, duck hunting, especially like pheasant and grouse hunting. Although, as I joke with people, I say, I'm more of a nuisance to wildlife than a threat, because I'm not the greatest shot, but it's still great being out in the woods.
So I grew up and I shot on targets that said NRA on the bottom of them and all that stuff. I was in Boy Scouts and got a marksmanship merit badge and all that.
But in 2007, our daughter was murdered in the Craigslist killing out in Savage, Minn. She went to answer an ad for a nanny on Craigslist, and it was a fake ad of a 19-year-old posting that. He wanted to kill somebody, as he told some of his friends.
And our daughter, Phi Beta Kappa honors student at St Olaf, graduate. It was over in five minutes.
She just needed a temporary gig, to be a babysitter, to finance going on to graduate school. It ended with a bullet in her back.
So ever since then, took me a few years, but I have been working in gun violence prevention.
I've got guns. I've got nothing against guns. I hunt myself. But, obviously, as La Vonte was saying, things need to change. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to be at the state Capitol talking about safe storage of guns. If the pistol that shot my daughter had been locked up and stored safely by the father, my daughter would be alive.
I've got skin in the game. Both as a hunter and as the father of a murdered daughter.
When you think about the proper role of firearms in your community, what's at the heart of the matter for you? What do you most care about?
Rolf
I'm most concerned about safety in the community, the freedom to live without the fear of getting shot.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My daughter’s freedom to live was limited by the use of that gun, irresponsibly, against her. So, that's one story.
My wife was a teacher in South Korea for four years. She taught high school English here in the Cities and then she had a four-year gig over in Busan, South Korea. We went out for walks in the dark at night with absolutely no fear of violence. When we were out walking, I said, "There's all these women out here with their headphones on, in the dark, walking around alone.” I couldn't believe it. I know that rarely do people, women especially, do that in the States.
Also, recruiters from different colleges would come to her high school in Busan. And many of the students said they were not going to come to the US, after graduating from school over in South Korea because of guns. They were going to colleges in Australia or in the UK because they didn't have problems with mass shootings or people getting shot as frequently as here.
So the reputation of the US around the world is an outlier, and we know why, and so safety in the community is my prime motivation. I work in this area to prevent others from going through the same thing we did.
Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten
Sydney
I spent six months in college in Australia, and as soon as people knew I was from the United States that were my classmates there, they would ask about gun laws, and if I felt safe, and if I was walking around afraid of being in a mass shooting.
I currently teach a lot of international students and have partnerships with other schools that want to send their students to the United States. And that's one of their first questions as well: How can we know that our students and our children are going to be safe?
My partner was robbed at gunpoint. I have a lot of different stories of situations where people that I love have felt unsafe because of the presence of firearms.
The other component to that is that I don't see a world without firearms and without guns. I just want to seek a way of having them in a safe, responsible manner, where people don't have to be afraid, where people can feel safe. And to me, that looks like enforceable gun regulations and policies with minimal loopholes, which seems like an insurmountable task sometimes.
Cheryl
I agree with the other two panelists.
I grew up in an age where, in the fall, a kid with a shotgun would get on the school bus, because it was show-and-tell, he put it up near the bus driver next to the musical instruments. Nobody thought that shotgun was going to be turned against students and teachers.
When I grew up, I was not conscious of walking down the street and always listening for that click of a firearm, you know? I guess I'm gonna stop here and take a deep breath for myself, realizing, holy crap, the world has really changed.
Mikki Morrissette
Christopher
I'm going to be right on that same line with everyone else. It's about safe, proper, and responsible usage.
I coach the local high school trap team here, and we have very large numbers of high school students. We have a state tournament at the end of the season that has over 10,000 athletes that show up to shoot in this event, and there’s been zero reported injuries. I think part of that comes from the education and the push for safe use and responsible handling when we start these young athletes out with that.
It's about safe storage. It's about using it properly. It's about knowing what (a firearm) can and can't do when used in the right way, or possibly in the wrong way.
I'm pushing that responsible side, and then, what the consequences can be if it's used irresponsibly. It's a tool in the hands of a person, it does need to be manipulated by someone for it to do things. If it's not thought through before that happens, the consequences can be devastating or they can be really good, depending on the situation it's used in.
La Vonte
It's an interesting question, right? What's the proper rule of firearms in your community? I think we all need to take a second, step back. Firearms are an interesting thing in reality.
Humans are violent beings. That’s just kind of how we work. We’re very capable of being violent. Guns, knives, things like that might have first been made to add to the process of hunting, using them as tools.
But the reality of it is a lot of guns are made now to do more than just hunting. I don't advocate for the removal of all guns, because that's quite actually impossible. And also it wouldn't help because there are legitimate reasons to use guns.
We all have to come to terms with: some of these guns aren't meant to just be tools. And there's nothing exactly wrong with that. It is something that we all need to be aware of.
Guns don't kill people. People kill people with guns. And being aware that people kill people with guns, being aware that they're more than just a tool, and some have quite actually been created just to do more damage. You have to take it all into account when you think of where they belong in our society.
Reality of it is that firearms should be just used as tools, but they aren't. In my opinion, that's the proper role: hunting. some sport,
Teaching safety and all that. I wasn't taught gun safety in school. That's my biggest issue.