Killing Floor: Navigating Real World Gun Violence as a Hardcore Gamer

Here is a simple truth when it comes to me: I think guns are cool. I think guns are cool in the way that I think an electric toothbrush is cool. Or a V8 engine is cool. I think guns are cool in the way I think it’s cool that my daughter looks both like my wife and I or the way that aloe seems to heal everything. To paraphrase Walter White, sometimes it really is about the science and there is no denying the technological marvel that is the firearm for what it is capable of, regardless of intent or result. That’s a huge, unfair “regardless” there, but we’ll circle back to that. And as cool as guns are in that modern invention kind of way, it’s only half the story. The more nefarious side is that I enjoy what guns can do in the fictional abstract. It isn’t really honest to say that I think an AK-47 with a ridiculous high rate of fire is cool and not group that the sheer violence of it’s bullets ripping through something with furious tenacity. So yes, that means that it isn’t honest for me say that I enjoy Rick Grimes spraying automatic vengeance without the people of Terminus being the bullet sponges. Admitting you enjoy watching violent ballistic death on TV doesn’t make me a sociopath (I don’t think) because it is so wildly enjoyed by others, but it is a bit alarming to say it out loud like that. Even then, that’s watching gun violence, that’s not the act of doing it, so that adds another level between what we would start to consider problematic right? Well, what about video …