This is an opinion column.

I’ve fired a lot of guns in my life, and consider myself a decent shot. But I’ll admit up front I’m biased.

Where I come from, bringing a weapon to a fight would get you labeled a coward, or a cheat.

You solved things with your fists, or your wits, or your feet if you had to. You took your lumps. Or gave them. In the end everybody got to go home.

But of course we aren’t in the schoolyard anymore, though it seems we still have much to learn. Like why so many of us believe walking around with a gun makes anybody safer.

Frankly, the bulk of the evidence says otherwise. But I’ll get to that.

I know talking about guns is like talking about abortion, or Donald Trump, or the Iron Bowl. You know where you stand, and if Jesus or Gandhi or Johnny Cash himself came down to tell folks different, a lot of ‘em would argue the point.

Roll Tide.

I don’t know why I bother. But I’m not trying to convince you. I’m not trying to take your gun. I’m just speaking my piece. And my peace.

Alabama woke up again Wednesday to another round of shootings, including one in Enterprise, at the Walmart on Boll Weevil Circle, which is as Alabama as you can get.

Cops said two people had an argument in the Walmart parking lot (Who hasn’t seen that before?) and carried it inside. Both pulled guns and shots were fired and somebody died. Lord knows how many people got lucky and walked away.

This stuff happens way too much.

A friend of mine had an argument with his pistol-packing relative recently, and told me the next time he saw that man he’d be carrying his gun, too. Which was the only way I could envision a trigger being pulled. I begged him not to do that. It could result only in tragedy, because nothing is more likely to make somebody shoot than staring down the barrel of a gun.

But I understand how it happens. We are told by politicians and many in the media, by everybody from the NRA to state AGs that you have much to fear, that you should be closer to your Glock than your God. Some people act like those are the same thing.

But the real research on this stuff – for those who still do science – is pretty strong.

Scientific American cites 30 studies that indicate putting more guns on more people creates more crimes, including murder and rape. Those studies found, among other things, that assaults with firearms were almost seven times more common in the states with the most guns, and people with guns at home were almost twice as likely to be murdered as those without.

David Hemenway is the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Research by him and others found very few people actually use their guns for defense, and those who try to defend themselves with a gun are hurt far more often than those who simply get the heck out of Dodge or call police.

We have become victims of our own fear. Gun sales surged after 9/11, and after Sandy Hook, and at the start of the pandemic. Open carry laws proliferated, and in Alabama, lawmakers decided you don’t even need a permit to carry a concealed weapon anymore.

We are supposed to be afraid. Because fear drives politics, and gun sales, and emotions. And deaths.

In 2020 the national murder rate rose. Whether that’s because of the pandemic or the spike in gun sales is unclear. But more than 20,500 people were murdered that year – more than three out of four by guns – and America’s homicide rate reached 7.8 for every 100,000 people.

That’s a lot for this century, when typical rates have held in the fours and fives. But the good old days were rarely so safe. That 2020 U.S. homicide rate is lower than any year between 1970 and 1995.

I’m not telling you not to have a gun, or to love it. I just want you to know the truth. Living in fear is bad for your health. And carrying a gun doesn’t make you safer. Or tougher. It just makes you more dangerous.

John Archibald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for AL.com.