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so long as the buyer has a purchase permit or a concealed-carry license.

I felt uneasy

He liked the rifle. I needed the cash. We shook hands, and off we went.

There is rarely a moment when I’m not within reach of a firearm.

We don’t touch the guns or draw them from their holsters. They are unseen and unspoken of, but always there.

Rarely do we mention what we carry

I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew the rules: Always assume a firearm is loaded. Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. Know your target and what’s beyond it.

Guns were often a bridge between father and son.

or my family, guns had always been a means of putting food on the table. My father never owned a handgun. He kept nothing for home defense.

had a gun put to my head

I can remember that

steel

I can remember

In the end, what happened was swept under the rug. My parents said the school was probably trying to keep the story off the news.

surrounded myself with the people I did as a form of protection.

I dropped to the ground as gunfire rang from a car at a bonfire party.

I pushed friends behind the brick foundation of a house as a shootout erupted over pills. There were times when someone could have easily been shot and killed.

his service weapon pushed into the base of my skull.

I stood there trembling while they apologized.

Jackson County

I found a community that reminded me of my grandmother, where folks still kept big gardens and canned the vegetables they grew. They still filled the freezer with meat taken by rod and rifle — trout and turkey, dove and rabbit, deer, bear, anything in season.

hared passion for wilderness and time spent in the field with gun in hand.

Those types of things are rare now, even in places like Appalachia.

A few weeks later, the boy took that .30-30 lever action into the field and killed his first deer with it — the same as his uncle, his grandfather and great-grandfather.

centuries of experience gathered around the campfire each night

the .308 blew apart the morning.

There is a sadness that only hunters know, a moment when lament overshadows any desire for celebration

Life is sustained by death

the killing is not easy, nor should it be.

would feed me for a year

I asked if there was anything I could’ve done differently to make him more comfortable when he first approached the truck.

He smiled and told me: “But this is South Carolina. Most every car I pull over has a gun.”

As I headed toward the mountains, all I could think about was Philando Castile,

situation was re

All I could think about was how things might have been different if the

versed and that young black state trooper with braces had been behind the wheel, a white trooper cautiously approaching the car.

It was impossible not to recognize how gun culture reeks of privilege.

Ruger 10/22s and Marlin Model 60s, the .22LRs

There were always guns, but nothing like the assault weapons that line the shelves today.

firearms whose sole purpose would be to take human life if I were left with no other choice.

I’ve witnessed how quickly a moment can turn to a matter of life and death. I live in a region where 911 calls might not bring blue lights for an hour. Whether it’s preparation or paranoia, I plan for worst-case scenarios and trust no one but myself for my survival.

they joke about the minute hand of the doomsday clock inching closer to midnight.

as they wait for the end of the world.

they own them because they’re fun at the range and affordable to shoot. They use the rifles for punching paper, a few for shooting coyotes. E

step as close to Title II of the federal Gun Control Act as legally possible without the red tape and paperwork. They fire bullets into Tannerite targets that blow pumpkins into the sky.

None of them see a connection between the weapons they own and the shootings at Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Aurora, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland. They see mug shots of James Holmes, Omar Mateen, Stephen Paddock, Nikolas Cruz — “crazier than a shithouse rat,” they say. “If it hadn’t been that rifle, he’d have done it with something else.”

They fear that what starts as an assault-weapons ban will snowball into an attack on everything in the safe.

I understand what’s at stake

I think about that boy picking up that AR in Cabela’s, and I’m torn between the culture I grew up with and how that culture has devolved.

changes I know must come, changes to what types of firearms line the shelves and to the background checks and ownership requirements needed to carry one out the door.

an unrelenting fear of what could be lost

a subsistence culture already threatened by the loss of public land, rising costs and a widening rural-urban divide; the right of individuals to protect their own lives and the lives of their families.

He cut a look in my direction as if I’d absolutely lost my mind.

I’d be fine with an assault-weapons ban

question is irrelevant, that the reason doesn’t supersede the right.

Despite everything we have in common, despite the fact that he’s my best friend and we were going squirrel hunting in a few days, the two of us fundamentally disagree

As sad as it is to say, the silence is easier

there were kids on the television in the background, high school survivors who were willing to say what we are not, and I was ashamed.

ne of those pretty, late-winter days with bluebird skies when the trees are still naked on the mountains and you can see every shadow and contour of the landscape.

The muzzle was pointed in our direction. Ashley was terrified.

The truth is, there are guns I feel justified in owning and guns I feel belong on battlefields.

I know that part of what they’re missing or refusing to acknowledge is how fear ushered in this shift in gun culture over the past two decades.

Fear is the factor no one wants to address — fear of criminals, fear of terrorists, fear of the government’s turning tyrannical and, perhaps more than anything else, fear of one another.

I recognize this, because I recognize my own and I recognize that despite all I know and believe I can’t seem to overcome it.

I don’t buy into that only-way-to-stop-a-bad-guy-with-a-gun-is-a-good-guy-with-a-gun bravado.

I have no visions of being a hero. Instead, I find myself looking for where I’d run, asking myself what I would get behind. The gun is the last resort. It’s the final option when all else is exhausted.

we walked, I could feel the pistol holstered on my side, the weight of my gun tugging at my belt. The fear was lessened by knowing that there was a round chambered, that all it would take is the downward push of a safety and the short pull of a trigger for that bullet to breathe. I felt safer knowing that gun was there.

Over the last 20 years, several large colleges, like N.Y.U. and the University of Southern California, have improved markedly, effectively increasing the number of seats on elite campuses

On average, about 15 percent of students at elite colleges receive Pell grants, which as a rule of thumb go to students in the bottom half of the income distribution.

Low-income applicants are left to compete for the remaining slots with applicants who have the highest test scores, most impressive extracurricular activities and most eloquent essays.

“Scaling the Digital Divide,” published last month, looks at the arrival of broadband service in North Carolina between 2000 and 2005 and its effect on middle school test scores during that period. Students posted significantly lower math test scores after the first broadband service provider showed up in their neighborhood, and significantly lower reading scores as well when the number of broadband providers passed four.

The expansion of broadband service was associated with a pronounced drop in test scores for black students in both reading and math, but no effect on the math scores and little on the reading scores of other students.

THE one area where the students from lower-income families in the immersion program closed the gap with higher-income students was the same one identified in the Romanian study: computer skills.

How disappointing to read in the Texas study that “there was no evidence linking technology immersion with student self-directed learning or their general satisfaction with schoolwork.”

With a typical class load of five courses, it could be possible to completely offset the cost of a device like an iPad in textbook savings alone.

North Carolina State University Libraries announced this past spring that it acquired 30 iPads to offer students and faculty for four-hour loans as part of the school's Technology Lending Service.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People -- a set of universal, timeless, self-evident principles common to every enduring, prospering society, organization, or family. I take no credit for these principles. I simply organized, sequenced and articulated them. These principles include 1) taking personal responsibility and initiative, 2) getting clear about what's important to you and setting goals, 3) putting those priorities first and being disciplined, 4) seeking mutual benefit in all interactions with others -- the golden rule, 5) seeking to understand others from their perspective first before making your point, 6) valuing differences and creating third-alternative solutions to problems that are better than "my way" or "your way," and 7) taking care of and renewing yourself in all four areas of life -- body, mind, heart and spirit.

The approach is inside-out, with the teachers and administrators learning, living and modeling the principles themselves first, and then, at the most basic level, integrating the principles into their teaching every day. There is no new curriculum. The principles of effectiveness are creatively woven by teachers into every subject -- reading, math, history, science, social studies, art, etc. From the moment they walk into the school each day until the final bell rings, the children soak in their adult leaders' belief that they are leaders of their own lives, have unique talents, and can make a difference.

We don't define leadership as becoming the CEO or the few percent who will end up in big leadership positions. We are talking about leading your own life, being a leader among your friends, being a leader in your own family. Leadership, as one school put it, is doing the right thing even when no one is looking.

The world has moved into one of the most profound eras of change in human history.

"The notion that the cultural traditions of our population reside in Western Civilization is belied by the demographic changes in the American population," Grossman said. He said it is knowledge of world history, a perspective that encompasses Western Civilization, that students are going to need in order to be successful in business, nonprofit, and government jobs.