How my kids are adjusting to life in a country with more guns than people

The first mention I hear of guns in the United States comes within an hour of landing at Los Angeles airport. My husband has taken our two kids to buy a Dunkin’ donut, and I’m struggling to stay awake while waiting for our connecting flight to New York.

The young woman sitting opposite is chatting loudly on the phone to her mum. “I didn’t stay out late,” she says. “There was a shooting a few blocks down from my hotel.”

As Mark Bryant, from the non-profit group which tracks shootings in the US, laments: “In America, everybody has guns.”Credit: AP

Six hours later, we’re waiting for a taxi at JFK Airport, surrounded by our sea of suitcases, when a voice comes over the loudspeaker, reminding passengers that no firearms are allowed in carry-on bags.

“What’s a firearm?” asks Miss 9.

“It’s when you have pistons on the end of your arm, and they fire out flames from each finger!” says Mr 11, seizing the opportunity to tease.

We scramble into a taxi and head towards the city lights.

The first few days, we walk the streets as the city basks in the last days of summer. Counting squirrels in Central Park, wandering the narrow streets of the West Village, the intense busyness of Times Square, where the kids gape at women with US flags painted across their breasts.

We walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, posing for photos alongside hordes of sweaty tourists. It seems quieter, more relaxed in Brooklyn than in our new neighbourhood in Manhattan, where the nightly soundtrack alternates between screeching police sirens and the trombonist blasting random notes on the street below our apartment.

Looking back to the city skyline as we munch burgers and fries by the water, I wonder if perhaps Brooklyn would have been a more family-friendly option.

Later, after the kids are in bed, I read that there was a shooting in Brooklyn that afternoon. Five people shot at a parade. One of the victims later dies.

On the day the kids start their new school, a 14-year-old kills two students and two teachers at a high school in Georgia. Five people are shot in Kentucky a few days later. Daily television bulletins bring news of more shootings from somewhere in New York City, from somewhere across the US.

At 10am on the second Monday of school, my phone buzzes with a text message. “This is a test of the IRIS Alert System to confirm that all members of our school community are receiving school communications.”

The principal had forewarned parents that there would be a practice IRIS (Immediate Response Information System) alert, which the school uses to notify parents in an emergency, and that students would do a practice lockdown.

When Miss 9 comes home that day, she says her teacher taped a piece of paper across the small window in their classroom door so that people couldn’t see inside. She had to sit in the bag closet and keep quiet.

Former president Donald Trump has vowed to protect the rights of gun owners.Credit: Bloomberg

I hadn’t planned to write about gun violence as soon as I moved to the US – surely, there’s been no shortage of coverage of the devastation wreaked by guns, I’d thought from the comfort of Australia.

But this relentless stream of killing is impossible to ignore. There’s been an average of 47 deaths a day from gun violence this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That’s down from a peak of 57 deaths a day in 2021, but Mark Bryant, who co-founded the non-profit group which tracks shootings, fears we’re about to see a spike in violence as this deeply divided country heads towards November’s election.

“There’s too many angry people and too many people trying to wind other people up,” he tells me. “At some point, somebody will pull a gun, and sadly, in America, everybody has guns.”

US leaders from both sides of politics have long been reluctant, or unable, to take on the powerful gun lobby or seriously question the constitutional right to bear arms. And this year’s presidential candidates are not offering much hope that things will dramatically change no matter who the American public votes into the White House.

Donald Trump is surrounded by US Secret Service agents following an attempted assassination in July.Credit: AP

Former president Donald Trump has vowed to protect the rights of gun owners, telling a meeting of the National Rifle Association last year that he was “proud to be the most pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment president you’ve ever had”.

Two assassination attempts by men with guns seem to have done little to change his mind.

Kamala Harris favours tighter gun laws, including a ban on assault weapons, but I’m taken aback during the presidential debate when the vice president says she, too, owns a gun. She promises viewers she won’t “take anybody’s guns away”.

“If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,” she later laughs in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Before we left Australia, the kids would regularly watch the nightly TV news – I wanted them to know what was going on in their community and the wider world. But here, I’m no longer turning it on.

There are more than enough daily reminders that we’re living in a country with more guns than people – like the sign in the front window of the Museum of Ice Cream that reads: “This is a gun-free establishment”. The kids are too excited by the prospect of unlimited ice cream to notice.

But on a warm spring night, Miss 9 is sitting at the kitchen bench when a loud crack sounds through the open windows. “Was that a gunshot?” she asks. “No,” I say quickly. “Just a car.”

“How do you know if it’s a gunshot?” she wants to know. An engine roars down below on Seventh Avenue.

“See?” says Mr 11. “That’s a car.”

Liz Gooch is an Australian journalist based in New York City.