“A senseless act of violence.” That’s how University of New Mexico athletic director Eddie Nuñez described the 4 May shooting death of 23-year-old UNM baseball player Jackson Weller. But he might just as easily have been describing the killing that same day of 14-year-old football phenom Jaylon McKenzie, shot along with a 15-year-old girl at a party. Or the shooting death six days earlier of Dwane Simmons and the wounding of his college roommate, Corey Ballentine, recently drafted by the New York Giants. Three young athletes killed in the space of a week. Three families destroyed. Three promising athletic careers cut short.

Devastating. Tragic. But maybe not so senseless.

There is a certain perverse logic when we look at the numbers, the macabre math of murder. A US Centers for Disease Control report concludes that gun deaths in the US are at a 20-year high at nearly 40,000 people in 2017. A previous CDC report placed homicide by firearm as the second-leading injury category for Americans between the ages of 15 and 24. Given these statistics – and many more – it seems less “senseless” that these shootings take place, than inevitable. The senselessness is in our drowsy reaction.

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Gun violence is of particular interest to athletes of color because they are more in danger of being victims than their white teammates. African Americans comprise only 13% of the population, yet as of 2017, players of color made up 42.5% of the MLB, 80.7% of the NBA, and over 70% of the NFL. At the same time, blacks make up 58% of gun homicide victims while guns are the leading cause of death of black males between 15 and 34. Among whites, 77% of gun deaths are the result of suicide, while among blacks 82% of gun deaths are the result of homicide. This is especially worrisome when you realize that while 41% of white households own guns, only 19% of black households do. Fewer blacks have guns but they are much more likely to catch a bullet.

I own guns. Over the years, I’ve supplemented my studies of the history of the Old West by collecting a number of guns and other paraphernalia from that era. So, this is not a finger-wagging creed demanding the banning of all firearms. Instead, it is an exploration of the passive-aggressive and sometimes abusive relationship among sports, violence, and guns. All three of these are powerful social influencers of how the world sees America and how Americans see themselves. Maybe therein lies the answer.

Violence is in the DNA of most popular sports, which either include some form of violence in the play and/or elicit violence from rabid fans. Perhaps the worst case of fan violence occurred in AD532 during which a chariot race resulted in half of Constantinople being burned and 30,000 people killed. Most people are familiar with more modern fan riots following championships as well as games in which players (myself included) punch, kick, or bite each other. While fan violence is difficult to control, players have to behave within strict rules or be punished. Sport tries to create a well-regulated form of entertainment that pushes athletes to their physical and emotional edges, but reins them in from going too far. In general, that philosophy works so that sport, while acknowledging our aggressive impulses, promotes individuals striving to go beyond what people have achieved before. But we also have to accept some responsibility when we see referees standing around letting two hockey players pummel each other, or we see the benches clear for a brawl at the pitcher’s mound, we are sending a message that this is how adults resolve problems. It’s entertaining, but maybe we need to be more vigilant in condemning it.

Interwoven in this tapestry of sports and gun violence in the US is our current political landscape, which pundits and politicians constantly describe as the product of a deeply divided country. However, as far as I can remember, the country has always been deeply divided – that’s one of the defining elements of a democracy because we encourage diverse opinions. These divisions are eventually bridged when the public is informed through facts, statistics, and experts. Knowledge leads to mutual compromise.

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Yet, under the Trump Administration, rational discourse has been under direct attack. The president has called the press the “enemy of the people” and encouraged supporters to verbally and physically harass reporters. Instead, disinformation is given out to the public (Trump recently passed his 10,000th lie as president) directly and through what amounts to the public relations branch of the White House, Fox News. This tactic is meant to stem the flow of information to the people. Which is why the US has a higher proportion of climate-change deniers than almost any other country in the world, and why anti-vaxxers thrive. Scientific, medical, and legal experts are being discredited whenever they say something that makes people uncomfortable or interferes with those seeking profits. This removes any way for people of goodwill but with differing opinions to hash out those differences by examining the facts.

The result is that the most uninformed, irrational, and violent among us are encouraged to express their rage. This has led to increased attacks on Muslims, Jews, and others. Hate crimes increased nationwide in 2017 and then again in 2018. Of course, those without the ability or inclination to articulate issues and discuss them rationally will want to support their opinions with guns. And guns need targets. In the past few years, athletes have become more outspoken in protesting the rise in perceived social injustices and in doing so have made themselves targets. Most of these outspoken athletes – Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James, Stephen Curry – are black, which statistically already makes them bigger targets anyway.

My fascination with the Old West is in how people braved harsh elements and harsher people to build a lawful civilization, while at the same time justifying eradicating indigenous people who’d already done that. Guns allowed them to exert their brand of morality and eliminate any who didn’t agree. But that is the history of nearly all civilizations, including indigenous people. Might makes right. The gun has been the symbol of every aggressive US expansion policy from manifest destiny to eminent domain to American exceptionalism. That’s why we feature it so much in our movies, TV shows, and literature. Disagreements lead to violence and violence is resolved by who has the biggest gun.

But there’s a difference between entertaining fantasy and operating in the real world. Sports, movies, television, and video games create a fantasy world where violent impulses can be acknowledged without being endorsed as appropriate behavior. In the real world, where issuing “thoughts and prayers” to victims’ families is easier than turning down gun lobby money, we need to demand extensive gun legislation that restricts who gets guns, what kind of guns are available, and why they want guns. Anything else is senseless. And we know what that leads to.