HANOVER, N.H. — I am a junior in high school, and I regularly shoot guns, for target practice and hunting. Going to school can be hard because most kids don’t understand how I live. It can be uncomfortable to be a gun-owning teenager right now, when high schools have become the centers of gun control protests. But there are many of us around the country.

I own firearms not only because I think they are cool, but also because they are considered a tool in my family. I have been brought up around guns all my life. Yes, I have used AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, and old Civil War rifles, too. I live on a farm where I hunt wild game and butcher animals humanely. Some kids at my school don’t understand why I hunt; they think that it is cruel and that raising beef cattle and chickens is bad. Sometimes I get the feeling these kids are afraid of me because I own firearms.

There was a walkout at my school last week. It was meant to honor the students who died in the school shooting in Florida, but it was also about protesting firearms. I didn’t join in. I feel horrible about the kids who were killed or hurt, but firearms aren’t the problem — people are.

I think people who use guns in mass shootings are using those guns to seek help. There are other ways to get help, but the people who do these things have probably asked for help or have shown signs that they need it but were let down by the adults around them.