I was obsessed with machine guns when I was a boy. Then I put away childish gun culture.

I was 11 years old when I learned about the existence of a machine gun. I had never heard of such a thing until the airing in the 1960s of a new series on television: "Combat!" It followed a squad of American soldiers in France during World War II led by Sgt. “Chip” Saunders. He was the one with the machine gun. He blasted Nazis, and mowed them down. He was my hero, so much so that I called myself “Chip,” and better still, I found my own machine gun.

In the woods on the property where I grew up there was an old garbage dump used at the turn of the century by the previous owners and years before the town mandated a garbage pick-up system. My sisters, brothers and I enjoyed excavating the dump, finding old bottles, dolls, cans, and once a beautiful, enamel, cream-colored machine gun.

It was, in reality, the leg of a kitchen table with a support bracket that looked like a weapon Chip and the men carried through the war they fought every Tuesday night.

I lugged my machine gun through the backyard and adjacent woods for weeks, shooting airplanes, squirrels, the neighbor’s beagle, the neighbor hanging her laundry, and my sister at least 15 times a day. I loved the adventure, the victories, the feeling I had when I placed my gun in the garage and ran up the back porch steps on my way to dinner.

What does your child see?

That summer, my grandparents came to America for a visit from Belgium. It was at this time that my grandmother explained to me how my grandfather volunteered to fight in World War I, and how a German bullet ripped through his left arm, shattered the bone, nerves and cartilage to such an extent that my grandfather lost the use of that arm.

I always knew he had a shriveled appendage, always saw how he struggled with the newspaper and the garden tools, but I never knew what happened until that summer and after my grandmother shared the story of my grandfather’s near death experience on the battlefield, and his spending two years in the hospital with countless operations, I dragged the kitchen leg and buried it in the ancient garbage dump.

No way to stop it: Gun control is a lost cause. Come despair with me.

It is my suspicion that the exposure to violence that we see on television, in the newspapers, in video games, in art, and in the words of pop music all contribute to the mass shootings in the nation these past months and years.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, the average American youth will witness 200,000 violent acts on television before the age of 18. We spend over $240 billion dollars in 2019 on advertisements, proving that pounding the image of a product into our minds again and again convinces people to subliminally purchase this brand of beer, or that medication or this automobile or that insurance. Advertisement works. Chip Saunders was my hero, and "Combat!" my user’s manual.

Perhaps children being exposed to 200,000 violent acts of television before they reach the age of 18 isn’t a good idea.

Pleasures of violence

Do we learn violence and its pleasures from our culture, or is this an innate dark side of our nature? Why do people flock to the bullfight arena and watch the abuse of an animal with glee and call it art and tradition? Why do we relish a seat ringside and watch with passion two human beings smash each other in the face until one combatant falls unconscious to the mat with blood oozing from his mouth and nose?

John Steinbeck said in his acceptance speech after being awarded the Nobel Prize in literature that the writer “is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.”

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We are a nation dreaming of death and violence, having exhumed my kitchen machine gun and shooting people in the malls, in the offices, on the streets, and in our homes.

Why do we have so many guns in our country? How is it possible that it is illegal for an air freshener to block a car mirror, and yet so many millions can enter a store and buy a rifle?

Advocates of our national arsenal use the Second Amendment as a justification. But what does the Second Amendment say? "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The writers of the Constitution didn’t say that a militia and every Tom, Dick and Harry have the right to walk around with a semi-automatic slung over his shoulder. This clearly reads that the people have a right to establish a regulated militia to protect our country from aggression.

Despite this common sense reading, the Supreme Court held, 5-4, in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case case that the Second Amendment "protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home," granting this guarantee to the individual person.

Where is the limit?

And yet the country is still not satisfied. People want to carry their guns out into the neighborhood, so the Supreme Court will decide this year if states can prevent people from carrying concealed weapons outside the home for self defense.

I don’t think the framers of the Constitution would suggest that there ought to be a .44 Magnum tucked under our belts when we go out for ice-cream or a bazooka, which are heavily regulated but still legal, in the SUV.

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But we are a nation with freedoms. We shun regulation. We want what we want. I loved my machine gun. If someone wants a gun (the thinking goes) that person ought to have the right to own that gun. But we are placing weapons of mass destruction in our hands. Routinely we hear of another mass shooting. Violence is advertised and consumed in our homes daily from police dramas to the nightly news. What do we do?

Why don’t we as a nation sit next to James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, and establish gun laws that not only protect us from our enemies, but also protect us from ourselves as well?

Christopher de Vinck’s newest book is "Ashes" (published by HarperCollins), a novel based on his relatives’ four year experience under Nazi occupation in Belgium.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 2nd Amendment culture fuels violence on TV, in society in America