When the news of the Santa Fe high school shooting first broke, I was thoroughly engrossed in the first novel in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, "The Gunslinger." Now, for those who have read "The Gunslinger," you'll know that the book is filled with metaphysical ponderings and an intense interplay between light and dark. You'll also know that the book is home to an incredible display of violence, particularly at the hands of the main character, whose specialty (as his name may suggest) is guns.

This ironic juxtaposition of real life and fantasy gun violence gave me pause: does our dark world merely reflect that of Roland, the gunslinger, or (as some have been apt to suggest) does the fantasy world create our dark reality?

As a young person in this day and age, I've been met with constant conversation about guns and the role they play (or shouldn't play) in our society. And as a young person, I feel I depart from many of my contemporaries in my support for the 2nd Amendment. The American people need recourse to defend themselves, as do all free peoples. The 2nd Amendment guarantees that.

However, that does not mean, nor has it ever meant that access to that recourse should be made readily available to every citizen without regard to how fit they are to wield such life-taking power. I do not think the mentally unstable should possess guns. I do not think the criminally unstable should possess guns. There should be a vetting and licensing system in order to own guns. There is, after all, such a system in place in order to operate a car. I feel all of these are straightforward sentiments that we all can agree on, but are worth repeating.

And when it comes to the role that media plays in shaping our gun culture, there is inevitable controversy. Many are quick to dismiss the role that violent movies and video games play in developing a violent culture, while for others they fixate on it. And while I have usually found myself in the camp of the former, I've begun to wonder if there isn't something to the latter as well.

Now, I don't believe it is the violent media that makes a person violent. If so, anyone who has ever seen a Quentin Tarantino movie would have developed into the most ardent serial killer. This, of course, is not the case.

But there is something to be said about the imagery and the socialized millieus that such violence creates. Combined with the very narrowly defined definitions we have produced surrounding masculinity in the United States, violent media like The Gunslinger present a form of escape for the predisposed.

The Santa Fe shooting was motivated, in part, by one of the victims consistently and persistently denying the romantic advances of the shooter. Such attitudes on the part of the shooter, in which he believed his only recourse for redemption (in a wholly nonpolitical sense) was violence speak to a wider association of masculinity with that same violence. In a twisted way, the shooter believed he had in part claimed justice by slaying his "wrongers" and in part reclaimed his masculinity.

To be clear, none of this is to discourage or dissuade Mr. Tarantino or Mr. King. After all, consumed correctly and in the correct state of mind, "Pulp Fiction" is no more damaging than a can of Coke; that is the viewer must acknowledge the fiction and partition fantasy from reality.

Additionally, violence has always been a part of human (and more broadly speaking all animal) interaction. And in all fairness, in terms of numbers, we are living in one of the most peaceful and least violent time periods in all of human history.

What is frightening about this kind of violence though is its almost wholly domestic nature. School shootings are not wars with all the same pomp and circumstance. They are quick, brutal, often isolated incidents. They come and they go, and as such the public consciousness around them is usually short-lived (hence the unique situation surrounding the Parkland shooting and the March For Our Lives movement).

Likewise, "The Gunslinger" is not some military propaganda piece, but a fictional novel written for the purpose of entertainment, communication, and artistic merit. This kind of domestic production, one that is not necessarily motivating, but surely is informing these sort of attacks, only serves to further complicate the issue.

So, what can possibly be done?What option for recourse do the American people have in this instance? If we are to guard what is an intrinsic right of the people to bear arms and resist against an unjust government, then we must have solutions at the point of the attacker.

In the short-game, the American right has popularized the idea of "hardening the target", or making it more difficult for violence to occur at the point of attack. This has consisted of equipping schools with metal detectors, site-specific police officers, and armed teachers. And while I think most of these ideas are fine ones, there is a clear distinction between what a school needs and what a school is.

A school is not an airport. While it serves a function just as an airport does, its primary purpose is not utility, but growth and development. As such, this need for security contradicts in many respects the more urgent need to educate. Consequently, I hold that this cannot be the sole and only focus.

To treat the long-term, what is more imperative is addressing unhealthy manifestations of masculinity. That is not to say men cannot be strong or courageous or even violent (should the occasion call for it). Rather it is to say that men can be more than only those things, just as feminists have for years asserted that women can be more than beauty and congeniality.

Unfortunately, for men, there is no equivalent discourse.

School shootings have become all too common an occurrence in the American daily life. School is not a place where one should need fear for his or her life. And while hardening targets at the point of attack may be best, especially in the short-term, this issue will never resolve itself in the long-term if we do not act to resolve its more nuanced aspects: violence in the media and more specifically, violence and its place in masculinity.