Don't Take Your Guns To Town

How Country Music Can Help Heal Gun Violence & Bring America Together

“A young cowboy named Billy Joe grew restless on the farm

A boy filled with wanderlust who really meant no harm

He changed his clothes and shined his boots

And combed his dark hair down

And his mother cried as he walked out

… "Don't take your guns to town, son

Leave your guns at home, Bill

Don't take your guns to town" - Johnny Cash

Some people might say I’m an anomaly because I am both a gun rights activist and a gun owner. I’m a Midwest Farmer’s Daughter and a newly appointed member on the Board of Farm Aid. Over the years, I’ve been vocal about America’s need for gun violence prevention policies, background checks and gun safety. I also own guns. Here is a photo of myself in my mid twenties, living in a tent in the wilderness carrying an unloaded shotgun to protect me from mountain lions and bears in Colorado.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”  

Protesting with my megaphone at the Tennessee Capital after the Covenant ShootingPhoto by Ray Di Pietro

I grew up in a small town with a population of about 3,500 people. In the Midwest, farming, fishing and hunting are a way of life and I grew to respect it. In our household, it was not uncommon to come home to fresh game like pheasant or quail in the sink waiting to be de-feathered. During hunting season, there was often a deer hanging up in the shed waiting to be cleaned. Sometimes, I helped clean um. Despite my mother’s objections, I was shooting skeet by the time I was ten years old. We were taught gun safety and learned to deeply respect firearms. My father's hunting rifles and ammunition were kept locked up in a gun cabinet deep in a closet. We were not to play near it.

It was also not uncommon for junior high and high school students to miss class during hunting season or during harvest time. As a child growing up in Aledo, Illinois, I listened to a lot of different kinds of music and enjoyed a variety of genres but I, along with most everyone else, listened to a lot of country music. It was the soundtrack to small town life and I think for a lot of folks, it still is. The local radio station played only country music- 102.3 WRMJ. They’re still on the air today.

Photo of me in 4th grade Show Choir. I got to sing a small lead part on Patsy Cline’s “Walkin After Midnight”

I believe that because of these rural ties, Country Music artists are in a unique position to talk to our fans about common sense solutions to gun control. Despite my more centrist stance on the subject of guns, I have received hate mail and threats from both the right and the left because of where I stand. We are living in such polarizing times and I have grappled with how to handle so many issues that challenge us today. It seems like America gets a little more divided every day as we yell at each other from behind our screens, while simultaneously connecting to each other less and less in person and out in the real world. I know there are a lot of musicians out there who feel the same way I do, but they refuse to talk about it for fear of losing ticket and album sales. It’s many times the only revenue that an artist has because of what streaming has done to the music industry. Fear can be paralyzing.

A child weeps while on the bus leaving the Covenant School following the school shooting in Nashville, Tenn., March 27, 2023. Photo by Nicole Hester