Guns have been an integral part of American society and culture ever since Europeans migrated to the New World.

Whether used for hunting, protection, or large-scale violence, firearms have built nations, won wars, and enforced laws but, as seen with the increasing normalcy of shootings and gun deaths in America, guns are also responsible for a despicable amount of deaths.

On Jan. 1, 2016, Texas became the forty-fifth state in America to allow open carry, as a result of a bill signed into law in June by Governor Greg Abbott.

The bill allows those who are licensed to carry a gun to do so in public now, with the exception of gun-free zones like schools and courthouses.

In the grand scheme of things, the issue of open carry does more to sustain reckless gun culture rather than to shape gun control itself like issues of background checks and the actual sale of firearms have.

According to data published by CNN, American ranks number one in most firearms per capita with 88.8 guns per 100 people. Collectively, American civilians own 270 million guns, almost the population of Indonesia, the fourth most populated country in the world.

Even though the advent of open carry is a considered a defeat for gun-control advocates, what’s even worse is that of the forty-five states that allow open carry, Texas is only one of thirteen states that requires a permit or a license to open carry.

That means at the end of the day, Texas is actually more responsible than most other states when it comes to this issue, which is even scarier.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with open carry, if we truly understand the capacity of gun culture to foster violence in our nation, we should treat the distribution and use of firearms with as much precaution as possible.

If it’s any indication of the severity of this issue, the United States has faced an unparalleled 51 mass shootings in the past 19 years.

Many gun-rights activists argue that, as the forty-fifth state to have passed open carry legislation, Texas shouldn’t be surprising anyone with its latest decision.

The Lone Star State has gun culture pumping through its veins and written in its history, all the way back to the Alamo. Nevertheless, carrying out a culture purely because it marks our past is unreasonable. As Texans, we should always be evaluating our principles, pushing for greater integrity, and shaping our state to configure to our developing ethical standards.

Additionally, it is frustrating to see people up in arms about dangerous terrorists “invading” our country when many of the same individuals refrain from advocating measures to reduce deaths by firearms.

Domestic deaths by firearms are responsible for almost 2000 times the number of deaths that terrorism is annually, especially in recent years. In light of that statistic, general American concern seems substantially disproportionate to the actual severity of both terrorism and firearms.

But, of course, while this should be primarily a topic of saving lives, many argue it’s one of saving rights. When considering issues like gun control, it is important to understand the political environment America is experiencing right now.

In the throes of a massive presidential election, with an increasingly stratified political spectrum, and a new shooting in the news what seems like every week, anything having to do with gun control is sensationalized and portrayed as an obstruction of the Second Amendment and a veiled effort to steal the population’s guns.

The right to carry a firearm is right there in the Constitution and that is not going anywhere anytime soon.

However, it is important to recognize that, by making the situation more of pride than of anything else, the culture surrounding firearms considerably obstructs any effective reform that could help to keep our friends, our families, our relatives, our fellow Americans safe from harm.

We must decide whether clinging to our past is worth risking the stability of our future.