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StrangerThan -> RE: Who else carries? (8/21/2011 7:55:32 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Edwynn
Find any weapons-owning parents and teach them, no disagreement here.
Let's deal with education of the owners first, how's that?
See, Ed, I fell into this deal years ago. I had kids around the house. The news purveyors were offering up one talking head after another, one column after another, one editorial after another from folks I didn't realize at the time, just hated weapons in the first place. A good many wanted guns out of the house period. Another set, wanted them locked up, locked away, kept like the liquor, the porn - pretty much anything else that curious types will eventually play with once they start becoming more autonomous. Or at least, thinking they are.
But now, I'm a guy who likes to ask the after question a lot of times. As in, given these scenarios of kids growing up force fed one image after another in movies, on tv, some even with musicians, how am I going to feel if one of them gets hold of a gun, and being a total idiot, either shoots themselves accidentally or shoots someone else. The answer wasn't a good one, so I sold my guns and lived on in happy ignorance that I had obeyed the advice of people who knew.
Two things eventually changed my mind. One was the realization that I couldn't keep them away from guns indefinitely. The second was my own raising. By the time I was 6, maybe 7, my uncle had me hunting with him on a consistent basis. I knew by then how to load, fire, carry, check and be safe. It was such a natural part of life. The question that kept coming back to me when I'd read about some kid shooting himself or someone else, wasn't OMG how did that happen, but why? Why didn't he or she know how dangerous they could be? Why didn't they know that the only time a gun is unloaded is when you have verified that yourself? Why didn't they know already where guns were supposed to be pointed? The why question was never answered by the stories.
Then I thought about the fact that when I was 12, I shot an intruder. Even though I'd heard many times in the years after how lucky I was to have had someone teach me about firearms when I was younger, it never really hit me how much of that action was a result of my uncle taking the time, and how differently the time might have turned out if he hadn't.
Around that point came another after question, that being how am I going to feel after a situation where one of them might need to use one, and not know the first thing about it. I had that mental image of them scattering shells around on the ground trying to figure out how to load whatever it was.
That's about the point I walked back in the house, told them they were going to learn to use them. Why? Because it was the only action that answered all the why's and solidified the fact that if they ever needed to, they'd know how. I could have never bought another weapon. But in the end, the two things that allowed me to do was blame everyone, and question myself afterward, would it have been different if I had taken the time to teach them basic safety over something they would encounter in life.
I can still blame other people. What I don't have to do now is wonder why I didn't love them as much as my uncle loved me, because he took the time to take the mystique away, to teach me not just how I should act with them, but how others should too.
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