You haven't heard? I'm someplace rustic, vacationing and calculating my prime amount of availability on an abacus. No, really. In the meantime, I've revived an old OPP favorite for your enjoyment - it's July Fourth-ish in that it has to do with our rights as Americans. Or something like that.
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Recently
Izzy of IzzyMom fame and glory posed the question:
I’m curious to know where I stand in comparison to other Americans as well as other world citizens, parents and non-parents, I’d like to know your views on gun control and the second amendment.
Aside from that fact that they're essential pieces of equipment for, you know, hunting. Which we do, a lot. There is a deeper reason that we keep guns in our home, properly stored, unloaded, and safely put up, of course. A reason why I fully support the second amendment, and a citizen's right to bear arms.
Before I go on to explain that reason, I'd like to give props to
Izzy's own reasons for supporting the right to bear arms. I think far too often, in our comfy American ways, we forget that governments
are corrupt, they
do infringe on their citizens, and it
is possible that it could happen here, to us.
That being said, I support the second amendment right for our citizens to bear arms for a deeply personal reason. As a child guns were not allowed in our home, despite the fact that my step-father was a hunter. My mother went so far as to demand that his shotgun, the only gun our family owned, be kept in the garage, with a trigger lock, inside it's locked gun case, inside a locked cabinet, behind a locked door. Clearly, there was an unhealthy amount of
Fear of God!!! surrounding that gun. Any gun, actually. My step-father kept the gun in the house anyway, inside it's locked case and unloaded, but it still remained a great source of tension and my mom made it clear that GUNS. ARE. EVIL. Evil, dangerous, killing machines. They could fire at any moment, shooting off your toe, or your ear, or your best friend's head. Even if you didn't even have it
loaded. I have yet to figure out where this position on guns came from, her having grown up on a farm with four brothers and a father all active in hunting and none having ever been injured in a gun related accident.
As time wore on guns became those
things. Foreign, forbidden, dangerous things. So, during an afternoon unsupervised at a friend's house, us in our preteen years at the most, when she mentioned that her parents kept loaded guns positioned around the house for protection, and offered to show them to me, naturally my curiosity peaked. Because kids are curious, especially about things with which they've been forbidden experience. Clearly I am still here today, so we know a horrible accident did not take place that afternoon huddled in her upstairs hallway, crowded around one of the three guns she showed me. But now, as an adult, the image of the barrel of that gun pointing directly into my face is ingrained. At the time, looking down that dark, cool shaft did not scare me. It exhilarated me to the very core. I was scared, yes, a fear of guns had been mentally beaten into me, but that fear only made the experience that much more of a rush. The adrenaline pumped and I stared it down, while tossing it back in forth in my palms. It was an old-style revolver, heavy and cold. I'll never forget it.
About one and a half years later I befriended an older boy, he was in high school, but my mom liked him and he was essentially harmless so I was allowed to befriend him, go shopping with him, "cruise" in his shiny blue truck. One day, in his backyard in the country, he talked about his guns. He was an avid hunter and when I mentioned my fear of them he offered to get his .22 and teach me to shoot. With him in a lawn chair ten feet away directing my every move I shot a gun for the first time that day, but the fear was far from over. With that tiny .22 it was intimidating, but manageable. I couldn't kill a deer with it so I clearly couldn't kill myself, right? Wrong, of course, I realize that now, but at the time it made it all manageable in my mind and I shot. He taught me how to carry it, how to load it, how to aim it, and yes, how to shoot it. I was actually a damned good aim, the first thing I had ever found that I was just
good at.
Later though, when another friend placed a 12 gauge, a big, heavy, long barreled 12 gauge in my hands and directed me to shoot towards the open field, I shook and when he gently wrapped his arms around me and then my finger around the trigger I started to cry. I do not cry. The reasons for that are numerous, but suffice to say I am not a crier. But that day, I did. I was so scared of the trigger. I was so scared that the bullet would fly out the backside, or flip into a circle, or bounce off the tree I was aiming at and thwack me right between the eyes. I cried, and shook. And finally looking towards that long, open field through my tear blurred vision I squeezed, as slowly as I could, the trigger. The gun barely kicked, though I had been squeezing it into my shoulder so tightly I'd left a little mark, and just like the booming waves of sound coming from its barrel fear radiated from my body. I felt it spill from every pore and I started to laugh. First as a giggle but it was a giggle that grew until, finally, I was bending over and laughing so hysterically I couldn't stand straight. The release was the most amazing thing I'd ever felt. I was freed. I was also hooked and I shot over and over again until every last bullet we had that day was gone.
Standing on the edge of a field that cold, fall day shooting at trees I learned to respect the gun but not to fear it. I learned that the gun is not that which is evil. I learned what was dangerous about guns was my own misunderstanding and lack of knowledge. But most of all I learned, that no one should have to go through what I went through in order to figure all of that out. And for that reason I believe citizens should have the right to bear arms. I believe that American homes should be healthy environments for learning about firearms, and that cannot happen without firearms present.
There are guns in our home, several of them, actually. They're unloaded and locked in their cases appropriately. They are brought out on lazy evenings and long weekend afternoons. They're used for hunting and target shooting. They're used for recreation, but also for education. One of those guns belongs to my daughter, who is less than a week shy of seven today. She does not fear her gun, or my gun, or her father's gun but she does respect them. She knows how to properly carry it, load it, and shoot it. She knows the dangers that it can present but also knows that she is the first line of defense in preventing them. She knows what a gun is capable of, she sits with us yearly during deer season, and has both seen and eaten the product of a bullet shot.
I do not fear that she will harm herself or someone else with a gun. I do not worry about the day she will look down its barrel, because for her a gun is not a
thing. It is not mythical or forbidden or dangerous, though she knows it can be. A gun is powerful, but also familiar. It is an object with which she knows how to act, it is a possession that she respects. Every child should be afforded that privilege. The privilege of knowledge and experience. The privilege of not being left to take learning into their own hands, where it can, too often, go wrong.
I am not opposed to simple safeguards to ensure the wrong guns do not get into the wrong hands. I've personally purchased all of the guns that we now own and each time I've happily filled out the forms needed, waited while my background check was processed, and taken all precautions required in transporting them home. Those things I am not opposed to, what I am opposed to are restrictions that put the right to bear arms for everyday American families, families like mine, who desire to teach their children safe, respectful, cautious firearm use, at risk. I am opposed to making guns, on a mass scale,
things; forbidden, dangerous things.
