Response to a Gun Nutter

[markpkessinger]

5. I don't think that's quite fair . . .

. . . the implication seems to be that sooner or later, every 'responsible gun owner' will become an 'irresponsible gun owner.' It's kind of like saying, "Every law-abiding, non-murderer is a law-abiding, non-murderer right up to the point at which he or she kills someone." I grew up in a household where responsible gun ownership and handling was drilled into us at a very early age (as I alluded in my comment on RawStory). Here's what that looked like in our house:

• Guns were stored in a steel cabinet, secured with a heavy combination lock, the combination for which only my father knew (and the cabinet looked like any steel utility cabinet -- it was not obviously a gun storage cabinet);
  
  
• ammunition was stored in a totally separate location (in an antique steel safe that looked very much like this:
  
  

  

  
  
  My father's store was attached to our house, and the safe was in my father's office. It was the same safe he used to keep his business receipts between trips to the bank. Only he and my mother knew the combination.
  
  
• Long before any of my siblings or I were ever allowed anywhere near an actual firearm, we began learning about proper handling of guns. He really didn't much like for either my brother or I to have even obvious toy guns, but being the '60s and we being boys, it would have been pretty hard to avoid them entirely. But even in the few times we did have even the most obvious toy guns, we were absolutely prohibited from pointing them at people or animals, or pretending to shoot one another), and we got a very stern reprimand if we were caught doing so. (He made an exception for squirt guns.) As a kid, I thought he was a bit over the top with this, but as an adult I see exactly what he was trying to do: that is, he was trying to instill in us certain absolutes when it came to handling guns, so that when the day came when we actually did handle real guns, those absolutes would already be a force of habit. (We never really appreciate our parents' wisdom as kids, do we?)
  
  
• Loaded guns were never, under any circumstances, permitted to be brought indoors or into a motor vehicle. If we were hunting or target shooting, we would make a point to load, as a group, when we arrived at the location of our hunt or at a shooting range, and then also make a point to unload as a group prior to departing. By insisting that these activities be done as a group, the likelihood of someone forgetting to unload a weapon was greatly reduced, if not entirely eliminated.
  
  
• When carrying a loaded gun during a hunt, one carried it pointing downwards, so that should it be accidentally discharged, the bullet would go into the ground about 18 inches to two feet in front of the carrier's feet. But I would add that, in our party at least, we never had any such accidental discharges. We did not, under any circumstances, lift the barrel of the gun except to prepare to shoot. And again, if anybody did slip up on that, they were quickly and sternly reminded.

Look, gun safety is quite important -- critically important even -- it's just clearly not enough. I don't own any guns, and I only hunted for a few years as a teen. I have no desire to do so now, and I have no desire to own any guns or even shoot any guns. But I did grow up in a part of Pennsylvania where hunting, for many rural families, a significant source of their meat intake for the year (indeed, it still is for many struggling families in that area). In my hometown of Beech Creek (pop. 750, give or take), one would have been hard-pressed to find a house that didn't have at least a small-gauge shotgun (for small game such as grouse or pheasant), and a larger gauge shotgun for turkey, as well as a rifle of sufficient caliber to effectively bring down a dear or a bear. Whatever your feelings might be about hunting (and believe me, my own feelings are very mixed), these folks were, and are, responsible gun owners. Gun violence was exceedingly rare, simply because guns were not thought of as a solution to problems involving other people (except in the case of law enforcement or the military), and were viewed more as a specialized tool. It think it is critically important to understand people like this, and to try to reach them with reasonable arguments about gun control. (And, at least where I grew up, most people had no problem with reasonable efforts at gun control.) Not everyone who owns or uses a gun is a raving right-wing lunatic. Just as the gun lobby risks hurting its own cause by failing to consider the reasonable arguments of gun control advocates as being nothing but an attempt to 'take away our guns,' so do gun control advocates risk damage to their own credibility by carelessly portraying all gun owners as redneck idiots who will sooner or later surely shoot themselves or someone else. Careless stereotypes do great harm to a very important public discussion, regardless of which side of that discussion one happens to be on.