Nevada Lawmaker Sends Christmas Card Featuring Fully Armed Family

[LeftyMom]

19. That's an attention getting stunt and it worked.

I grew up around guns. My dad used to hunt and still collects guns and is not infrequently annoying and dogmatic about it. One of my earliest memories (I *might* have been three but I think I was two) is of standing in the back yard with my dad, going over gun safety rules with a cap gun. Which I wasn't allowed to point at anybody, it was only a safety training aid because guns weren't toys. I was a pretty good shot in grade school, and one of the criteria for when I was old enough to babysit my younger sister is when I could be trusted to shoot an intruder. We lived in a BAD neighborhood, and my dad had to march a knife-wielding intruder onto the lawn at gunpoint once, this was not an entirely unreasonable criteria for being responsible for somebody else.

Is there a single picture of myself or my sister as children holding a gun? No. Why? Because guns were an unremarkable tool, but also a thing to be taken seriously. There wasn't a picture of either of us getting a driving lesson, taking shop class or trimming the backyard trees either, because the adults in our lives were making sure we learned to do dangerous things safely, not taking trollish pictures of small girls working stick shifts or using saws.

So I don't see armed Americans ready to defend themselves in that picture, I see a troll who sees a gun as a lifestyle accessory rather than a potentially dangerous tool. And that's fucking scary, in addition to being some seriously appalling parenting.