I grew up with guns.  When we were young, my brothers and I had cap guns, which made a loud noise (the caps had dots filled with gunpowder) when we could convince our parents to buy rolls of caps for us.  In elementary school, just ten to fifteen years after the end of World War II, the boys would play “war” on the playground at recess and after lunch.  As I remember it, our “enemies” were usually Germans, not Japanese soldiers.

Around the time we were ten, maybe a little earlier, we were allowed to have a BB gun.  The strict rule was that if any of us ever shot one of our brothers with the BB gun, it would be taken away forever.  About that same age, my dad let me shoot a 22-caliber rifle for the first time.  Another rule, which has been stated by others in this conversation, was that I could never point a gun at anything that I did not intend to kill, and that a gun was always considered to be loaded, even if I had just inspected it and determined that it was unloaded.

Dad had a twelve-gauge automatic shotgun with a five-shell capacity, although in Ohio you had to have a device that limited the capacity to three shells if you were deer hunting.  He never actually shot a deer on our farm, but he did have a deer head on the wall from his one successful hunting trip in Michigan.  He got that one with an 8-mm Mauser, a German army rifle – I don’t know where he got that rifle, but I don’t remember anyone in our family ever actually shooting it.  I was allowed to use my grandfather’s 22-caliber/410 gauge over-and-under rifle/shotgun when I went squirrel hunting in the woods behind our farmhouse.

Over the years, I shot two squirrels, one rabbit, one groundhog, and a large number of rats that infested our henhouse and ate our eggs.  Now I do not own a gun, and June would be horrified if I ever decided to buy one.

That’s all background information.  I grew up with guns, know how to use them, and have a very healthy respect for them as dangerous pieces of equipment.  There are way too many people, however, who do not have that same respect for them.

If you think about America’s “gun culture”, think about the influences that our kids are exposed to.  On television, far too many times the answer to a problem seems to be to use a gun to solve it.  That attitude then extends to problems that people see in real life.  “He disrespected me, so I had to shoot him.”  “She dumped me for that other guy, so I had to shoot them both.”  “He wore the wrong colors in this neighborhood, so I had to protect our turf.”

And now the technology of guns is far more destructive.  I’m not convinced that “semi-automatic” weapons should be outlawed.  The 22-caliber rifle that I used for target (and rat) shooting as a teenager could hold 20 “short” cartridges or 15 “long rifle” cartridges.  But it was just a hunting rifle.  Now you see people buying AR-15s and similar guns that are really just slightly disabled military weapons.  After watching dozens of movies and countless video games in which those types of weapons are used to commit mayhem, is it surprising that young people with a grudge use them to “solve” their problems?

We won’t solve the problem of guns by outlawing them, we’ll only solve it by making their use unacceptable.

There’s a gun in a case near Garth’s side of the bed. It looks mean. I’m afraid to touch it let alone pick it up.

I thought I’d use the excuse of this prompt to face my fear, hold the gun, learn how to load it, even go to a shooting range and learn to use it. I didn’t do any of that.

I’ll never hunt, don’t think I could shoot a person. Not even a robber.

But if they were hurting my husband, or my dog, or coming at me, I would shoot them!

Once I figured out how.

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100 words / RetroFlash

Guns were always around our family while I was growing up. My father, having grown up in Wyoming, would go hunting rabbits and snakes in his youth, and when his father died, several rifles and shotguns came with the estate. My grandfather had a rifle from his service in WW I that he’d outfitted with a nice scope as well. Somehow a German pistol was added to the lot, perhaps from my Grandfather’s estate.

My father would take us out shooting in the country a few miles from our small town and we’d go target shooting at balloons and perhaps some Coke bottles. But high on the list was his attempt to instill gun safety in us. The very first thing to do when handed a firearm was to determine whether it was loaded, and remove any ammunition. Then put on the safety, and never, ever, point it at someone. The mantra was always to assume that a gun is always loaded — even if you’ve just checked it.

I recall only one practical application of our guns. I was about 14 or so, and we were smoking out gophers that had made a mess of our front lawn by burrowing tunnels. The solution was to put a match to a smoke bomb which generated some poisonous gas (cyanide, I always thought, but I’m not sure why) and we’d insert the bombs in one of the open holes, thereby asphyxiating the gophers inside. Whether we killed any gophers, I don’t know – we had two cats that were rather adept themselves – but we did manage to smoke out a four foot snake, which, I discovered as I was inspecting it, had six rattles at the end of its tail. The snake just lay there, either sunning itself or dazed from the gases in the tunnel. Nevertheless, in a small tract of homes surrounded by undeveloped land, there were lots of kids to worry about. So my father went inside, came back properly armed, and shot it. I cut off the tail and kept the rattles for years. Someone commented to my father about his accuracy, to which he replied, “Hard to miss with a shotgun.”

In those days, the NRA was a useful organization, and sponsored “hunter safety programs” which we, as Boy Scouts, all attended. We probably got a patch or badge to certify completing it. And the YMCA summer camp we attended also had .22 rifles which we were all invited, but probably not required, to shoot. While I was making lanyards and the like, my twin (who I referred to as my “spare parts man”) spent his afternoons shooting the .22s. At the end of the week at camp, he came home with a handful of blue ribbons earned with his shooting expertise. I got a fourth place in the three-legged race I ran with my brother.

A few years later, the Explorer Scouts (Boy Scouts who were over 14 and wore dark green, rather than khaki uniforms) had an encampment at the US Army Camp Roberts in northern San Luis Obispo County. Explorers from all over the county attended. Naturally, there was a rifle shooting contest. Our group had the Explorer who won the year before, so I thought it would be wise to be in his shooting group. This turned out to be a good decision as he provided valuable advice, suggesting we all aim slightly higher and to the right of where the gun sight indicated we should. The former champ won hands down. But when the score sheets were tallied, I had tied for third.

So we had a shoot-off, but the initial set-up was that we would not use .22s, but be handed US Army regulation rifles. I probably weighed less than 100 pounds, and the person with whom I was tied was muscular and weighed at least 150. So they revised the rules and we went back to .22s. I doubt I could have picked up the regulation rifle and shot from a standing position. My opponent was not happy, and in retrospect, I suspect he felt, perhaps accurately, that the Scout leaders wanted to remove the advantage that my opponent, a Black Scout, had, because they’d rather the white boy won.

Which I did, handily.

Later that afternoon, when we were looking at the target sheets, it became clear that two of my shots in the first round of shooting entered the bulls-eye in nearly identical spots, creating a circle with an extra bulge at the edge. The conclusion was supported by the fact that without the second hole, there was a mystery as to how I could have missed the target completely, thereby scoring on only 19 of 20 shots that were possible. Had it been accurately counted, I would have received nine more points, leapfrogged the second place winner, and been awarded a slightly larger trophy than the one in the featured image. Thus, there would have been no need for the shoot-off, so I felt a little better at the change in the rules; which, of course, did not eliminate the conscious (or unconscious) racism in the decision.

I only have one firearm now – the others have been sold or are with my older brother. The one I still have is a small chrome-plated five-shot revolver, almost a derringer. The cylinder mechanism does not work properly, and it’s not been fired in the last 50+ years. I don’t think they make the .25 caliber ammunition for it anymore. My mother said an aunt or great-aunt of hers brought it with her “out West” for protection. I wish I knew more about it, but there’s no one left who can add to the story.

I have never held, or even touched, a gun of any kind except for toy guns and water pistols.
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