I never had a gun in my hands until I was 29 years old. My father was proud of his ROTC sharpshooter medal, but a gun in our home? Unthinkable.
My one and only experience with a gun was actually pretty funny. My then future husband wanted me to meet his two sons, age 11 and 12, and arranged a picnic in the country.
After lunch he took out a .22 pistol so his kids could practice shooting at a dilapidated barn. We could all hear the ping as bullets hit the building. I was given a quick lesson about squeezing the trigger and aiming.
I fired. No ping. Marilyn missed the side of the barn. Hilarity ensued. Never touched another gun.
I had to come to grips with the fact I was marrying a gun owner. How did I become comfortable in a house with guns? Because my husband was a true sportsman, gun safety was primary. He had a gun safe and carried the key with him at all times. Ammunition was stored separately under lock and key. After a shoot he always checked to make sure there was no bullet in the chamber before he brought the gun into the house.
He taught his children to 1) respect the power of a gun to kill and 2) never point a gun at a person. He taught each child, including his daughter, to target-shoot. One son became a gun-owning hunter and, being his father’s son, is scrupulous about gun safety and storage.
In the late ’60s, I gave my husband a membership in the National Rifle Association for his birthday. He enjoyed reading the American Rifleman and volunteered to teach gun safety.
But then the gun rhetoric started to change. Guns for sport morphed into a political Second Amendment issue. My husband made me proud when he resigned from the NRA, saying the NRA was no longer a sportsman’s organization and he could not support their political position on assault weapons.
My son just emailed,“My local gun club once was a place to teach my child gun safety. However over the last decade, the atmosphere has morphed from a friendly family place to a paramilitary training ground with idiots running around shooting AR-15s in rapid-fire fashion. Not a place for a responsible dad and a well-behaved boy. The atmosphere has changed from love of a sport to well-armed paranoia.”
The NRA lobby has great influence — so great that research on guns and gun safety has been curtailed by Congress since 1996. Reacting to federally funded research that had shown having a gun in the home led to an increase in homicide, the NRA lobbied Congress so effectively that gun violence research funded by the Centers for Disease Control is virtually ended.
Science leads us to the truth; lobbying dollars can leave us in ignorance. Though hunting is declining in popularity, the firearm industry thrives selling assault weapons and small concealable hand guns.
Nicholas Kristof, writing in the New York Times after Orlando, our most recent city of infamy, points out that the mass killer could not buy lawn darts because they are banned as unsafe. But buying an assault rifle without a background check?
Easy, thanks to the NRA. He adds if we want to prevent mass gun carnage of the innocent, “we need to be vigilant not only about infiltration by the Islamic State, and not only about American citizens poisoned into committing acts of terrorism. We also need to be vigilant about NRA-type extremism that allows guns to be sold without background checks.”
Parents, for the sake of our children we must counter gun “extremism” at the ballot box. We must resume research into gun violence and how to prevent it. Mass shootings are not a political issue, they are a public health problem exactly like an epidemic of Ebola. We must work together to confront hate crime. We need research into the best ways to diagnose and treat mental illness.
We absolutely must teach our children tolerance. Our neighborhoods and communities must find ways to reach out to the lonely. Better to offer a helping hand and prevent a tragedy than pile flowers on yet another makeshift memorial.
Addendum: My grandson Joshua, now 4, asked his mom yesterday, “Will Daddy take me hunting when I grow up?” Mom: “I’m sure he will, but first you have to learn all the rules of gun safety.” Joshua: “I already know the biggest rule, never point a gun at anybody.”
