Guns 101, part II: Why?
In part I of this series, I (hopefully) dispelled the "evil gun" myth; if I didn't go back and re-read it (not much sense in moving forward if you buy that nonsense). In this chapter, I will list the two primary reasons that I think you should own a gun of some type.
Although the main stream media like to bury news stories of a person defending themselves with a gun, it happens on an almost daily basis in the U.S. In a utopian society, the police would protect you from any and all criminals and predators; however, the reality is the police are often 5 or more minutes away when a crisis occurs, and that’s 5 minutes you don’t have to waste when thugs are breaking in wanting to do you or your family harm. In some cases, simply brandishing the weapon has caused a criminal to turn and run, no shots fired. Wouldn’t you want a chance to defend yourself, shots fired or not, if this were to happen to you?
While self defense is of great importance, I think an equally important (maybe more so) reason to own a gun is your own children. Kids, especially most boys, are at some point and time going to be fascinated with guns; cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, playing army, etc. Where do you want your kids learning about firearms? TV? Movies? Videogames? A friend at school? Or, you?
Children are going to be naturally curious about everything; instead of putting guns in the proverbial cookie jar and putting it on a high shelf and telling them “leave that alone”, why not teach them about it? Show them the responsibility and the respect necessary for the proper handling of firearms; take the mystery out of it. Then, when your son goes over to Johnny No-Good’s house and he wants to pull out dad’s guns to show off and play with, your son may just be the one to save his own life by walking away from a dangerous situation (or saving Johnny’s life by telling him to quit fooling around). Instead of kid-proofing guns, gun proof kids!
I’ll cover when to start teaching your kids about guns in a later part of this series. Next up: part III, the law and the 4 commandments.
Although the main stream media like to bury news stories of a person defending themselves with a gun, it happens on an almost daily basis in the U.S. In a utopian society, the police would protect you from any and all criminals and predators; however, the reality is the police are often 5 or more minutes away when a crisis occurs, and that’s 5 minutes you don’t have to waste when thugs are breaking in wanting to do you or your family harm. In some cases, simply brandishing the weapon has caused a criminal to turn and run, no shots fired. Wouldn’t you want a chance to defend yourself, shots fired or not, if this were to happen to you?
While self defense is of great importance, I think an equally important (maybe more so) reason to own a gun is your own children. Kids, especially most boys, are at some point and time going to be fascinated with guns; cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, playing army, etc. Where do you want your kids learning about firearms? TV? Movies? Videogames? A friend at school? Or, you?
Children are going to be naturally curious about everything; instead of putting guns in the proverbial cookie jar and putting it on a high shelf and telling them “leave that alone”, why not teach them about it? Show them the responsibility and the respect necessary for the proper handling of firearms; take the mystery out of it. Then, when your son goes over to Johnny No-Good’s house and he wants to pull out dad’s guns to show off and play with, your son may just be the one to save his own life by walking away from a dangerous situation (or saving Johnny’s life by telling him to quit fooling around). Instead of kid-proofing guns, gun proof kids!
I’ll cover when to start teaching your kids about guns in a later part of this series. Next up: part III, the law and the 4 commandments.
posted by misawa at 8:15 AM
1 Comments:
Thank you for your words of wisdom about kids and guns. If more people understood that, there might be fewer tragedies in this area. My brother is a prime example. Daddy spent quite a bit of time with us as kids teaching us how to use them and my brother killed his first deer at the age of 7 (right between the eyes I might add) after having passed the hunter's safety course.
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