Posted on 07/15/2006 8:35:57 PM PDT by Coleus
I don't own 98 guns but I am a gun owner and I always taught my kids gun safety.
There was always a rifle and/or shotgun propped up in the corner of the kitchen of my grandparents farm house. They were never loaded. But the shells were usually up in the cupboard, ready to go, just in case one of them no good whitetails showed up.
Us grandkids, no matter what age, 3-23, knew NEVER to touch those guns. We had our own guns to play with, be they squirt guns, cap guns, bb guns, or 2 pieces of wood nailed together in the shape of a gun.
When you walked into the house, you had to go past that corner of the kitchen, to get to anywhere in the house. I can remember one time being about 4,5,or 6, and walking past the guns like they were going to jump out and grab me. I also remember being told that I didn't have to be that way around them, but that they were still dangerous, and not toys to play with.
At times, my grandparents house was full of me and my relatives. It wasn't uncommon to have a half dozen kids running and rough housing in the house. But never did we come close to knocking the guns over.
My uncle took me shooting, his .22, when I was about 9 or 10. And then 2-3 years later, they moved me up to a shot gun. Since then, I've always loved shooting. But have always had a very cautious attitude with them. I never treat a gun as if its empty, even if I KNOW that it is. Except if the breach is open.
What I find funny today, is that I grew up in the city, and all my cousins in the country, on farms, with guns regularly around them. I didn't have guns regularly around me till I was 20. But today I am more at ease around guns then my cousins. The "city kid" is also, by far, the best shot in the family.
Welcome to FR, newbie.
Hey, I was a McGovern supporter in 9th grade. I wised up. So can our new friend.
Why don't you walk around FR with a "Kick Me" sign on your back? ;-)
Same here. A friend and I were talking about this very thing the other night. My Dad kept several loaded guns in the house and the kids knew to not even breathe near them, lest we get our keisters kicked. He taught us about guns from a very early age, took us out to shoot them in the woods and gave us a very healthy respect for cause and effect.
My kids grew up the same way....and now my grandson (9yrs) is taking lessons from his Dad (my son, the Marine). I laughed at the initial lesson with a .22 rifle because my son made my grandson first learn to take the gun apart, name all the pieces and put it back together....before he was ever allowed to shoot the weapon.
Afterward, my grandson (with supervision) was walked through the process of cleaning it and "securing his arm" in the closet. It's great training and gives a solid respect for the weapon.
Take a gander at americanstrategist's profile.
Those idiots would probably file the same charges if they had had a collection of 96 rocks and the kid stoned the other one to death.
By that age I had my own gun.
Yeah...kids...(sigh)
a child himself.
For some, 98 is "just getting started".
Children up to what age? Ever been on a farm? Ever been outside the city?
Haha never heard that one before. I remember the one about outlawing food because Rosie O'Donnell is fat.
Stay the course kid.
"Take a gander at americanstrategist's profile."
then have a look at his posts.....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?id=247914
Very well put. The house I grew up in in the '50's had 56 guns in it. There were guns in every room. As you say, guns in every vehicle. Every neighbor's house was the same way. Everybody respected guns. This isnt about guns. It is about urbanite paranoia.
I came back to this thread to say essentially what you said. My Dad had guns and ammo everywhere when I was young, nothing locked. I was taught gun safety from the time I could crawl and learned to shoot as soon as I could hold a firearm. There was never even the slightest question of doing mischief with a gun. I clearly understood if I did there wouldn't be a large enough blister-free area of my butt to sit on. Besides, we never thought of guns in terms of shooting people: just pheasants, ducks, quail, deer, elk -- and the occasional skunk that ventured too close to the house or barn. Of course we weren't fed an endless stream of gun violence on TV either.
Welcome to FR, and you've got a nice blog. Must be frustrating to hear mostly the "other side" in school, and I'll bet a few teachers have labeled you a troublemaker for not buying the party line. Stay strong.
Welcome to FR. My inclination is to agree. If someone had 98 pairs of shoes, or cats, or clocks, or televisions, or something like that, it would not be considered normal. I get the point you're making. I'm certainly not challenging anybody's right to own firearms, but the situation seems a bit over the top.
BTW, my kids are all teens, the youngest in 9th grade also, and they are all FReepers.
Not true! BUT if you want a coin collection, what you DON'T do is to put the coins in easy reach of children aged 6 months to 3 years old. Yes, they have a tendency to put things in their mouths that don't belong there.
See the correlation between this and having loaded guns around children 3 and up?
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