We were all new gun owners at one point in our lives, whether at age 6 or 26. We cannot afford any division in our ranks, because those who would seek to extinguish our 2nd Amendment rights will exploit any crack in our resolve.
My dad gave me my first real gun when I was 6 or 7. In my childhood he let me shoot his Colt .45 and Colt 22. He let me use guns out his collection for hunting and signed for my very first shotgun of my own when I was 14. He took me to many gun shows, including the Ohio Gun Collectors shows. How many of the "new gun owners" didn't have this kind of background, but finally came to realize that in fact, which has been expressed in the law for decades, the police have no obligation to protect individual citizens, just the public at large. You might say they have taken the first step in exercising support of 2nd Amendment rights, as now they a vested interest in those rights being protected. Would I have become a competitive shooter and active gun collector without the positive support and encouragement from my dad? Who knows?
One of Pop's favorite sayings, which I now find coming out of my mouth, is "If the older generation didn't pass along its knowledge to the younger generation, we'd still be living in caves." Years ago, I was friends in the Jaycees with one of the younger politicians in the county, who became president of the Board of County Commissioners. On the surface he would probably have been assumed to be against 2nd Amendment rights, but I got to know him and found that at least as to 2nd Amendment rights he took the classical position of it being an individual right. So one day I took him to my club to shoot on the bowling pin range. I took my .44 Special, which I figured with factory loads would have enough soup to take bowling pins off the table but not have a lot of recoil. HE HAD A BALL! He did get a hammer bite in the web of his thumb. He looked at that as a badge of honor, and he took one of the shot up pins home as a souvenir.
The upshot of this story is that to him, I was the "older generation", not by blood but by experience. I've lost track of him, but if I came across him again, would I spring for a box of shells to take him shooting at the range? In a heartbeat.
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