Anybody remember?...

[Rastoff]

When I was young, we had no guns. Not an anti-gun family, just no real reason to have them. Not hunters and not sport shooters. I was always fascinated by cowboy movies and TV shows.

When I got older, I went shooting with some friends out in the woods. I'm sure we did a lot of unsafe stuff, but I don't remember mostly due to my ignorance at the time.

Now that I'm older and wiser, I understand the concerns around kids. I still believe education trumps legislation. My son has little interest in guns, but has been around them since small. He can safely handle every gun I own and knows how to clear them all.

 

[PALADIN85020]

As many of you may perhaps know, I've been around guns nearly all of my life, and raised four girls to adulthood knowing that I had guns. I satisfied each curiosity with honest answers, and often a shooting session so they could see the power and danger involved - only after drilling the safety rules into them. They were cautioned to never tell their friends that I had guns, and if they encountered one in another house to leave immediately and tell an adult.

Oddly, none of my girls developed an interest in guns or shooting, but two of my grandkids, a boy and a girl, were rewarded for their interest by my presenting each of them with a Model 69A Winchester - again only after learning the safety rules by heart, passing a quiz to my satisfaction, and sighting in under my instruction. Each has also been taught how to take their rifle apart and clean it properly.

John