Posted on 6/17/2008, 8:02:58 AM by neverdem
IMAGINE A child barely tall enough to reach the top drawer of the bedroom dresser. Imagine the child on tip-toes opening the drawer because the forbidden object is hidden there. The naughty thrill of reaching under the socks, the shock of actually touching the thing, finding it cold, as if on ice. Such is my memory of furtive encounters with my father's handgun. At the time, Dad was an FBI agent. Where he stowed his weapon when off-duty was absolutely out-of-bounds, which defined its appeal. Invading that drawer is my first remembered act of disobedience.
Even at age 4, I was hypnotized by a gun. The gun was a mystical object, with significance that far transcended any imagined use. Fear, but also consolation. Awe. Trembling. That the gun was my father's was a first clue to potency. Hidden away, yet the gun sent a pulse through the whole apartment, a psychological electromagnet around which my awareness swirled. Long before I tasted the temptations of sex, I yielded to an irresistible prurience by opening that drawer. Initiation into obscenity. Because primal disobedience is so defining, I found a sense of independent selfhood in relationship to a gun. Only later would I realize how very American that makes me.
What is it with Americans and guns? "The right to bear arms" is the constitutional dynamo sparking an electromagnetic pulse through every corner of politics. Meanwhile, in the nation's cities, a slow-motion massacre unfolds, with gunshots mercilessly cutting down a legion of the young. Yet in legislatures, bills designed to reduce gun violence are routinely killed by the all-powerful lobbying of the National Rifle Association. Presidential candidates are universally required to worship at the altar of the Second Amendment.
Now an "open carry" movement encourages gun owners to wear their weapons ostentatiously on...
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
There’s always been guns in our family.
There is no hidden mystique about them.
When one has children; you take the kids to your home
range or to your local range and you shoot the targets,
tin cans, tomato sauce cans, etc.
You plug your target full of holes (if you’re a good shot) and
you show it to the kids.
See kids?
Never touch our guns.
They can hurt people if not used responsibly.
It’s that simple.
Time to ban pills in the house or get pill safes. and bottle locks.
OPINION: This author will probably win some journalism award.
He fits right right in with the lame-stream media — a very creative
and imaginative writer.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall watching this guy go through psychotherapy. From this article, I’m getting the distinct impression that he’s got “issues”.
People like that so called "journalist" make me wish he gets mugged and dropped in a dumpster full of rotting garbage.
.
Another prime example of liberal logic.
The author seemed very emotionally perceptive at age four, and undoubtedly still is given that he is emotionally arrested there.
If his buddies on the other coast hadn’t spent decades corrosively depicting illegal firearms and the thug life as glamorous in “music” and on film, both he and Hizzonor Daley would have less hopolophobia bouncing around in their empty brain pans.
Daddy should have noticed the drawer had been rearranged a bit (most likely) and turned some little pipsqueak over his knee.
I agree.
Imagine someone barely able to form complete sentences writing anti-gun drivel in the Boston Globe.
I've said for years that anti-gun activists should produce a big colorful coffee table book every year of those murdered by firearms so that America can see the faces and names of the victims in this so-called 'slow motion massacre'. Use police photos and mugshots when available, and include big fold-out maps of pinpoint murder locations indexed to the victims contained therein. Whenever possible, place the photograph of the murderer next to the victim. Sell the book at Barnes and Noble, right up in front on display at the checkout counter.
After flipping through about twenty pages or so, most Americans would put it down and realize that the gun deaths problem America has is largely demographic and composed of people who were practically asking for something bad to happen to them. I think that the book would have the opposite effect of what the authors intended.
Meanwhile, in Boston, another idiot thinks criminals will abide by strict gun control laws. What a deep, logical, original thinker this "journalist" is. He'll probably win a Pulitzer for this worthless piece of drivel. How many times can these idiots make the same, emotional, illogical arguement? As many times as it takes? They should at least come up with a new angle to their tired, asinine point of view on guns. It's pathetic that this simplistic, illogical tripe passes for journalism.
Where’s the BARF alert?? Oh, boo hoo, it’s for the children. Mine have been competition shooting since age 6 - they could shoot a fly off your cigarette at 300 yards. For the children indeed.
I assume that this stupid writer cares nothing for the children of policemen, or the children of numerous Federales. He only cares about my children. How about letting me do the caring about/for my own children?
ML/NJ
I had been late with our first son. He got a Rugar .357 mag when he was 17, the same day he bought his first vehicle with his own money and paid his own insurance premium, too. Responsibility, you see. I rewarded it with something I noticed he had been looking at in magazines for two years. Good father-son stuff. Good memories. Since then he has taught himself a whole lot of ballistics; loads his own ammo, and I'm sure could place in many national competitions if he had a mind to do so. But he has many varied interests, and is in the Lord's work oversees.
Presidential candidates are universally required to worship at the altar of the Second Amendment.
Why is it that our media types only honor 1/2 of one amendment? What would they do if free speech and press were restricted as much as the 2nd Amendment is?
They'd be screaming for ARMED revolution!
When we were helping to raise our grandson I did not hide my handgun under my underwear. It stayed in my desk drawer in the living room. He was taught as a toddler that it wasn’t a toy. I allowed him to touch it, I even allowed him to hold it once and continued to let him know that guns weren’t toys.
My weapon was demystified. He had (and still has) respect for me, and even though he hasn’t lived with me for 10 years or so he still doesn’t have the desire to play with guns.
My kids know where the guns are around the house, both at home an at Grandma and Grandpa’s. On my ex-wife’s side, her father won a national championship and is a gun-smith. They know where the guns are at, how to load them, and can do it in a hurry. As Mr. T so poignantly stated, “ I pity the fool” who thinks we’re going to be their victims.
Even taken some of their friends to the range with us.
First thing people see when they walk in my door is a full gun case. Never had a parent grab their kid and run out the door after seeing it.
> IMAGINE A child barely tall enough to reach the top drawer of the bedroom dresser.
IMAGINE putting a couple of slugs into a rapist who has entered the child’s room for nefarious purposes.
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