BANG BANG, YOU'RE DEAD

     Well, there’s been another shooting. 4 people are dead in Pennsylvania. Guns. Hot topic. And, a very controversial one.

     I grew up in Iowa. All of my farmer relatives, and my dad who grew up on a farm, were hunters. I remember growing up around guns. I didn’t think much about them. They hung on walls, they were propped against the corner inside the closets we hid in while playing hide and seek, and if you were rich enough, you had a gun cabinet to lock them in. They were either rifles or shotguns. If we behaved, sometimes an older relative would take us out to a field for a bit of target practice. They would line up bottles or cans on fence posts and we would try to shoot them off. Rifles were kind of fun to use. Shotguns not much fun for a young girl, but it was a lot of fun for the older relative that let you shoot it and watched when it kicked you in the shoulder and knocked you on your butt.

     All I knew about guns was if I touched one when I wasn’t supposed to I’d be in a wealth of hurt. I never touched them. I also knew these guns were used to shoot animals. I hated that. I loved animals and I wouldn’t eat any wild animal that got shot. Hunting was a relaxing recreation for my male relatives. They’d tramp through the woods for hours and then come home with something they’d shot and dressed out there, and the women would fry it up. Nothing was wasted. One year my dad “got a deer” and we had venison all winter. I didn’t eat any of it. I wasn’t eating Bambi.

     One time Dad and Uncle Howard took me and my cousin Deanna squirrel hunting with them. That didn’t last long because we spent the whole time making noise so the squirrels could run away.

     Anyway, the point of this whole thing is as a child I didn’t make a connection to guns and violence, not like children do now. I don’t have a problem with hunters using guns in sport. I realize the military and the police need guns.

     There’s absolutely no reason that I can think of where Joe Q Citizen needs an automatic weapon. Why does Joe need an assault rifle? Can someone please tell me? If you want to arm yourself in your home, wouldn’t a shotgun do the trick? Come on now. Can’t we meet somewhere in the middle?