Rolled Out On: 5/13/2007 10:40 AM

Good for you...

I remember being about that age when my dad started showing me about gun safety and care. He was (still is) a huge gun collector, and my mother was a cop. I don't remember there ever being a time we didn't have guns in the house.

As you said, we were demystified about them, and though we knew they were there, we also knew safety, and that we were not to handle them without one of my parents present. Of course, my mother's training books for the police academy helped that... nothing like seeing what a gsw will do to the side of someone's head.

Some of my best memories are of our family walking down the deserted track setting up targets, smelling the hoppes gun cleaner and learning how to disassemble and clean the gun "right", and watching and learning the process for reloading shells (which my dad did for years before the Parkinson's overcame him.) We(my brother and I) were handling/shooting guns from about the age 7 on. We spent several years as junior members at a gun club, and it was some of the best family time I remember.

I didn't have guns in my home while my children were growing up. It surely wasn't that I didn't like them or think they should be around them. I was a single parent with 3 small kids, 2 jobs and I knew that I couldn't effectively spend the time teaching them the way my parents had me. It was a different time. Rather than put them in any danger, I chose to put my fun with guns aside. Now that they're grown, I may take that up again.

*sigh* thanks for the memory hon...
*hugs*
Miss B