I was just reading this thread on MetaFilter, about firearms and home defense. I got to thinking–do I known anyone who owns a gun? Not to my knowledge, but then I live a very urban (but not, you know, boyz in the hood urban) lifestyle. That said, it’s my perception that plenty of gun-owners in the States are suburbanites, not city-dwellers or farmers.
I’ve only fired a gun twice in my life. Once during riflery class (and the subsequent competition–I came second) at camp and once while visiting the Yukon (walking in the middle of nowhere with this guy, who I reconnected with after about 18 years via Flickr). I’ve fired gazillions of virtual guns in a quarter-lifetime misspent on computer games.
Do you know anybody who owns a gun? Why do they have it? Have they ever aimed it at another human?
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Up in Kitimat there are a lot of hunters. It’s a big deal if you win the lottery for a license to kill… deer? Bison? Moose? I have no idea. But hunting rifles aren’t really the same as guns, since they’re a bit too big to conceal on your body without looking way, way too interested in the ladies.
By the way, if you’re offering yourself as target practice, Darren, I’m in!
When I lived in the Peace everyone had guns. They owned more than one and different types.Sometimes they used them for hunting mostly they used their guns to try and kill coyotes or bears who were after their livestock.
I’ve shot a gun several times, against my wishes. One of my friends insisted I learn to shoot skeets. I was hopeless prematurly hitting the trigger everytime.
These people grow up with guns. They use them responsibly, ie storing them in locked cabinets seperatly from the ammunition. Gun regulation pissed them off royally.
Melanie
How about a rifle? We lived up north before moving down to the island and Dad hung onto his rifle until I finally coaxed him into parting with it when the firearms registry “began”. He hadn’t been hunting in 15 years, I wasn’t inclined to take it up myself, and we didn’t want it sitting around in the house. He did have 3 when we first moved to the city, but 2 were stolen from a storage locker he kept them at and were never recovered.
Interesting note: The rifle was used and intended for hunting but Dad stored it in a deep corner of my parents bedroom closet. We hadn’t seen it for so long we forgot about it being stored there (imagine). One day my mom stumbled across it and banished it to the basement. We had a Japanese student (Tokyo-raised) living with us at the time and when we passed each other on the stairs, and he saw what I had slung over my shoulder, he just about passed out.
Addendum: Despite being in the closet, ammo was locked away in the basement.
Yeah, Darren, I have a few guns.
The big one (A WWII-era 7mm Mauser) was my grandfather’s.
I have a few .22 rifles aside from that.
I like to take the guns out with my friends and shoot at targets, like shaken up soda cans and the like.
No, I have never pointed a real gun at a real person, but I’ve pointed fake guns at real people and real guns at fake people.
A friend of mine is a hobby handgun shooter, he owns a couple of handguns (.22 and 9mm) and some “small ammo” rifles (if that’s even the correct term for a .22 rifle). He’s a responsible firearms owner, and the range he took me to for fun one day has a strict “no human targets” policy – meaning no paper targets that resemble people – animals and abstract targets only.
Ironically, we all had to stop shooting for about 20 minutes while a deer wandered out of the surrounding woods and grazed on the range for a bit.
my personal experience with firing guns is pretty much limited to a .22 rifle i used at camp when i was about 12. darn good shot too; i still have one of the targets with 5/5 bullseyes.
i lived with a boyfriend who owned a handgun “for protection”.
he did use it to protect me once (from being raped or worse by 3 hoodlums trying to get in my house) but then he only had to show it in the waistband of his jeans to scare them off – not actually aim it at a person.
the incident i remember best, however, was the time he shoved the gun in my hand, placed the barrel to his temple, and tried to force me to pull the trigger. i guess you could call that “aiming” at someone.
somehow i’ve been a bit a off of guns in general ever since. based on my experience, i firmly believe the adage that, “a gun in the house is more likely to hurt you than an intruder.”
I know two people that own a gun. One is an RCMP officer, and the other is the same person Jen mentioned above.
I would never consider owning a gun, or living with anyone who owned a gun, or spending significant time with anyone who was carrying a gun.
I grew up in Nanaimo and I knew a lot of people who had guns — mostly for hunting or target practice. My dad had tried hunting when he was young, but he wounded a deer and felt so sick about it that he never touched a gun again. When my mom was teaching in the 70s, one of the second graders at her school shot his little cousin — my parents often used this story to explain why we shouldn’t even touch toy guns. Also, the sister of my ex was playing Russian Roulette with some friends about 15 years ago and her best friend “lost”. So, even though most gun owners are law abiding, I don’t feel comfortable with people having guns. It’s a lot harder to use a knife to stab your cousin to death or decapitate your best friend.
My mom owns an old rifle from when she was a kid — they grew up on a farm, it was just another implement required for their operation. I believe said gun is in the crawlspace and I know she doesn’t own any ammo for it. She considered registering it when the whole gun registry thing came up, but figured hell, she hasn’t even thought of the thing in years, she’d just leave it be. If it still worked, I’d be amazed.
When my uncle stayed with us about 10 years ago, just after his marriage ended, he kept a gun in the house. I didn’t like it much, but I was 15 and had no say in the matter. 🙂 He’s another one of those rural people — until he moved in with us, he’d lived in Ft. St. John for the past 30-odd years.
Did you have any weird experiences with guns when you went to South Africa? Mom and Dad were asked if they wanted to “check their guns” while dining in a South African restaurant.
I was born and raised in rural Texas and owned/fired a variety of firearms. They were necessary on a ranch, for both self-protection and for mercy (dying, suffering animals and the like.)
I remember being confused when I was in elementary or jr. high because I heard some radio reporter talking about a kid who brought a gun to school. He said that it was the worst thing that could happen in the world. Looking out my car window as we drove up to the school, I saw no less than ten, occupied gun racks in the back of trucks. As far as know, no one ever killed anyone with those guns. Two people in my class were murdered — one was beaten with a stick and one was run over by a truck that had a loaded gun resting in its rack (go figure.)
In regards to people being uncomfortable around guns, I have the following opinion: if the person is uncomfortable having a gun in the house or being around people with guns, it means that they or the people around them are not properly trained. More over, as a responsible gun owner, you should respect that, and take the appropriate actions to remove firearms from their vicinity to make them comfortable and to keep everyone safe.
Funny, there’s this one quite heated (as usual) discussion going on The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.
This site is PURE hate.
My grandfather owned guns. They sat in a visible rack in the den, and the ammo was hidden off somewhere. He lived on a farm and used the guns for hunting purposes and training his hunting dogs to become accustomed to the sounds of guns.
Through my entire childhood I never had the slightest interest in touching those guns. On the other hand I always snuck some playtime with his sword. It was a ceremonial naval sword.
The only time he ever asked me to use a gun was when he handed me a .22 loaded with blanks and asked me to go out back and fire off a few rounds at some dogs that were harassing one of his dogs that was in heat. I remember that I held the gun like Sonny Crocket from Miami Vice and that the trigger was harder to pull than I thought. My grandfather chided me for thinking Hollywood knew anything about firing guns. After having seen what guns do to some of the animals my grandfather shot, I lost any minute interest that I might have held for firearms. Ironically, I LOVE military video games and freak my friend out by being able to tell what gun is being fired without needing to see it.
I guess I’m saying, I’m only a gun nut in make-believe-land. 🙂
P.S. That image of you staring at me while I preview this comment is even more disturbing.
I own several guns. I own a Mossberg 500 Slugster shotgun, a .30-06 rifle and a .357 blue steel Cobra…
The Cobra is self defense.
I noticed that the Google ads on your site are now displaying “Canadian Firearms License” and “Gun Dealer’s License Kit”. Computers “think” in the most amusing ways.
About 3 years ago, Teresa and I were on a road trip through the US to Mexico. While camping in a national park in Kentucky, we struck up a conversation with a farm couple from southern Illinois. We got on to the differences between Canadians and Americans and I mentioned to them that I did not know a single individual who owned a handgun. The Illinois corn farmer told me that he didn’t think he knew anyone that *didn’t* own one. He related that when a bunch of his buddies got together for a fun trip to Chicago, they all packed their pistols.