I do not consider myself a gun fanatic.  That being said, my life has been around guns for most of my 77 years.  Growing up, Dad had a couple of .22s and a shotgun in the house.  My brother and I were not allowed to handle them until our teen years, and then under strict supervision of our father.  And I don’t remember Mom ever voicing any reservations about having the weapons in our home.

            My first memory of using guns was with Granddad Fish.  When visiting him in eastern Iowa one fall, he invited me to go hunting with him, hunting rabbits.  This was a lifelong avocation with him, and it also provided the table with meat, as Grandma was adept at preparing and cooking such game.

            Granddad and I went to the usual places where rabbits burrowed, managed to scare up some with the help of his hound dog, and we brought home a couple of the furry animals, dead and ready to be the evening meal.  Of course, I had the better gun and the worse aim, so Granddad was the one who got them all with his little shotgun.

            Dad did not have a pistol, and neither did Granddad, but since his (Granddad’s) service in World War 1 was driving an ammunition truck, pictures of him show the sidearm he was required to carry.  My first experience with a handgun came from my uncle, a combat veteran in World War 2.  He had brought home (I think, not positive) a .45 from his service.  My brother and I, as teenagers, were eager to try it out, and under Uncle Edwin’s oversight, we tried it out.  As you can expect, the recoil was more than expected, and the target was safe from either of us.

            As a young adult, and into middle age, I managed to acquire a few rifles down through the years.  One was a modified Enfield rifle, used as a deer hunting weapon.  On the single deer hunt I went on, my shooting met nothing but air.  Deer were safe from me!

            One of my weapons was a muzzle loading black powder rifle, which I never mastered, either cleaning, loading or shooting.  I also had a single shot .22, but that was not usable and I never got around to having it repaired.

            About twenty years ago, I acquired a .38 revolver, but after a few rounds of practice shooting, it was left in the closet for those subsequent years.  Doesn’t seem like a rabid 2nd Amendment household, does it?

            That changed early last year, with the shooting in Florida’s Parkland High School that left 17 dead.  News stories were filled with the anti-gunners blaming the “gun culture” of America, and calls for limiting the ownership and use of guns were made by left-wing politicians and Democrats.  People ranted about the NRA and those in Congress they supported, called them killers and much more.  More gun control laws were needed, we were told, even when the facts were that no gun laws on the books or even proposed would have stopped the killer at that high school.

            My reaction  —  my guns were not evil.  They were benign, only to be used by a human.  The evil was in the mind, heart and soul of those who would want others dead, and the guns were only a tool in their hands.

            Here I am, then.  In the aftermath of that shooting, I took and passed a concealed carry class, joined the NRA, and purchased more firearms that would be easier to handle.  Now we have multiple firearms around the house, to easily access them in case of an emergency.  Jane now has a concealed carry license, too.  Also I researched the times the most vilified gun, the AR-15, was used in mass shootings.  My take on this was that life is deadly.  Look at the list of deaths from various sources in the United States, and wonder, as I did, why guns are singled out as the most nefarious way Americans died in a single day.

            
Average # of deaths per day in US:

Abortion: 1,778
Heart disease: 1,773
Cancer: 1,641
Medical error: 685
Accidents: 401
Stroke: 401
Alzheimer’s: 332
Diabetes: 228
Flu: 150
Suicide: 128
Opioids: 115
Drunk driving: 28
Underage drinking: 11
Teen texting-and-driving: 8
All Rifles, including AR-15s: 1

Is the answer to mass shootings to get rid of firearms in the United States?  When I was in high school, we never had any drills to evade an “active shooter” as Paris High had in the past week.  We never had to make sure our schoolroom doors were locked and we had to hide in some closet.  (Of course, our drills were to hide under our desks in case of an atomic attack, but that is a subject for another day!)

Did we have misfits in our midst?  Of course! Were there any deaths of our contemporaries because of misuse of a gun?  Yes —  one of my classmates, shortly after graduation, was killed by her husband with a handgun.

            What has changed in the past sixty years?  For one thing, mass shootings are fairly rare; today they are blasted over the airwaves and on social media nonstop so we all hear of them more.  But more than that, the morality of the nation has plummeted to unheard of depths. We have killed more than 63 million babies through abortion, we have made mainstream activities of those once thought of as aberrant.  Television and the media have demonized those who uphold “traditional” morals, and Christianity is under attack in this nation and world wide as never before.

            With threats to our old-time moral values, I will continue to advocate for the arming of America, and will continue to carry to protect myself and those I care for.  Guns are in many homes in America, benign pieces of technology.  Those who decry the private ownership of firearms are missing the point.  They should be looking at the root cause of why anyone would use a weapon to kill, and attack those causes with the same zeal as they do the “gun culture” they despise.  Then, perhaps, the deadly assaults will lessen and the time will come when the “lion will lie down with the lamb”.

            Until then, our arsenal will be periodically upgraded, and our target practice continued apace, as we use our benign guns for our protection.