DWCAP: Thanks. My dad was an ex-Marine, and I learned to shoot from a very young age. I also learned to respect the weapon, but to never treat it as anything other than a tool. Societally, we’ve imbued guns with such a mystique that people forget they are simply mechanical devices.
I also had a lot of confidence instilled from learning to shoot. I was comfortably shooting a .30-06 M1 Garand by the time I was 10 and that focus came in handy in many other circumstances.
I now have a 10 year old son, and I am constantly having to deal with the omnipresent thug culture that glorifies violence and misogyny and treats guns as a ticket to power and respect. It’s pathetic and sad, but these are the times we live in. And, unfortunately, for many people a gun represents a single, drastic answer to a lot of problems. People like the clown in the picture above.
