A story about mom and learning about guns

[John828]

Another thread about anti-gun families sparked me to ask my mom how she felt about guns. I always thought she was neutral on the issue even though she gave me my first "real" shotgun for Christmas when I was sixteen. Anyway, I stopped by her house today after work and during the conversation asked her. Indeed she didn't really care for them but is fine with others having them. Anyway, she then told me this story which I had never known:

About thirty-five years ago, she was a single mom with my me and my sister (five and nine years old). She started receiving strange/threatening phone calls. Evidently, it continued long enough that she decided to buy a handgun. The day she bought it, she said that she was sitting at the kitchen table trying to figure out how to load it. That same day she said she had called the police because she saw some damage to the back door and was worried that someone had tried to break into the house. A detective stopped by evidently while she was struggling loading the gun. She told the officer that she had bought this gun and was going to shoot anyone who tried to break in, but she couldn't load it. The part that makes me proud is that he wasn't condescending or negative. He asked her if she had ever shot it (which she hadn't), and then he asked her if he could take her to go shoot it. So he drove outside the city limits, showed her how to load and unload it and then let her shoot it.

My hat is off to that officer. My mom and I laughed about it, but it makes me kind of sad for her having to feel afraid back then and struggling to figure out how to defend herself. Nowadays, there is a sign advertising concealed carry classes on every fourth corner around here. By the way, that first "real" shotgun she gave me was a Remington 870 that sits next to the H&R twenty gauge single shot that I carried for five seasons.

 

[Skribs]

That sounds like a police officer who takes his job seriously. His job is to increase the level of safety in his jurisdiction, and by helping a woman learn to safely use her firearm, he did just that.

After I got my first gun, I found out that my Mom (who I assumed was the more neutral parent, my Dad was very supportive of my choice to buy a gun) wanted one when she was younger, but finances couldn't allow it and that all went by the wayside.

 

[SHOOT1SAM]

About 10 years ago, my Mom was spending a couple of months with us during a time of gun-control debate that was going around (don't remember the specifics of it now).

Anyways, my Mom has always been neutral on guns; she never shot anything, but bought me my 1st .22 rifle and never had a problem with the other guns that came along later, including a .22 revolver I had given my parents several years later as they were getting on in years.

I could see that she was beginning to give some credence to the control side, so I went to the safe, brought in a pistol, loaded it, cocked it, set the safety, then I set it right in the middle of the table. I looked her right in the eye (while my children looked on) and said "Mom, that pistol is NEVER going to get up, walk out of here, go down the street, take its safety off and shoot someone. It's going to take a person to do that" I could see her recognize the reality of it, and knew that my kids could grasp it too.

Sam

 

[berettaprofessor]

My mother, who has owned a revolver for years, has drank the KoolAid about those "terrible assault weapons" and is all for universal background checks and banning large magazines. I'm trying to work on her, but it is slow going.

 

[MedWheeler]

Mine was vehemently anti-gun, not out of politics as much as out of fear. It didn't help when she relented long enough to get my then-thirteen year-old brother an air rifle for Christmas, and he promptly had it seized by police for riding a bicycle through a crowded parking lot after dark with it over his shoulder.

But, she knows I have them, and I started acquiring them while still living at home. I was an aspiring LEO (and later an active-duty one) and she knew that guns came with the territory.

I've been out of the house for 25 years now, and she recently (in the last few years) became aware that I still own and shoot firearms. Perhaps she assumed I'd have let them go after leaving the profession, or when my daughter was born; I don't know. But, when she was telling me about the movie "2016" and that I had to see it, I asked her if it would make me "want to buy more gun", and she replied Oh, yeah! It will." Her tone indicated she had no concerns about it at all.

I visited her last summer in NC, and brought a couple of guns with me (one of which was always on me.) Though I didn't outright tell her about them, and was staying in a motel room across the street, I did tell her I might take my nephew, who also lives in that town, out shooting if I could find a spot, and she thought that that would be a really good idea for him (he was an introverted, video-game-addicted 19 year old.)