Do you come from a non-gun family?

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Pro-gun, but non-owners best describes my family. I had to use the local "good 'ole boy" network in town through my mother to even get my danged permit.

Some of my uncles own firearms, as do a few of my father's friends.
 
My friends in Texas are as anti-gun as they come. Their son is a FBI special agent and when he comes home they ask him to leave his guns in his car. He finally told them is packaged deal him with his firearms or no son. They live with it but are not happy.

Dampoo
 
Of course not! I'm from Kentucky! :D While my family may not have been big time involved shooters (I think that is more a modern thing, really) we would always get together at Christmas and Thanksgiving at my grandparents house, everybody would bring out their favorite pistol, and we'd go outside and shoot! My Mother says that when she was little, it was the custom on Christmas and New Years for everyone to shoot guns, almost as "fireworks". My dad is from Illinois. Not quite as "enthusiastic" about shooting as we are here, but still they liked and had guns of all kinds.
 
everyone i grew up around was pro-gun. i grew up 300 yards from the entrance to jesse james birth place in clay county missouri. when i left clay county, the last murder that was on the books was when jesse and his gang commited the first daylight bank robbery in liberty missouri, also in clay county, and they killed a william jewel college student. things changed a lot, but back when i was raised....everyone hunted, fished and had guns. it was just a way of life.
 
Batty67 said:
Same, my Dad shot rifle team in HS and at Naval Academy and certainly not anti-gun, but never had guns in the house. My brother and I shoot a lot and he joins us sometimes, so he still likes to punch paper from time-to-time...
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I shot on the Canoe U team in the sixties and later in the Navy when duty allowed. My first two ribbons were expert pistol and rifle during plebe summer. Do we know each other?

No one in my extended family ever owned any guns or ever hunted. However, my parents allowed me to have BB guns and a Remington single shot 22 when I was eleven. I carried that little rifle everywhere, even to school and on city buses. Things were different back in the fifties. I still have it up in the attic.
 
I am in the same boat, until my sister married a hunter. He is what many would call a "Fudd", and only has hunting rifles and shotguns, loads them only when in his stand/blind etc. Otherwise, no known gun owners, until my Dad got a .22 which he enjoys shooting, and he likes to go to the club and shoot my guns. I introduced him to it.
 
Yes, before I owned any firearms my family was moderately anti but became more tolerant as I bought more guns. Once I turned 21, my mother told me no guns in the house. So I went out and bought my first gun. A year after that, a second gun, and on and on. My dad didn't really care either way.

My dad considers me a member of, in his words, the GNA - the "Gun Nut Association" - his little poke at humor :)
 
Indifferent. No shooters, hunters, or LEOs, few veterans. But I grew up with cap pistols, Cowboys and Indians, playing "War", my mother never said anything about my collection.
 
My grandfather on Mom's side grew up in Huntington UT. One of his earliest memories is his older brother handing him a 10 ga side by side and telling him to point it at the fence post and pull both triggers. He maintains that the recoil of the butt of the gun into his stomach (more "help" from his older brother) hurt more than the butt whoopin he got for knocking down a fencepost. He spent 23 years in the Navy, and competed in smallbore pistol and service rifle matches at Miramar for many years. When he retired, they offered to give him his NM .308 Garand and the S&W model 41 pistol. He declined, and has been kicking himself for the last 10 years for that decision. Now at 76 he's discovered sporting clays and has bought 7 shotguns this year, including ones for my brother, uncle, and a cousin, but not me.

That being said, my parents both grew up mostly in San Jose CA in the late 70's and early 80's. My dad was passive, he just didn't care to ever go shoot or to buy guns. When he found out that I'd gotten my CWP a few years ago he said "Well, don't do anything stupid I guess. You don't really need such a thing here in Utah, it's really safe anyways." My mother on the other hand says that every minute I carry is one minute closer to getting shot. In her view, only people who carry guns ever get shot. Also, the scent of Hoppe's #9 makes her nauseous. She tolerates it now because I told her that if she were going to give me crap about it every time she saw me I'd just stop coming to her house. My 21 year old brother's 20 ga Benelli Nova has to have the barrel removed, action disassembled, then locked in a case inside of a locked room. Even then she's pissed at her father for giving it to him.

Even my mother is coming around now. She feels a lot less safe since my dad passed away a few weeks ago, and a few months back while I was at the house my 19 yr old sister's ex boyfriend who'd gone off his meds showed up in the backyard yelling about killing himself and taking my sister with him. I got the mossy 590 out of my car and persuaded him to drop his Hi-Point 9mm and wait for the cops to show up. I'm gonna try to get her to the range with me after the holidays.

From my influence, and the renewed interest of my grandfather in shooting, my brother is a shooter, as are two of my three sisters, my wife, and it would seem my 4 year old daughter. She's insistent that she gets a pink gun for Christmas...we'll see.
 
WOW! All these anti families! Everybody in my family had arms... My Great Granny, Cherokee, Scottish and Irish roots, and born in 1907, she kept a double barrel .410 next to the door (country, different world, different time) and use it often 'til the day she died. All of her kids, my Granny and her siblings, they all grew up hunting. My father learned from his uncle, her brother, and from his grandmother and passed that on to me. I learned old school stalking techniques, and had a firearm since age 8. We also have a strong military heritage too, that on my father and mother's side as well as myself... I really can't think of a relative that doesn't own a firearm. I've always thought it was natural.
 
What happens with some relationships can easily happen with hobbies.

People have sometimes married a person After a parent has frequently criticized the boyfriend/girlfriend. This might have happened, regarding my wife's late husband, and probably happened with her brother.

Apparently this happens with guns?

People sometimes go to unusual lengths to prove that their judgement/tastes/decisons are sound and competent.

The people who criticize family members' choices often are intelligent, but ironically either feel just the need to control and/or also choose to ignore the true character of human nature.
 
My folks were also "non-gun" rather than anti. My dad actually owned several guns (mostly war souvineers from his and his fathers service). To the best of my knowledge none of them have been fired in my lifetime. Most all of my extended family are "city kids" so I have no familial exposure to hunting of any kind.

I myself developed a interest in guns as a teenager. Aside from toy BB guns, my first firearm was a percussion Hawken Rifle kit I bought and built while in college. One I moved out of the house I picked up my first center fire and since then have slowly added various guns one at a time to my collection.

One of my brothers has a similar interest in guns but with a wife and family to support has much less discretionary funds to spend on his interest than I do. So, while I know a few other friends who share my interest he's the only member of my family that does.
 
Neither my wife's family or mine were anti or avid.

They left it up to us to try to get good at it.

They are, however, starting to see the value in it...
 
My father grew up in rural GA and served in Vietnam. He grew up around guns. He later became a Jehovah's Witness and although I never had guns growing up, we always had air rifles and bb guns, and I was taught how to shoot. Upon moving out of the house I started purchasing guns. He still doesn't have any, but I wouldn't describe him as anti.
 
My mother used to hate guns. She tolerated my dads guns, but they were always locked up and unloaded in a safe. 20 years after their divorce, she got into shooting, and now has her CPL and carries a .38. We go shooting often. Kind of funny, because even though my dad hunts, and has a dozen or so rifles/shotguns, he hates the fact that I carry.
 
No antis in my family. We didn't even have a safe or gun cabinet. There was one in most corners of the house, except for the kitchen and bathroom.
 
They wern't anti-gun even though with my grandparents consent my dad join the Navy at age 15 in WWII from Ohio. Never did have any interset in guns, he even won a 20ga pump in a raffle and just kept it in the closet. He did talk about shooting the Jap's down with the quad mount 40mm's though on the Battle Ship New Jersey BB-62. Only person was a Uncle married to my dads sister that was a avid hunter upland bird and deer also from Ohio too.

But my brother and I are a different story though...I have 9 long guns and 8 handguns(in my 5ga Sturdy RSC:)) and my brother has 4 long guns and 4 handguns.
 
It's amazing how many gunnies came out of anti homes.
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Pretty ubiquitous amongst that particular sub-set indeed. I dated a bunch of preacher's daughters when I was young. The one's under the most restrictive and totalitarian fathers were by far the wildest... Trend?

I too wanted a motorcycle in high school but Mom and Dad were against such.

My dad was career Air Force, flew over 200 combat missions in RF-4Cs in Vietnam, was always engulfed in work and not interested in fishing or hunting when I was young. He carried the S&W Aircrew 38 Special that is infamous for its aluminum construction and potential KB. He told me that he and the other pilots pretty much considered it a joke - a last resort if you were facing capture. I've looked at purchasing one of these just for collector value but don't have $3,000 to stuff into my vault in that fashion. I thought my dad was crazy flying in a war zone in a recon jet without any armament. I always thought "He got the big balls, I must have gotten the brains..."

Mom was a teacher and motherly so wasn't into anything that could hurt children. Sister doesn't like to kill anything.

Dad got me a Crossman M1 Carbine BB gun after I pleaded my case. A cousin had one and I had shot it - now I NEEDED one. Still have it. With original hang tags but no box...

Being an Air Force brat, we moved every 4 years mostly, spent half the 70's in Hawaii where guns weren't really prevalent, then ended up in Texas. I should have been military myself but was born in a gap - what like Faulklands, or Panama or something? No thanks, I was busy skiing/snowboarding...

Well let me tell you something, son... They's got some guns down round about Texas way for certain!!! We had a weirdo uncle with a pawn shop that had guns stacked up like cord-wood. Stacks of Colt ARs when they were prolly $300/ea NIB. I started to see that perhaps guns were more than just a physical tool but also a financial instrument as well.

Fast forward to collage and a friend of mine who, without a doubt, had the largest influence on my current situation. His father had the gun collection of gun collections. Gold Colt single actions out the yin yang, military hardware, every version of every pistol, shotgun, lever gun, bolt action, full auto, you name it. I was slack-jaw when we'd get together and blast everything from MP40 Schmiser open-bolt full-auto, to Galil full-auto, Tompson 1928 open-bolt full-auto "Tommy Gun", 454 Casull, Barrett 50BMG semi-auto, Uzi, S&W 44 Mag in all shape and size... And he'd be out shooting gold guns that were museum pieces... Wow.

I vowed that someday, when I could afford it, I would emulate this feat. I visited the Buffalo Bill Museum, which holds the Winchester collection, in Cody, WY. If you like guns, you need to see this collection. One of the few times I've been slack-jaw once again.

I see it all as a balance. A huge pile of guns without ammo is pretty useless. Huge pile of gold without any guns, same. Huge pile of cash, scary. A nice balance of cash, gold, guns, ammo, food, water, etc. is the strategy I've come to adopt. My wife is grateful for my... esoteric, eclectic, prepare for SHTF ways. My family and friends think I'm kind of nuts but LOVE going to the range with me... ;-)

Thank God that there are so many of us and Happy Thanksgiving! I do my best to rub off positively on young people or peers that I take shooting/hunting.
 
My dad's family were gun users, and some are gun enthusiasts. Mom's family were not. There were guns in the house when I was a kid, and we went shooting some. Dad taught me to use a double-action revolver. He's now a retired cop.

I was not allowed to have a gun of my own until I became an adult, due to an edict of my mother's. One day, I was wishing that I had a gun of my own because I wanted to go shooting, and realized that the only reason I didn't have one was because I hadn't gone out and bought one. Mom and the law weren't in my way anymore, so I bought one. And so it started.

Mom's getting a carry permit, and a pistol. :D
 
My family is neither pro nor anti. Alot of military in my family, some career, but most for education. My parents in particular knew I own firearms but only preferred they were kept away from my underage-at-the-time little brothers. As long as they werent in their house, they were pretty much indifferent.
 
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