Nah, my mom has said many times that she thinks I was born with a rifle in my hands. However, my beautiful wife of 45 years, while never exactly anti-gun, was terrified of guns when we got married. That was partly my fault. Being born and raised into a family of hunters and gun enthusiasts, it just never occurred to me that my wife, whose mother wouldn’t even allow a gun in the house, might be a little bit apprehensive about them.
So what’s one of the first thing my wife’s brilliant husband does less than a week after she married him? He takes her up on mud hill to try out his dad’s new 30-30. After a couple of shots I turned around to ask my bride if she wanted to give it a try. She was pale as a bed sheet, trembling and had tears running down her face.
I was dumbfounded, but I guess to someone who had never heard a gunshot other than on TV or in a movie, even a little 30-30 is pretty darned loud. Besides, my wife’s mother had 19 years to instill the “guns are evil” silliness in my wife before she ever met me.
Anyway, I took my bride out with a .22 loaded with shorts the very next day. After some gentle coaching, and careful teaching of the safety rules, she was grinning from ear to ear as she regularly punched holes in the tin cans we’d brought with us. That was in June, 1971. By October that year, she had her own 20 gauge double, and she was happily walking with dad and me as we trailed behind a couple of dad’s Brittany Spaniels searching for pheasants.
Nowadays, my wife has as many guns as I do. She always carries. In fact, they’re not required in Idaho anymore, but she actually had a CCW license for 8 or 10 years before I decided to get one. She’s a better shot than I am with a revolver, doesn’t like semi-autos, and had a custom, Model 70 Winchester, 7mm Rem Mag built for herself a few years ago.