Were you ever anti-gun?

No. I was never anti gun.

There was a short time (months?) when I favored a little more gun control.

During around me being 4-9 yrs old, I was raised going camping a lot with my step-dad.

Guns were sometimes part of that depending on the trip.

My mom and 'real dad' didn't really influence me. They never seemed to be pro or con.

During the mid 80's, gangs drive-by's etc were fairly common in L.A. which was about 50 miles north of me.

More towards the later 80's, things were coming to a head. The news was all over it like they are now, imo. I was in my very late teens at the time. (mom was divorced from alcoholic, a-hole step dad when I was 9 yrs old.)


With all the news and politician saying they needed to do it to reduce the gang shootings, it seemed to make sense.....

UNTIL......

The folding stock issue came up. When I figured out that what they were feeding the public was that a Mini 14 with a tradition stock was fine but somehow became menace to society if it had a folding stock.


That's when I realized the media and Govt don't always tell the accurate truth.

 

I grew up on a farm in southern Iowa. My Dad had a 1891 Argentine Mauser he had purchased by mail from Montgomery Wards around 1960. That rifle was always kept loaded in the coat closet just inside our back porch door as we had a number of stray dogs on occasion try to feast on random Sheep, chickens, and other livestock we raised. We were not allowed to shoot anything other than a BB gun until we passed the golden age of 12. By the time I passed that landmark my two older brothers had acquired several .22 rifles, which were also kept loaded inside the back door in the coat closet. Nobody ever got shot in our house although a lot of stray dogs did get the opportunity to quit harming livestock. I still to this day do not understand why folks wish to treat the hardware like it is the problem rather than instilling the sense of responsibility required to handle a firearm.

 

No. Guns were a part of my life from birth. Started hunting doves with dad at 9. As I got older I realized the more important aspects of the 2nd amendment.

 

Sure. I grew up in a liberal family. President Kennedy was assassinated when I was 2. Bobby and MLK when I was 7. I watched the Vietnam war on the evening news during my years in elementary school. I was pretty anti-war and anti-gun by the time I was in high school. It was part of the zeitgeist. Interestingly, we had a .22 rifle and 12 gauge shot gun and I hunted pheasants. Deer were off limits, because that was Bambi... I was against nuclear weapons in college. My brother went to the naval academy and was a career officer. We became estranged for 20 years.

Not until I was 43 and my son was born did I feel the instinct to protect and defend him. The instinct was strong and persistent. Instead of a midlife crisis with a sports car and a mistress, I got interested in disaster preparedness and defensive use of firearms. A friend mentored me into the responsible use of firearms and defensive shooting. I am now a 4-H Shooting Sports leader, doing archery and small bore rifle with my son and his friends. My brother and I are close now because I found something that we could talk about, share, and enjoy.

 

My dad only owned one gun, a single shot 22 for shooting rats in the chicken houses. He didn't hunt but, when I started getting interested in hunting he encouraged me and got me into the local gun club's youth shooting program. That was about 50 years ago.
Short answer, Nope, never been anti gun.

 

That is a very fine, moving story, jamesjames. Thank you very much for sharing it with us.
One thing stands out. Life is rarely easy or uncomplicated.

 

That depends. I've never not liked guns, so that's one way to answer it.

However, I wasn't born with a full understanding of the US Constitution so there were surely some times as a younger man that I held views that are different than I have today. Some of those views I had as a teen/young man might have been more restrictive/uneducated, than what I hold now, but that's part of learning. You see things, you learn, you grow. You change your thoughts based on new information and facts.

I didn't grow up hunting either. I can recall times as a teen thinking there was no way I could kill an animal that had done nothing to me. Boy was I ultimately wrong on that one.

The Marine Corps taught me more about guns and gun safety than I ever would have guessed when I signed my name on the dotted line. That was a great education that built a solid foundation of respect for weapons and safety.

I later taught myself how to hunt with rifle, bow, pistol, shotgun, and muzzle loader. I've killed over 100 deer and countless other critters.

I shoot, hunt, reload, and collect firearms. I wasn't born doing any of this, I learned along the way that I love it. I can't imagine what I'd do with my time if I'd never discovered hunting/fishing/shooting. Heck, I'd probably be out on your lawn playing Pokemon Go right now while you called the cops!

Mine is the progression of someone who was raised in a house with no firearms at all. My mother hated guns then, and still does. I was raised in a military family, and we moved around a bit.

How I went from a kid raised in a gunless home, to having my own home full of guns, a wall full of mounts, and a freezer full of memories is probably a mystery to some...but it seems the only natural outcome for me. My siblings all wonder how I turned out this way. I in turn wonder if I was adopted. .

I can tell you that on my journey there were several men who were hugely influential. They left an impression upon me as a small child that I carry deeply to this day.

One was my uncle John. He was big time into guns, hunting, and fishing. This was back in the 70's. We'd occasionally visit their home and the guy was just larger than life with all the stuff he did. He reloaded ammo in his basement. I can recall seeing the lead melting equipment as clear as if it were yesterday. He had a bullet stop in the basement so he could shoot his pistols down there. He built his own crossbow.

He gave me a .44 mag dummy round on a keychain when I was around 7 years old. I kept that thing until I was a grown man. I'm sure it's still around here somewhere. Heck, I made my own such keychains not long ago after remembering that gift he gave me. He's probably part of the reason I own as many .44 mags as I do.

He was a really neat guy. He took the time to give me a little insight into the shooting/reloading world when I was a kid and that seed got planted really deep in my brain.

Another influence was an older couple that my folks knew. They lived in San Francisco and whenever we'd go to their apartment I'd beg to see his deer rifle. My mom would protest and he'd tell her something to get her mind off it and I'd get to hold the rifle and look through the scope. He taught me how to oil it, and basically just spent some time to teach me a little about the rifle. I never got to shoot it but that was OK. I got to hold a real rifle and that too planted a seed of curiosity that would only grow over time.

So in the end I'd say I was never anti-gun, but my views have surely evolved as I've grown up to be far more pro-gun than you'd have thought I'd be if you interviewed me when I was 15 years old. People grow. They learn. Their thoughts evolve.

 

The gospel truth. Well said!

 

Never once at all.

 

Nope - I grew up with guns all around.

 

Never occurred to me to be against guns. I thought a lot as a kid, all kinds of philosophical questions. And had already figured out there are good and bad people but guns are irrelevant in that assessment.

My dad had a revolver. His uncle gave me a Winchester pump action .22 rifle when I was a pre-teen. Made in 1910, still have it. No idea of its history before me. My grandfather took me hunting with that .22.

Early exposure helps along with taking the time to think at least two moves ahead to realize banning guns is wrong headed for the world we actually live in.

 

I was once in favor of restrictions, since they do make intuitive sense on a very shallow level of thought. But I was far too logically-minded, and believed that such laws should be based upon evidence/trends and have demonstrative beneficial effects, so I felt that a ban on 9mm pistols made far more sense than assault weapons...then I learned how many different handguns and cartridges are equivalent to 9mm and realized the only solution could be banning all handguns...but quickly realized how impossible this was given both their numbers and simplicity. Around this time, I had graduated college (having miraculously gotten not one but two constitutionalist/libertarian civics teachers in both high school and college) and decided I should buy and learn to use a handgun & rifle. I'd shot 22LR in Boy Scouts, and perhaps as some leftover shade of the old Scout ethics, I felt these were skills one should simply have (something along the lines of that laundry list of human skills Heinlein popularized). Again, being logically minded, I sought out the guidance of those more knowledgeable than I, and found myself here of all places, learning about the myriad of handguns, and the even greater constellation of gun laws that I must avoid like a minefield.

Basically, the more I learned (and continue to learn) about guns, the more gun control seemed impossible or even counterproductive. This seemed a strange set of affairs to me, and is why I began to learn more about gun control, and gun laws in general. The more I learned about gun control, the more incredulous, then irritable, then angry, then outraged I became. I realized I was bearing witness to a creeping cancer upon our most fundamental human rights, deceitfully candy-coated in good intentions. Gun control was literally one of the most evil and indefensible policies that has ever taken root in this country, right up there (and deeply intertwined) with Jim Crow and institutional subjugation of all kinds (not just African slavery, but oppression of Irish, German, Japanese, and many other ethnic groups, both here in America and across the world throughout all of history)

I realized gun control was a binary test of one's intentions for their fellow man when it came to governance; whether you believe mankind should live grovelling in chains, or at the direction of his agency. Around that time (2011 or so) I came across that famous essay "The Gun is Civilization" which put to plain print what I had been cogitating loosely for months. From that point on, I've steadily found more and more reason to doubt the intentions of gun controllers and the supposed benefits of their long-running sham of public policy, and more reason to have faith in my fellow man to bear arms peaceably in mutual respect & protection.

TCB

 

Nope..

 

Some surprising answers, to me anyway. More of the posters here have changed their convictions than I would have thought.

I grew up in the rural south, was hunting unsupervised at 10 years old with a 20 gauge shotgun. It was pretty clear to me from the get-go that misuse wasn't the fault of the gun.

 

This echoes my story for the most part.

I grew up in a house where my father had a pistol, and he'd go to the range with a 50 and box of ammo once every few years. I first got to go to the range at about 10 years old, where we rented a .22 rifle for me. I went again about 3 years later when he went again, and again when i was about 15.
Guns were never spooky, or scary. They were never something that should be banned outright. But my mother HATED guns, and dad was ok with very strict gun control and rarely practicing with the gun he did have. We grew up in a liberal suburb of NYC and while I was more favorable toward guns than many of my peers, I was a product of the philosophy i was raised with.

When I went to college, which was a very very politically liberal school in Boston, I saw just how extreme people got in their anti-gun views. Here I was a kid who had generally oblivious to deep political issues. Heck, in H.S. I had even worked for the Gore-Lieberman campaign because I wanted something on my resume for college.
But once I got to that very liberal college, the views were so extreme that they pushed me to examine the other side of things, and that's where I found myself politically, and most specifically in reference to guns. In my merciless examination both sides, I felt like the pro-gun view stood up better to scrutiny.

In fact, if you look at my join date, it is in 2006, the same year I graduated college. I learned a lot in college, and the college education was only a small part of it.

 

I never have been anti. Some of my family is though. My aunt and uncle were notoriously anti gun until they woke up one night to find a drunk Mexican sleeping on their couch. They bought a handgun after that and it opened their eyes some.

 

Fascinated with guns and pro gun since I was born.

 

No.

Dad taught me to shoot (aamof, here on my maternal grandparents' farm where I have live for the past ~26 years) before I even started school. I have been enjoying it ever since.

 

No, but my views have evolved a lot in the last 15 years. I grew up in North Jersey but my Dad was always pro-gun. He hunted and shot for fun with his brothers and everyone in his family were cops and firemen. Everyone in his family also enlisted in the service if they were able-bodied. My Mom was anti-violence. She competed in the Miss New Jersey pageant, she was homecoming queen and an honor roll student every single semester of her life. She lived in a little bubble where bad stuff didn't happen.
I grew up loving guns and war movies and Mom never did anything to change my mind. Now, many years later, every time I see her we actually go shooting together! Mainly 22's but she still has a blast! I have even gotten her to shoot a few AR's over the years.
After I left the Army I became much more pro-gun. I moved to PA and became a lot more pro-gun. When I left my job as a LEO I became more pro-gun as well. As I get older I become more and more pro-gun.
This is the thing, I was never an anti. I always hunted and target shot. I always believed that Americans had the right to bear arms. It was just never a hot button issue to me until about 15 years ago.

 

Nope.....I have always been into shooting and hunting! Brought my kids up in the same manner!
Dan

 

Ambivalent

Born and raised in NJ, one of the most anti-gun states in the union, I never thought too much about it. My Dad had a couple of guns but only ever brought the shotgun out to shoot trap which he brought me along to watch. Dad got me a single shot .410 and the club let me take some shots at clays without much damage to the pigeons. Probably illegal too.
I moved out of NJ to the GunShine State in '89 and after seeing the devastation caused by Andrew in '92 I became much more pro selfdefense and wanted the best tool for that job. There is no sense doing the preps and having no way to protect your stash.
:banghead:

 

Nope. Been fascinated with firearms since a young age though only shot a couple times before joining Uncle Sam's gun club (USMC). After I got out I started my collection and expanded my knowledge on the subject substantially. Very much pro-gun.

 

nope...

I wanted a BB gun since I first learned what they were and had an impressive collection of all the US standard issue firearms... for my G.I. Joe. Funny that the hardest one to come by back then was an M16.

 

I have never been anti.

I was born in Alabama, raised in Mississippi and Arkansas so I have always been in the South where gun ownership was completely normal.
My father has always had firearms and been an NRA member.

I cut my teeth on guns, so it was never anything novel or out of the ordinary. I had been around guns so much when I finally did come into contact with anti-gun people I knew that their arguments were based out of illogical fear.