Not really, it just seemed like a good title.
A short distance from my house there is a private gun range. I think it’s for the Secret Service. Maybe the FBI. Most mornings I hear the sound of somebody practicing.
It doesn’t bother me, and if people are going to carry guns, they should definitely practice.
But I often wonder what my neighbors think. Some people have strong reactions to guns.
When I was a kid, my father had just won another shotgun. (He had incredible luck in the gun-club raffles.) That evening, his best friend from his childhood was coming by with his wife, and Dad wanted to show Howard the gun, so he put it behind the couch. Unloaded, in a box, etc.
Half-way through the evening, Dad pulled the box out from behind the couch to show Howard the gun. Julie, Howard’s wife, almost had a fit. She couldn’t believe that she had been sitting “so close to a gun.”
I was very surprised by this. Howard and Julie were both very intelligent people, and I would sit in and listen to their conversations with my parents.
An unloaded shotgun is about as dangerous as an aluminum baseball bat, and … we were all friends. Nobody was at any risk at all. But Julie seemed to have an emotional reaction to the very idea of a gun somewhere close to her.
That stuck with me (obviously), and I factor it into my expectations of how people will react to gun-related stories.
Even rational, intelligent people can have some strange hang-ups.
(BTW, names have been changed.)