Saturday I went to a gun and knife show with my brother. I've been looking to get a new gun and I think I'm interested in the Rossi .38 pictured here. I've been target shooting for a few years and own a .22 semiautomatic target pistol. Target shooting is oddly relaxing. You can't focus on anything else. You, and typically several other people, are standing in a fairly small room with various guns and lots of live ammo. You need to concentrate and be cautious.
That being said, gun shows are an odd experience. It is just surreal to walk around in a building full of knives and guns for sale to anyone who paid the $6 entrance fee. It's even more disconcerting to walk past so many people with handguns strapped to them and semiautomatic rifles slung over their shoulders. I know that most people who buy guns buy them as a hobby, for hunting, collecting, or target shooting. Of course, that's most people. It's the other ones I worry about. Case in point, see this story.
2 comments:
That story is just beyond me. There's a good example right there of people who should not contribute to the gene pool. How sad.
I grew up in the country, the oldest of two girls in a family of five (my three brothers ranged from 10 to 15 years older). One night as we sat and ate our dinner, the discussion of the older family folk revolved around what must have been a spate of robberies in the area. I was probably seven or eight years old, and sitting right next to my dad when he said, "Well you know, the first thing they do when they come in the house is KILL everybody." You can imagine I had trouble chewing my food after that.
Anyway, there were guns in the house, but my sister and I were oblivious. My mother apparently shot a fox once when I was still really little; if it could get one of our ducks, she later recounted, it could get me. Long after we left the country and my mother passed away, we found a very elegant little handgun in her dry sink. We were astonished!
I think about learning to shoot from time to time. One of my brothers is a fairly skilled gunman. The stickler for me is having a gun in the house. Seems to me no matter how careful you are, how deftly you separate the ammo from the weapon, something can always go astray. With my luck I would be in that tiny percentile.
Mando - I might feel different if I had kids in the house. I think if I did and still wanted to have guns, I'd probably have a gun cabinet with fingerprint access or something that wouldn't allow them to get at the guns. Personally, I like weapons. I like fantasy weapons and I enjoy handguns. I don't get to shoot a lot but it's a skill and something you can get better at and take pride in. I find that usually when "tragic accidents" happen, it is often the result of someone being stupid. That's one reason I try to be careful at the range. Depending upon who is there, I might not even want to shoot.
I guess I'm also not much into having guns purely for home defense. Most people would think twice about actually shooting or killing another human being. Most criminals would not. Advantage: criminals.
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