Did you know what the letter 'L' and children's blocks that are shaped with a 90 degree angle have in common? If turned the right (or wrong) way, they both look like guns. Yep, guns. The Captain and I were practicing cutting and were having quite the fun time cutting out shapes and letters the other day when he realized (again) that if you turn an 'L' the other way and hold it in your fist, it looks like a gun. Darn it!
I'm from Iowa. I was raised, at least to some extent, around guns. Grandpa hunted. Aunt Kris owns a few guns. They both, for very different reasons, went shooting in the woods. One for hunting, the other for ummm, target practice, yeah that's it. Oh, and there was never a gun in my mother's house at anytime during my childhood. I did, however, courtesy of Aunt Kris, have toy guns. I loved my toy guns but eventually I grew out of them. I always liked guns on a theoretical level. Guns were cool. Guns were pretty. If I wanted to see one I could request a look at Aunt Kris's collection, read one of her gun magazines or go to a gun shop. They have those in Des Moines, IA. I had hoped at one point or another to join a shooting range and practice shooting and keep one there, in a locker, at the range. Not at my house. Too scary, too dangerous for children and clumbsy adults.
My husband is from the Southside of Chicago. But he was a Boy Scout. He learned the proper use of guns but only at camp. No guns at home. If I can stereotype for a minute here, as far as I know, guns on the Southside of Chicago are rarely for hunting dinner or game. They are protection or unfortunately, a different kind of hunting. Guns are not a good thing, in my opinion, on the south side of Chicago. It seems that the wrong people have the guns.
For our honeymoon, we went to Orlando, FL. I never realized it before but if it weren't for Mickey Mouse and multi-million dollar subdivisions, Orlando would pretty much be a country town. So, it's really no surprise that there were a lot of gun ranges. We know that because they were advertised on several big billboards around town. I suggested to Lew that we go to one. He was thrilled and made it his mission to call them all and find the cheapest rates. And he found the cheapest one, it was right by the prison. Still not sure how to think about that. We had fun that night shooting cheap ammunition at our paper targets.
We now live in the South Suburbs of Chicago. And I have a huge insecurity about guns and raising my black son in Chicago. Here, black boys with guns get shot down in the street or they shoot other black boys. I would like to get my boy in Boy Scouts so he can learn survival tactics, gun safety, honor, perseverance, organization, teamwork, etc. I want him to know how to build things, swim, row, build a fire, save a life, pitch a tent and whatever the heck else Boy Scouts learn. I'd love for him to follow in his father and uncle's footsteps and rise to the level of Order of the Eagle. I really look forward to being a den mother. I will look fly in that uniform and I really want to learn all that stuff too.
I do not, on the other other hand, look forward to explaining to him that the children down the street may not understand gun safety, they may not have been taught much about guns at all. The children down the street and the adults in uniform may not recognize that he is a well-prepared, brave, honest and honorable boy when they see him walking down the street.
I want him to love God and respect human life. Especially his own. I don't want him to ever get near a gun, touch a gun or even look at a gun if he isn't at Boy Scout camp. Too much TV, too many 'cool' looking guys on TV holding their guns sideways and looking hard, too many news stories about the little boy who accidentally shot his friend, too many stories about big boys who shot each other on purpose, too many stories about officers who shot a boy down in the street because they thought he had a gun...
But right now he's only 3.5 years old so today we talked about being polite and how its not polite to play pow, pow because real pow, pow hurts people. No guns, not even for pretend and no pointing the letter 'L' or the 90 degree angled block at anyone, ever. There are many lessons to come and I hope we do a good job of teaching them and I hope we can join a scout troop soon.
