By Greg LaRose
The Daily Record Newswire
Guns were a prevalent part of my formative years. From neighborhood skeet shoots to bagging wild game for the dinner table, my childhood was typical for South Louisiana.
It’s that background that shapes my feelings as gun control once again becomes a hot topic for discussion in America. The tragedy in Arizona has me torn as to which side of the argument I stand, and, coincidentally, I’ll be visiting Tucson next week with the incident still fresh.
But before any of you Second Amendment zealots or fervent gun-ban advocates move to strike me down, step back. Last time I checked, I was entitled to an opinion. Deal with it.
Where I grew up, gun cabinets and rifle racks were household fixtures, much in the way you would find lamps or coffee tables in other homes. For as long as I can remember, the presence of firearms in the home was accompanied by regular lectures on staying clear of them without adult supervision. That lesson continued once I was old enough to target shoot a Benjamin pellet gun and well after I graduated to a .22-caliber rifle, then a 20-gauge shotgun and up to other weapons in the family arsenal.
We weren’t a homegrown militia, simply a family that shared an interest in hunting. As such, shotguns and rifles were considered heirlooms that were passed down through generations, and with them a primer on how they should be used safely and for wholesome purposes.
Once I reached age 20, my interest in hunting and guns waned. It wasn’t that I developed distaste for them; other pursuits just became more interesting to me. But since then, I’ve never looked back and regretted my hunting past, nor do I feel growing up around guns made me more prone to violence. To the contrary, I developed a healthy respect for them after seeing the damage they’re capable of inflicting.
Even through all that exposure, there were some aspects of gun ownership that never sat right with me. For one, I never could fathom why some family friends sought to obtain assault rifles or automatic weapons. They had no practical or ethical use in hunting, and they went against the precise nature of marksmanship.
Still, I chalked it up to the school of “to each his own” and never saw them or the people who owned them as a threat.
Until now.
Now I live in a city where it’s not uncommon for street criminals to be better armed than the police. Now I’m part of a society growing callous from reports of escalating violence involving firearms: Waco, Columbine, Virginia Tech and now Tucson.
It forces me to stop and think: At what point am I willing to hold on to my rights when the chance that others will exploit them comes back to cause irreparable harm?
I sincerely cherish memories of a childhood that included firearms, as abnormal and hokey as that might sound to many of my fellow city-dwellers. But I don’t look back at that time as a right guaranteed to me. It seems more of a privilege earned by following the rules and understanding the responsibility inherent in gun ownership.
Perhaps that is what’s missing from today’s discussion. If we were to treat our rights as privileges, perhaps we would still have never heard of Jared Loughner, and a Safeway in Tucson would be just another forgettable suburbia supermarket.
