The Frisky:
Sure, it’s a stretch to connect children who play with water guns or even play with video games to the seriously mentally disturbed people who go shoot up classrooms and buses and hair salons. I can’t help but wonder, though, if we’ve become a little more desensitized to those real life shootings because we like how fun playing with guns can be. It’s fun if you’re a grown man with his buddies, sitting in a tree, patiently lying in wait to shoot a deer. It’s fun if you’re a kid running through a backyard shooting water at your aunt.
But maybe it shouldn’t be.
Let’s deal with this as a serious objection to guns, because for too many people it is. First of all, hunting is a well respected and serious sport, and an activity that has kept many a family fed for many years. Furthermore, the deer population of Missouri, for example, is higher now than in colonial America because of modern game management practices, and culling the population from hunting is part of that.
As for the shooting sports, see Jerry Miculek shoot a 40-round magazine and tell me he isn’t enjoying himself. This is a man who spends much of his life at the range and participates in (and wins) competitive shooting competitions.
Next, the population of feral hogs is increasing and even lethal removal isn’t enough to control the damage to the land. Shooting them with weapons is environmentally friendly.
Moving to war (which seems to occupy much of the author’s attention), war is certainly a horrible thing, but that doesn’t mean that having to fight them is evil. On the contrary, there are good wars, and if your world view cannot see the good in defense of your country, then you should revisit your world view. You have deeper problems than with guns.
From wars fought against aggressors to prevention of tyranny, you should consider the lives saved by the availability of firearms. Finally, if you are unwilling to look upon guns this way, you had better hope that your children can safely operate them for when that rapist or home invader violates your space.
Your children are doing just fine playing with water guns. As for me, I have said before that my own grandson, just two years old, gets wide-eyed and excited when Papa brings his guns out. But he knows that he can only touch them when Papa is with him. I look forward to shooting his first 10/22 with him, and I won’t be suffering from any silly moral dilemmas on that day.
