A 14-month-old child stumbles around a coffee table clinging to it as he focuses on the exciting objects on top; brightly colored blocks, soft squeaky toys, and a Smith and Wesson hand gun.
The toddler picks up and plays/chews on each item with little reaction from his dad, unless it is the gun. And then the dad’s reaction is swift and startling, dad slaps his hand and reprimands the child, “No!”
My family and I are at a shooting range on a cold September day on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. I had just asked our gun instructor and father of six how old his kids were when he started teaching them about guns, and he explained that this is how he did it. And, he started as soon as his baby could roll over.
My initial instinct was to be horrified, but I checked myself. I had to ponder this one.
At What Age Should You Teach Your Children About Guns?
The answer to this question can be very different if you happen to be a gun owner, and then, what kind of gun owner. Avid shooter and hunter, or someone who keeps one small gun locked away in a safe.
I had thought signing up my 13-year-old-son and 15-year-old daughter for a lesson at a shooting range was pushing it, but here we were being instructed by a father and his 12-year-old son, a boy who says he learned to shoot by age four.
I wasn’t raised around guns, and neither were my kids. All they know about guns is that guns are behind school shootings and lock down drills. In Boulder we lived just miles from Columbine High School. Recently, while driving around Denver, my son asked if we were near Columbine. When I asked him why he wanted to know, he responded, “I don’t know, I just can’t stop thinking about it.”
My son’s outward response to it all is fear. My daughter’s is fear, and anger. I have only supported her action when it comes to campaigning for more gun legislation so signing us up for this lesson was met with confusion and resistance from her. I get it. It wasn’t long ago that we participated in a march after 17 teens lost their lives in a high school shooting in Florida. Tatum’s homemade signs made #14 in this Denver newspaper’s list of “Most Inspiring Signs at the March for our Lives.”
But I feel my decision to have this family lesson at a shooting range wasn’t a “if you can’t beat them, join them” one, but a, “if you can’t beat them, learn as much as you can about them.” This feels especially important when you live in a community where the majority of the residents have guns in the home. Also, there is the bear attack nightmare I keep having. https://pokingthebear.org/4-tips-on-how-to…id-a-bear-attack/
I had been asking people I was starting to meet in town whether they “carried” when hiking, etc. Most did. Of course our gun instructor did. I asked him if he ever had to use a gun to protect himself in the wild. “Of course,” he answered, “I had to shoot a brown bear, a black bear, and a moose.” Once again, my initial instinct was to be horrified.
So far we have only had this one introductory course which quickly dissolved into a scene of chaos that has become our family’s signature. Given that we were handling firearms, we decided to cut the lesson short. I have a couple of important takeaways for a more successful lesson next time. If there is a next time.
1. A Good Shooting Range Rule; Avoid Distractions
Unfortunately, that’s hard to do when you’re married to a big one.
Can you say “ho-ser!” Mark’s hat sat perched on his head exactly as pictured…the entire four-hour lesson. It was simultaneously absurd and impressive.
Turns out it is harder to lecture your kids on the seriousness of guns when you look like one of the McKenzie Brothers from the 80’s movie, “Strange Brew.”
My Little “Billy Elliot”
Distraction two; as I opened box one out of our 12 boxes of ammunition it was hard not to notice Anders out of the corner of my eye who was busy dancing, as he does all the time, and often unaware. Anders has been popping and locking since he was in the womb. When he was eight we rented an airbnb in Paris for a week. Night one and we already had a downstairs neighbor pounding on our door. Despite four years of high school French, I had no idea what he was saying, and so the frustrated man tried to explain by flapping his hands, then pointing at the floor, and saying “ba ba ba.” I turned and looked around at our quiet apartment and so did he, momentarily confused. Then as if on cue, Anders appeared in the arched doorway moonwalking backwards across the hall from one end, stopping to do an a MJ spin and a couple of stomps, then moonwalked out the other end. The neighbor pointed excitedly, “C’est le garcon!” Finally, the French lessons paid off as I knew what he was saying, “it’s the boy!”
And really, of course it’s the boy. It always is.
The rest of the week was a something of a stressful vigil; always at the ready to quickly stop my son’s feet from breaking into dance on top of the wood floors in a building that was 100 years old. Since then we only rent ground floor apartments.
The Projectile Tooth
A third big distraction during our lesson was the fact that every time my daughter laughed or sneezed her fake tooth flew out of her mouth. Long story short, one of her canines never grew in. When she stops growing she will get a tooth implant. Until then, trying to keep a fake tooth in with various retainers has become a full time hobby. A few times we had to stop what we were doing and look for the tooth while trying to keep Anders from dancing on top of it.
Turns out spotting a $200 off-white fake tooth among light colored gravel isn’t as easy as it sounds.
There is a chance a projectile tooth, a breakdancing son, and a husband unintentionally dressed like an SNL character might just be distractions that are specific to my family. But this next one applies to everyone.
Check the Weather!
Had we checked the weather, we would have dressed more appropriately, or better yet rescheduled. The day of our lesson had finally arrived, but so had the first hint of winter. It was freezing, and when you can’t feel your toes due to the cold, it could turn into a situation where your don’t feel them ever again.
Distracted by the cold, I was about to re-holster my gun with my finger still on the trigger when my 12-year-old instructor stopped me. “That’s a good way to shoot yourself in the foot.”
Or worse.
“I don’t like how your holster is twisted like that,” Mark says looking over at us. “It’s aimed at your groin.”
I re-adjusted the holster, and considered myself lucky.
Any day I don’t accidentally shoot off my vagina is a good day, I say.
I looked it up and leaving your finger on the trigger when re-holstering is actually the number one cause of accidental discharge when handling a gun. My husband has seen the aftermath of such a mistake multiple times as he has spent most of his career as an orthopedic trauma surgeon working at level 1 trauma hospitals. Below is a link to an article devoted to this safety tip. Do not open this article on the subject unless you have a strong stomach.
2. The First Rule of Gun Safety? “Assume EVERY Gun is Loaded!”
At one point during the lesson Anders forgot this golden rule. Instead, he stops dancing, pulls his unloaded gun out, and aims it at his sister.
It was at this point that my husband’s head did a 360-exorcist spin, detached from its shoulders, and flew into Anders’s face.
“Never, ever, ever, ever, point a gun at Tatum!” the red-faced floating head screamed.
“But,” Anders sputters, “it’s not loaded!”
The red-faced floating head spins again and turns dark crimson, “EVERY gun is loaded! Always handle a gun as if it is loaded!!”
“Yeah Anders, you stupid,” a shivering Tatum manages to get out through her chattering teeth. I suspect if these happened to be her last words before freezing to death she’d be good with it.
Anders looks at our 12-year old instructor who gives a shrug as if to say, “that is the rule, but yeah, your gun isn’t loaded.”
The red-faced head eventually returns to its shoulders and looks at me.
“What Anders just did is exactly the reason why we wanted this lesson,” Mark tells me.
I nod.
“I’m not kidding,” Mark says.
My nod wasn’t kidding either. That was pretty bad.
After this incident and combined with the fact that all of our hands were shaking from the cold, Mark made the appropriate call to call off the lesson. If we have a second lesson will just do a dry one, and inside. “Dry” meaning no ammunition.
Clearly we aren’t ready to be gun owners, and I don’t necessarily want to be one. But if that ever changes, we happen to have a gun safe which was left in the basement of our new house. I think the house was actually built around it.
