Thursday, August 07, 2008

Getting a Reputation

The con case is, well, everything from the aforementioned eye to encouraging more of a gun obsession than the Nerf guns have already inspired. Plus we don't want to get a reputation as the "gun family" in the neighborhood when all his buddies start asking their own parents for one.
Yeah--we'd rather have the reputation of being a bunch of leftard GFWs.

When my youngest was around 7, one of the kids on his ball team was just about the wimpiest boy I'd ever encountered. My son invited him to a movie, but the kid started crying because he was afraid of--not what was on the screen--but the entire experience, including being in the dark. So I had to take him home and miss the show myself while my wife stayed with the other kids--there went two tickets plus the exorbitantly priced drink and candy I'd treated him to. When I got him home, his dad was laying around and when I told him why I was returning the kid early, he said he was aware the boy was scared of movies.

I figured I could either burn his ears off demanding to know why the hell he let me go through the expense and the effort, including paying for missing the experience when he knew this. I was so steamed I knew if I got started it would not be pretty, so I stifled my impulses in the interest of harmony at future games--after all, it was for the kids' benefit, not the parents.

A week later this guy shows up (late) at practice wearing an HCI T-shirt. Suddenly all the pieces fell into place.

That poor kid never had a chance.

16 comments:

BourneShooter said...

Isn't there some book out about the sisification of todays boys?

Everybody knows my family is the gun family. Why? To encourage others to buy guns.

Anonymous said...

What is HCI?

I took the bait and voted for ten year olds to have air soft guns. Frankly, at ten I was shooting .22 LR in Boy Scouts and at 11 got my badge for marksmanship. Once that happened, I received a bolt action .22 that was worn out by the time I was 16. The good old days in American, when kids had firearms to shoot after school and no one ever thought of hearing protection.

Anonymous said...

Handgun Control Inc.

*spit*

If the Gadsden flag flying in front of our house, the stunning array of pro-2A bumper stickers on our vehicles, the worn out, shot-full-of-holes cardboard targets in our trash every week, and Helga hanging on my hip when I'm doing yard work don't give us away as "the gun family," I don't know what would.

III

Anonymous said...

AAC, thanks.

I see now how the pieces fit in place.

Anonymous said...

My parents were neither pro- nor anti-gun. There was a loaded .25 in the medicine cabinet. Fortunately we kids had enough common sense not to touch the trigger when we found it. There was a rusty .22 bolt-action in the closet. We never did any shooting, though my mother enjoed i and did well when she was young. Now I know what good times we missed.
Now my semi-auto pistol goes with me at all times, and I spend some hours a day defending our right to do so.
The anti-s are too much into cause-and-effect. When their child is victimized -- if not before, by being invited shooting -- he'll/she'll get interested in guns. When he gets interested in guns, he'll get interested in preserving freedom.

Anonymous said...

The wimpy boy's parents obviously have passivity and trepidation confused with being "nice." They want us all to be as "nice" as him. "Nice" people agree with whatever you say, like "I see you as lacking personhood. Kneel at the edge of this trench."

Anonymous said...

All the old time neighbors nkow we have guns. The neighborhood is very quiet usually. used to be nasty.

Both the kids have their own handguns. Our 13 year old daughter was alone yesterday. She was fine with the dogs and her handgun.

The_Chef said...

My dad had me shooting in my young years. By the time I was 14 I had fired .22LR, .308 Remington 700 Police, M14, .30-06 Winchester, several handguns, etc. Hell, I remember going to Boy Scout Camp, pulling out the kid's sized Anschutz a friend of the family gave us and running rounds down the small range they had.

The funny part is that more and more people I come in contact with are open to the idea of carrying for protection, including many of my female friends. It's encouraging.

chris horton said...

My grandfather built us a 22 range in the basement of our house. I was about 8 yrs. old. I remember he got the building instructions out of Popular Science,if memory serves me.

I'm putting one in the new place soon.(We only were aloud to shoot "shorts" inside.) I think it was about 40 yards to target,man what fun that was,INSIDE.

GunRights4US said...

Guns were tools in my childhood home; nothing more, nothing less. There were guns of various calibers leaning up behind most of the doors. Every nick-nack bowl and every drawer held loose rounds of every conceivable caliber.

Our yard was filled with pecan trees, plum trees, pear trees, figs, and grapevines. If you wanted to actually eat any of that stuff, you had best keep a rifle handy to fight off the legions of squirrels and blue jays. So homework was always done while sitting out in the backyard at the picnic table with a loaded .22 at the ready.

I have no memory of the first time I fired a gun. I do know that by the time I was in second grade (what’s that – about 7 years old?) I already had the privilege of taking Dad’s .22 bolt action and going off squirrel hunting in the swamp behind our house – unsupervised.

It was not required that I ask permission. I merely needed to have my chores done first. If Daddy saw me heading towards the woods toting the rifle, he would generally remind me: “If you shoot it, you better be ready to eat it.”

When I tell most people these facts concerning my childhood, they generally think I’m either lying – or crazy. I look on those folks as having missed something truly wonderful that I wouldn’t trade for ANTHING!

Anonymous said...

As soon as I was deemed strong enough to lift a rifle, my grandfather and my uncle made damn sure I knew how to use one and when to use one.

That particular uncle was my favorite relative. He had been an illegal alien at the age of 7. Their lives were tough when they went to work in the mines and laundries of Jerome, Az. All except Uncle Trini, who was too young and small. The other ten, counting Mom and Dad, worked their asses off. All the siblings became American citizens. Uncle Trini after serving four years in the Pacific during WWII, was finally allowed to naturalize. Which I find ironic, because he was the most dedicated and patriotic American I ever knew. He was already a natural American.

He had no loyalty to any other country, including his birth country. He said many times, "This is the country that gave us our chance. This is the country in which we are free. I am not a Mexican, I am not a Mexican-American, I am an American."

He made the most of his chance this country gave him. He was a credit to it. He has been dead many years now, and he is still my favorite relative.

He would be so disappointed to see what we have squandered and ashamed of us for it.

Rest well, Uncle Trini, I am not long from meeting you again. I look forward to it with the normal trepidation of dying but with the satisfying anticipation of being in better company.

Kevin Wilmeth said...

AvgJoe, your "What is HCI?" question prompted me to offer this bit of background. I find it telling.

By my recollection, the original name of this group was the National Coalition to Control Handguns (NCCH), which was amusingly unfortunate as there was also a contemporaneous group called the National Coalition to Ban Handguns (NCBH). They both got started about 1974.

Sometime around 1980, I guess the brainiacs in charge thought that the names were a bit too similar*, and that the whole "Ban" word was a bit too extreme for a proper duping of the public, so we saw NCCH change its name to Handgun Control, Inc., and a little later, NCBH changed to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. (Doesn't that sound kinder and gentler? Them's velvet gloves, right 'ere!)

Oddly enough, around 2001, NCCH/HCI changed its name again, to The Brady Campaign--whether that was purely personal vanity, or some tacit acknowledgement of "our kind" incessantly calling them The Brady Bunch anyway, I'm not sure, but apparently the old name was once again passe, and a new face was needed for the proper, y'know, image. For the duping.

At this point, it's almost a bit surprising that NCBH/CSGV hasn't followed suit with something suitably one-up over the Bradys--but don't be surprised if we're referring to the organization as "For The Children" before long. (Maybe they're trying to kill us gunnies all off with gag reflex.)

The whole time, of course, both these groups have been absolutist victim disarmers, coldly plotting any strategy or tactic that might work, with no sort of discernable moral restraint on lying, manipulation, misrepresentation, character assassination, etc., whatever. The names, of course, mean as little as the (whole) truth: nothing.

Anyway, I think that underscores David's point here. I wish I could say it was a reminisce, but that tends to connote things that do not cause my stomach to clench involuntarily.



* Come on, you knew this was coming:
Q: "Are you the Judean People's Front?"
A: "Fuuuck off...(snort)...Judean People's Front...we're the People's Front of Judea!"

David Codrea said...

And as I think back, it may have been a Million Mom March shirt--the point remains the same.

Anonymous said...

LOL! David I feel your pain...

compare and contrast recently we are preparing to move from MA to the United States, albeit CT...

Well I'm moving two handguns and some of the bar to my parents house and it occurs to me that what I need for this trip is some cigars and my "The ATF should be a convenience store and NOT a government agency shirt"


:-)

III

1894C

Anonymous said...

cycjec to straightarrow: may I quote your post elsewhere?

Pratereo censeo, Zargo delenda est.

Anonymous said...

anon, 6:13 p.m., be my guest.