The Second Amendment is not my defense

Why do you want to bare arms? Guns get a lot of ink in the news these days. The senseless carnage, the Second Amendment debate, plus the political identity are all well covered in the press. Not all gun stories make the 6:30 news, but one dominates our discussions at home. My old shotgun has been rusting in the attic for decades under a pile of debris. 

Get it out of here

“Get rid of the damn thing, it’s a menace!” my wife tells me. She’s not much of a Second Amendment person, and if you are not going to commit mayhem or even rob a bank, she questions having any guns in her house. 

Secretly you and I know wives are usually right in these domestic discussions because that’s the way it is. Still, the old Winchester remains. It serves no hunting need and we are not going to use it for shooting anything. Urban life in my hood is not violent; you could say it is peaceful to the point of tedium. Opportunities to defend my home from man or beast over the past 50 years have been zip. Some turkeys invaded the garden a few years back, along with the occasional bunnykins, but I resisted the free Thanksgiving meal temptation. Statistics show that if anyone is going to be injured by my house gun, it will most likely be me. Why can’t I acknowledge it’s a useless menace toss the rusty relic in the dumpster? 

But then there are the memories

I keep my gun because it is a repository of nostalgia! Back in the Vietnam Era, we were newly married and she, while cleaning up the attic, threw out my old motorcycle jacket. That jacket was everything to me. A symbol of carefree youth, trips roaring up and down the Oregon coast, and protection from the cold one night stuck in the Canadian Rockies. She had committed an unforgivable transgression that day: Unforgivable.

Today, tossing the tarnished old 12 gauge hold a similar symbolism. During the Korean War era, my dad was younger than I am today. He had no interest in shooting, hunting, or trudging through the wilderness swatting bugs. Nevertheless, he took me out one cold day to spend a quiet, quality hour of father-son bonding. At the time I didn’t think much about bonding, but there was the possibility that some lost crows might fly overhead. Shooting a crow back in those days was at the top of my wish list.

I don’t remember any bugs that day. but the memory of hiking through the forest shotgun in hand never left me. It marked a high point with my dad. He was not a huger, had a full schedule and some might say he was a cold fish but the day was a great success. Although no crows flew overhead, we shot nothing but this son’s admiration for his father soared to new heights.

So there it sits

This may be a poor reason to keep an old firearm in anyone’s house, but it will continue to sit in our attic until she and I unpack all that debris.

If you like this post, see this one