Thank you for sharing the stories about your younger years and guns -they range from horrific with the “what ifs,” to interesting in what you learned from your father about guns and gun safety.
I agree with all that you have written and am in despair. I weep every time there is another senseless shooting, and that’s a lot of tears. I cannot fathom sending one’s child to school and have them never return home because they are murdered at school, consider the people who go to a grocery store, or a concert, or a parade and never go home again.
The list is endless and all we need and want is common sense gun reform. We should all be horrified and ashamed that this continues and continues and continues.
And as you say, “the NRA loons” refuse to do anything. I don’t understand. I’ll never understand.
Thank you for this. The shooting in GA is personal. My granddaughter has a friend who attends this school. She's so very fortunate that she had a Dr appt in the morning and wasn't at school when the shooting occurred. The very fact that we allow this to continue is beyond insane.
I am so glad she is safe. I don’t know how our children are able to process any of this. It is a huge burden on them. That this goes on is beyond cruel.
I especially like your third-from-last graf. The Founding Fathers, bless their souls, had no concept of automatic rifles or where their words about a "well-armed militia" would lead. It's time to inject some rationality into this situation. Way past time.
I hunted deer, squirrel. rabbit and duck with my father and older brother. The only different thing was my Dad told us never point a firearm at anything you don’t intend to kill. Kill made it a bit more immediate.
By the way, I came within four feet of being killed by the "Tower Sniper" at The University of Texas on 8-1-1966. A gentleman standing that distance to my right took a fatal round. These horrible situations ring very true to me and each time I read about one, it devastates me, even 58 years later.
Hear, hear!!! My husband taught both kids to respect guns from the time they were old enough to hold them. He taught them pretty much the same rules your father taught you, except that "you don't point the gun at anything you don't expect to kill." Our grand-niece was a student at Oxford High when that shooting took place - Georgia was far too chillingly familiar. I fear, however, the only way to change the laws will be to vote OUT all the GOP gun-humpers. Only when sanity is the majority will we finally be able to protect our children adequately again.
One of the worst days of my life was the day there was a shooter at my daughter’s school. She’s a high school teacher and didn’t have her phone available. It was hours before we heard from her and I was terrified.
One student dead, 3 injured. Could have been more but the shooter’s gun jammed.
She still has PTSD 5 years later. My heart aches with every one of these.
I just read all of your comments and thank you for each one. I live in a rural community where many people own shotguns and hunt; I have no problem with that. Everyone I know is responsible, careful, and goes through the lessons about gun safety same as Charlotte's father taught her. Deer meat is delicious and we would be even more overrun with ticks and tick-borne diseases without culling our deer herds. And the deer would starve. That said, neither I nor my husband hunt. Neither of us could point a gun at anything or kill an animal.
But I will admit that I wonder if a school shooting could/would ever happen here. My great-niece is in the third grade and I have three other young ones who will be school-age within a couple of years. All of our schools have shooter drills from kindergarten on. I can't imagine how anyone can tolerate this. I can't imagine how anyone can watch children being slaughtered and traumatized and have it not change our attitudes toward gun ownership. Every time it happens, it seems more craven.
Sadly, our governing bodies seem immune to common sense and regulation, or compromise for anything. Will it ever change? I just don't know and feel hopeless. There have even been children and teachers who have been through more than one shooting experience. What are we?
Blaming mental illness is just an easy excuse.
I guess that I blame the need for ridiculous amounts of money in our elections for some of the inaction by government. They all seem tainted by that. Real life isn't the way we were taught in civics class.
Thanks Charlotte - so much common sense. I was really grateful recently when my teenager was invited to a sleepover and the host’s dad proactively reached out to let me know he is a hunter and keeps rifles in their home. Kept exactly as you described - not loaded, located in a safe, and the kids do not know the code. He even invited me to take a look if I had concerns. I wish we could have more people like him in this country.
The need for common sense gun legislation is apparent to anyone who isn’t brainwashed by the second amendment. The restriction on suing gun manufacturers has to be lifted in order to prevent even more gun violence. If citizens could sue them for wrongful death, they would jump on board with trigger locks, gun safes, and licensing. Life in this country would become much safer.
When I was little, it was common for kids to have cap pistols and BB guns. We used them in outdoor play all the time. If you didn’t have either of those, you just pointed with your finger and said “bang”. In all three cases, including with your finger, every adult I knew - parents, teachers, your friend’s aunt or uncle - all said the same thing: “NEVER point even a toy gun - including your finger - directly at anybody. Always point it off to the side. Always treat them just as if they were real and loaded guns. Someday you could think a real gun was empty, and somebody could get hurt. Always treat any gun as if it is loaded, even a fake one.” If you forgot to point off to the side when pretending to shoot, other kids would immediately call you on it.
The only exception, of course, were water pistols.
It may sound naive now, but it was an effective way of instilling the process of learning to respect weapons: you may think it’s empty, but it could still be loaded. Always check. When my older brother began taking me to target practice in my teens, the thing I remember most was that, upon firing, I would hear an immediate, “Get your safety back on right now. Check, make sure it’s on.” Even though I was going to take another shot.
After I grew up, I was never around guns or owned one, but a healthy respect for the inherent danger in them had been drummed in.
Years later, I was doing a show and there was a report of a production of “Oliver” in L.A. where the Bill Sykes was killed by a “blank” fired onstage when the other actor shot directly at him. Our director became really angry and said he was pretty sure how it had happened: they’d put a little extra powder in the blank (I didn’t know blanks even contained any gunpowder) to get a louder bang when it was was fired, and miscalculated the amount. And had not trained the actor who fired the blank to point off to the side - so it killed the Bill Sykes. He said you should never point directly ever, nor was there ever a need to - proper staging easily makes it look as if you had.
The warnings of all the adults from when I was a kid suddenly made a huge amount of sense. (It used to be called “common”).
Games involving guns or other weapons fell out of favor because it was thought the games themselves taught kids to be violent and aggressive. Maybe so. But, in my childhood, they served not only as a way to learn respect for (fear of) the danger inherent in guns and weapons. You had to look at the other kids, and know where they were, in order to point the other way. The real object of “pointing and shooting to the side” was about learning to respect the life and safety of another person by not pointing any gun directly at them in the first place, even in play.
I don’t know if that ship has sailed away forever. At present, a general lack of respect for people you don’t know - which is often openly encouraged - and a do-nothing (when it’s not pandering) government seems to make such reasoning - a common regard for the lives of other people - impossible. “Regard” in the sense of our simply looking at each other. I can only hope for better.
Thank you for sharing the stories about your younger years and guns -they range from horrific with the “what ifs,” to interesting in what you learned from your father about guns and gun safety.
I agree with all that you have written and am in despair. I weep every time there is another senseless shooting, and that’s a lot of tears. I cannot fathom sending one’s child to school and have them never return home because they are murdered at school, consider the people who go to a grocery store, or a concert, or a parade and never go home again.
The list is endless and all we need and want is common sense gun reform. We should all be horrified and ashamed that this continues and continues and continues.
And as you say, “the NRA loons” refuse to do anything. I don’t understand. I’ll never understand.
Thank you for this. The shooting in GA is personal. My granddaughter has a friend who attends this school. She's so very fortunate that she had a Dr appt in the morning and wasn't at school when the shooting occurred. The very fact that we allow this to continue is beyond insane.
I am so glad she is safe. I don’t know how our children are able to process any of this. It is a huge burden on them. That this goes on is beyond cruel.
I especially like your third-from-last graf. The Founding Fathers, bless their souls, had no concept of automatic rifles or where their words about a "well-armed militia" would lead. It's time to inject some rationality into this situation. Way past time.
In fact the expression is “well regulated militia”.
I hunted deer, squirrel. rabbit and duck with my father and older brother. The only different thing was my Dad told us never point a firearm at anything you don’t intend to kill. Kill made it a bit more immediate.
By the way, I came within four feet of being killed by the "Tower Sniper" at The University of Texas on 8-1-1966. A gentleman standing that distance to my right took a fatal round. These horrible situations ring very true to me and each time I read about one, it devastates me, even 58 years later.
Hear, hear!!! My husband taught both kids to respect guns from the time they were old enough to hold them. He taught them pretty much the same rules your father taught you, except that "you don't point the gun at anything you don't expect to kill." Our grand-niece was a student at Oxford High when that shooting took place - Georgia was far too chillingly familiar. I fear, however, the only way to change the laws will be to vote OUT all the GOP gun-humpers. Only when sanity is the majority will we finally be able to protect our children adequately again.
Perfect. Amen.
Agree 100 percent.
One of the worst days of my life was the day there was a shooter at my daughter’s school. She’s a high school teacher and didn’t have her phone available. It was hours before we heard from her and I was terrified.
One student dead, 3 injured. Could have been more but the shooter’s gun jammed.
She still has PTSD 5 years later. My heart aches with every one of these.
I just read all of your comments and thank you for each one. I live in a rural community where many people own shotguns and hunt; I have no problem with that. Everyone I know is responsible, careful, and goes through the lessons about gun safety same as Charlotte's father taught her. Deer meat is delicious and we would be even more overrun with ticks and tick-borne diseases without culling our deer herds. And the deer would starve. That said, neither I nor my husband hunt. Neither of us could point a gun at anything or kill an animal.
But I will admit that I wonder if a school shooting could/would ever happen here. My great-niece is in the third grade and I have three other young ones who will be school-age within a couple of years. All of our schools have shooter drills from kindergarten on. I can't imagine how anyone can tolerate this. I can't imagine how anyone can watch children being slaughtered and traumatized and have it not change our attitudes toward gun ownership. Every time it happens, it seems more craven.
Sadly, our governing bodies seem immune to common sense and regulation, or compromise for anything. Will it ever change? I just don't know and feel hopeless. There have even been children and teachers who have been through more than one shooting experience. What are we?
Blaming mental illness is just an easy excuse.
I guess that I blame the need for ridiculous amounts of money in our elections for some of the inaction by government. They all seem tainted by that. Real life isn't the way we were taught in civics class.
Chef’s kiss Charlotte. I agree 100%.
Thanks Charlotte - so much common sense. I was really grateful recently when my teenager was invited to a sleepover and the host’s dad proactively reached out to let me know he is a hunter and keeps rifles in their home. Kept exactly as you described - not loaded, located in a safe, and the kids do not know the code. He even invited me to take a look if I had concerns. I wish we could have more people like him in this country.
The need for common sense gun legislation is apparent to anyone who isn’t brainwashed by the second amendment. The restriction on suing gun manufacturers has to be lifted in order to prevent even more gun violence. If citizens could sue them for wrongful death, they would jump on board with trigger locks, gun safes, and licensing. Life in this country would become much safer.
Thank you for stating what should be the obvious.
Thank you for every single word of this, Charlotte.
AMEN!!!
When I was little, it was common for kids to have cap pistols and BB guns. We used them in outdoor play all the time. If you didn’t have either of those, you just pointed with your finger and said “bang”. In all three cases, including with your finger, every adult I knew - parents, teachers, your friend’s aunt or uncle - all said the same thing: “NEVER point even a toy gun - including your finger - directly at anybody. Always point it off to the side. Always treat them just as if they were real and loaded guns. Someday you could think a real gun was empty, and somebody could get hurt. Always treat any gun as if it is loaded, even a fake one.” If you forgot to point off to the side when pretending to shoot, other kids would immediately call you on it.
The only exception, of course, were water pistols.
It may sound naive now, but it was an effective way of instilling the process of learning to respect weapons: you may think it’s empty, but it could still be loaded. Always check. When my older brother began taking me to target practice in my teens, the thing I remember most was that, upon firing, I would hear an immediate, “Get your safety back on right now. Check, make sure it’s on.” Even though I was going to take another shot.
After I grew up, I was never around guns or owned one, but a healthy respect for the inherent danger in them had been drummed in.
Years later, I was doing a show and there was a report of a production of “Oliver” in L.A. where the Bill Sykes was killed by a “blank” fired onstage when the other actor shot directly at him. Our director became really angry and said he was pretty sure how it had happened: they’d put a little extra powder in the blank (I didn’t know blanks even contained any gunpowder) to get a louder bang when it was was fired, and miscalculated the amount. And had not trained the actor who fired the blank to point off to the side - so it killed the Bill Sykes. He said you should never point directly ever, nor was there ever a need to - proper staging easily makes it look as if you had.
The warnings of all the adults from when I was a kid suddenly made a huge amount of sense. (It used to be called “common”).
Games involving guns or other weapons fell out of favor because it was thought the games themselves taught kids to be violent and aggressive. Maybe so. But, in my childhood, they served not only as a way to learn respect for (fear of) the danger inherent in guns and weapons. You had to look at the other kids, and know where they were, in order to point the other way. The real object of “pointing and shooting to the side” was about learning to respect the life and safety of another person by not pointing any gun directly at them in the first place, even in play.
I don’t know if that ship has sailed away forever. At present, a general lack of respect for people you don’t know - which is often openly encouraged - and a do-nothing (when it’s not pandering) government seems to make such reasoning - a common regard for the lives of other people - impossible. “Regard” in the sense of our simply looking at each other. I can only hope for better.