When we hear of a school shooting, you can pretty much guarantee there will be a call from someone to make a new gun control law. As William S. Burroughs said, “After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.” Perhaps there have always been school shootings, but I don’t recall one when I was growing up. During deer season, the school parking lot would have several pick-ups in the parking lot with deer rifles hanging in the rear window. Nobody thought anything of it, and I suppose it didn’t cross anyone’s mind to bring the gun into the school, certainly not to shoot anyone. So, maybe the guns aren’t the problem.
I grew up around guns. As a police officer, my father carried one eight hours a day. So, we were accustomed to seeing guns, and although we respected them, we weren’t afraid of them. I believe the first gun I ever shot was my father’s .357 magnum revolver. We would occasionally get a new 55-gallon drum to burn trash in, and we would always shoot several holes in its bottom so it wouldn’t hold water. It was a handful for a kid, but I enjoyed it from the very first time.
We moved from toy guns to BB guns, and as I have written before, I moved up to a shotgun as I got older. I even did some hunting, but I was less interested in the hunting and more interested in an excuse to do some shooting.
In my adult years, I have purchased handguns and long guns. Cheryl would tell you I have enough, but guns are like chocolates. You can’t have too many. Our favorite place to go shooting was my grandfather Hagerty’s old farm. We started shooting into a tree in front of the house with the house as a backstop for stray rounds, but I guess we killed that tree and had to move to the backyard. There was a huge tree that we used, and I don’t know how many thousands of rounds were in that tree, but it was a lot. I’m surprised we weren’t pushing lead out the back of it. Even my sons got the chance to carry on the tradition of shooting there for a while.
After the farm was sold and regulations increased with the population, it became nearly impossible to shoot anywhere in Henry County legally outside a shooting range. If you heard gunshots, you had to suspect criminal activity. Since we’ve moved to Pike County, we’ve heard gunshots from both properties next to us. I don’t know precisely what Cheryl said, but she mentioned something about the gunshots, and I simply said it sounded like freedom to me. I suppose sometimes you have to leave home to find it again.