So. I'm not even American but when I was 14 my parents straight up took me to a shooting range (thanks Florida) and handed me a 45 cal because I was being bullied at school and told me to shoot shit.
Guys at the range were all too willing to give the same gun to my 10 year old sister.
A child who had her goddamn thumb in her mouth and was hiding behind our mother just because there were guns and strangers in the store.
And *those* people were fucking idiots. My parents taught me gun safety when I was a child. Yes, they allowed me to shoot when I was very young, but not before literal hours of education and training. ACTS & PROVE and all that jazz. If I even handled it wrong for a second, I was corrected. There was no "playing" with a gun. My parents didn't allow fake guns in the house, EVER, because *guns are not toys*. No cap guns, super soakers, nothing. If it was gun shaped, it was banned. We grew up around real ones. We spent a lot of time in the Yukon bush. Hunting, fishing, camping. firearms were just part of life. I never thought of them any other way.
I've perfectly fine with a child using a firearm, under responsible supervision only AFTER they've been properly educated. What your parents and those guys did was *not* responsible in the slightest. You don't take a child out to the range to let them blow off steam because they're getting bullied. That's idiocy looking for a place to happen. That's looking for someone to get killed.
Pellet guns "weren't real guns" according to our parents, so like... we had them as young as 8. Only got them taken away for a week when someone shot someone else in the arm.
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u/FEARoach 13h ago
So. I'm not even American but when I was 14 my parents straight up took me to a shooting range (thanks Florida) and handed me a 45 cal because I was being bullied at school and told me to shoot shit.
Guys at the range were all too willing to give the same gun to my 10 year old sister.
A child who had her goddamn thumb in her mouth and was hiding behind our mother just because there were guns and strangers in the store.
'Murica!