Guns UPDATED

I found myself getting all worked up over the issue of ownership* the other day but for the life of me I can't remember what
-and she avoids the obvious pun and says instead

- naah...triggered it off.
Sorry; it's a sickness.
I just remembered what is was anyway. The stereotype that nice women do not like and are not interested in firearms; that they think they are scary and loud and shooty. Most of all, unnecessary.

While I can by no means be described as a nice woman I am a relatively average one. Like everyone I know, I grew up around guns. They're a part of my culture. Although I think it's creepy now, I had toy guns when I was a kid. (Remember, though; that was back in 1964-65. Kids could buy candy cigarettes and bubblegum cigars and ride around in the family car standing up on the front seat dancing like a go-go girl to 'She Loves Me had Yeah Yeah Yeah'. At least I did.)

I live in an average neighborhood in the Northwest and it's fairly common knowledge that we own guns. Everydamnone owns guns. It's no big fucking deal. Everyone owned guns when I was a kid, too. Again; no big deal. The ownership of guns does not automatically cause one to wake up one morning and walk down the street picking off schoolchildren. What it meant back then (and does now, in the Northwest at least) was that you could go out and shoot your own meat if you got laid off work or went on strike. A lot of people did. A a lot of people had to. That kept our shit going one winter in the early 70's.

It also meant, as it does now, that if some shitheel kicked in your door and you're at home you had a chance of defending your family and your property.

That aspect of gun ownership brings the anti- gun fice trotting out of their porti-sans. "Oh, but what if they take it away from you and use it on you?" To which I say "I've never, never once heard of that happening to someone I've known, lived near or done business with. What I have heard of is, someone ends up with a dead shitheel in the middle of their front room and has to replace the carpet."
And that is a fact. Over the course of my life I've known, and known of, a lot of average people who fired a gun in order to protect themselves on their own property. And it worked.

If it isn't on anyones' horizon of reality, the reason is that the police don't want to encourage that kind of thing. They're here to keep the peace, remember; not create vigilante heroes that would attract 'gunslingers'. They make no bones about it. Another reason is that an average, socially-adjusted sane person isn't going to go around bragging about how they killed someone; taking a life is horrifying and sickening, even if it is a 'them or me and mine' situation.

Another comment that arises is "Oh, like you'd really be able to kill someone if it came down to it. You'd choke and then you'd really be in trouble."

I'm a wife and a mother. Try and come at my family. Try and fuck with what my husband's worked for.
It's like that.

This is an issue that I've had to deal with in real life. One thing I KNOW about myself is that I not only could, I would. And that I would freak out and end up with bad PTSD. I mean, everyone started out as a little kid. It's fucked up world.

Back when it was just me and my baby daughter I had to look that issue in the face. The facts were these: I was a single woman with a baby, I was poor and I had no backup. None. Don't even say 'the police'. Just DON'T. That's another post.

I was not living in the land of the Care Bears. I lived in the middle of Seattle. People used to sell drugs out of the windows of my building. Whores tricked in the stairwells. Guys used to screw in the alley under my kitchen window. Here's how I lived then (and this is po' folks all the way, too.) I had a baseball bat next to the door and a hunting knife jammed into the frame up above the chain latch. Someone knocked. You picked up the baseball bat. Keeping your head away from the edge of the door, you stood sideways, opened the door with your hip braced against it and the side of your foot used as a stop. If they gave it a kick you could stop it with your weight and the help of the chain. If they made a grab, you slammed the door on their arm, broke it with the bat and then 'pinned' them there until the police came. The knife part was my idea. If someone fucked with me they were going to know they messed with a bitch.

As soon as I had the money I purchased a 45. Then I went to the sheriffs office, registered my weapon and got a carry permit. I qualified for concealed carry (which is good) and I took that right quick. I was packed 24/7. Every single time I left the house for three solid years, too.

I underwent a full background check which I consented to gladly. The outcome of that check, my fingerprints and my photograph are now on file at the FBI. And goddammit, I AM PROUD of this. It is verifiable proof that I own and intend to use IN A SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE MANNER. I have nothing to hide. (Interestingly enough it makes you just that much more employable, too. )

The world is full of people who don't play nice...predators, the criminally insane, the sociopathic, the dangerously schizophrenic. Whether or not people want to believe it or know it, these folks live all around us, they're related to us, we work with them...it's a simple fact of life. Just because you think ahead to rational outcomes doesn't mean anyone around you does the same.

The fact that you have a vagina does not change this. Neither does it serve as a magical 'danger and not-niceness-averting' talisman of some sort.
Quite the opposite.
Still, if you're single and have no dependents, go ahead and be a pacifist.
But if you have children, shame on you. Fucking shame on you.

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* I put this out with the phrase 'gun control' here and that's a completely different kettle of fish. Whoops. I mean private ownership of guns, 'K?