Sure as shootin'

A friend of mine at work the other day expressed surprise upon hearing that I don’t own a shotgun, being a good Georgia boy and all.

I didn’t find it that strange. I don’t own a gun of any kind, and it’s probably for the best, considering how agitated I get in traffic, or going through the drive-through at a fast-food restaurant. Every time some lethargic teen-ager gets my order wrong, I’m half-a-heartbeat away from being Michael Douglas in “Falling Down.”

I had a BB gun when I was a boy, of course, but I found it only provided limited fun. There were so many restrictions – don’t shoot it in the house, don’t shoot the dog, don’t shoot at passing cars – that it severely limited the options.

Not only did my mother warn me I would put somebody’s eye out, she claimed to know somebody it happened to. She also claimed to know of a boy whose face was disfigured because he kept making a popping noise by putting his finger in his mouth and pulling it our really quick (all boys know how to do this.) And she claimed to know of somebody who dove in a nest of water moccasins in a pond and died.

I’m not saying she didn’t always tell the truth. I’m just saying that the veracity of some of her claims is in question. Perhaps she regarded them more as parables than actual true stories.

My next-door neighbor Mike and I would shoot empty cans, though the BB gun wasn’t even strong enough to put a hole in them. One day we were shooting at the cans, stacking them in a pyramid next to the ditch and trying to knock them down. Mike was bending over in the ditch, re-arranging the cans, and I thought it would be funny to shoot between his legs and hit one of the cans, giving him a good scare.

Well, William Tell I was not, and my aim was a bit off, and the BB grazed his calf. He went off howling to his house, crying like he’d been shot – I guess he HAD been shot, but I still thought he was being a bit of a sissy about the whole thing. I went in the house and awaited my punishment, sure that I was going to get in some serious trouble, but I suppose my parents also thought he was being a sissy, because all they made me do was go and apologize.

We moved to a more rural setting when I was 15, and I got a .22 rifle, but the issues were pretty much the same. I just got no kick out of shooting. I was actually a pretty decent shot – we had to shoot rifles in my ROTC class at school, and my scores weren’t bad. Those were the good old days, when you could fire a weapon in school and not have somebody make a big deal about it.

When I got out on my own, I just never thought to have a gun. Then I had kids, and I had read too many horror stories about children getting hold of guns, so I wasn’t tempted.

I don’t really have anything against guns. I’m kind of ambivalent when it comes to gun control, though I do agree with the assault weapons ban. Are there really going to be occasions in your life when you need an AK-47? If so, you probably need to move to a better neighborhood.

So here’s hoping I never actually need a gun. If I do, somebody’s going to get hurt. Just ask my old next-door neighbor.