Postby martha » 30 Jul 2017, 22:42
I'm an American and I don't own a gun and don't want one. Neither does my spouse, gun ownership is not for us. I do not believe either of us would ever change our position on this issue. Aside from finding guns morally repugnant, I am certain that I do not have the proper temperament to be a gun owner and I know my kid way too well to bring guns into her life. I won't ever have a gun in my home.
But I've fired guns, I've even taken a marksmanship class in college.
I live in Montana, which has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the United States and is an open carry state. It's rural here and this is the Rockies. We live off a meadow adjacent to national park land and we get black and grizzly bears in our yard from time to time when neighbors are not careful about trash or leave food out overnight in a BBQ area. There have been wolves and mountain lions sighted and photographed in the meadow and rocky knoll near our home. So I can sort of understand why some people here would consider owning a rifle or shotgun.
But hunting rifles and even shotguns are to me are a different matter than handguns and assault weapons. I mean yes, Montana is rural. There's wildlife. But that's why they make bear spray and have fish and wildlife agents. The fact that anyone around me is probably armed, along with just having to survive hunting season, has been a source of stress for me as a person, particularly as a parent.
What alarms me lately though is that Post-Trump there's a lot of hate spewing around me towards liberals, people of color, non-christians and the non-heteronormative folks and I've been sort of shocked that lately many of friends have started either jokingly or seriously saying they are considering getting handguns. Their reasoning is that they feel frightened of conservative gun owners, neo nazis and kooks and the rise of fascism and don't want to be unprotected if the new brownshirts come a-knocking. I just hope they are joking and not serious, because for an otherwise rational person to buy a gun after a lifetime of not owning one because of the nationalistic zeal and polarization here seems unspeakably sad and fundamentally wrong to me.
--m.
