***Editor’s note: This cross post from Grounded Parents is by J.G. Hovey. Click through the link at the bottom to read the full post and make comments.
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I was 16 or 17 when I pulled into the mall’s parking ramp one day for my work shift. I was fiddling around in the car and getting my things together when I noticed something really strange. Another car, driven erratically, was jerking into the spot next to me and parking. As I watched, all of the doors opened and a bunch of kids that looked to be around 11-13 years old piled out… including one out of the driver’s side door. I saw no sign of any adults, whatsoever, and everything indicated that the kids had driven there themselves. On some of the busiest, most dangerous roads in my area.
I didn’t investigate, and I didn’t say anything (I wish I had) but I think that was the first time I thought about kid safety in the context of myself having kids some day. I thought about it a lot that day and many times since then. How could that have been prevented? Were there any warning signs? Can you trust your kid again after something like that?
Fast forward about 8-10 years or so…
…after a long, halfhearted lifelong fight against my grandfather who refused to teach me anything about hunting (because I was a girl and he didn’t like kids), against my mother who insisted I would cry the first time I shot a rabbit (mouse-trapping evidence to the contrary)…
…after making slight inroads on being educated in the safe use of guns from others, including some rather sketchy characters who weren’t concerned about safety or law…
…and after I finally had purchased my first gun, a 20-gauge Remington 870 Express…
…I inherited one of my grandfather’s rifles and several handguns. Slowly, but surely, I became more confident and educated in their use. I started going out hunting, take my friends out target shooting, and even helped a friend buy her first gun.
Dealing with my family resistance to learning to use these guns and to hunt was a long hard journey and the first set of actions I took in my life that made me realize I might actually be a feminist. (Instead of my earlier stance dismissing feminism as an over-reactive fringe movement.)
Fast forward another couple years and I was pregnant. So, of course, up comes the gun safety issue. At first, it started innocently enough… I browsed the options for cabinets and locks and whatnot. I was (still am) disappointed that my guns can no longer be attractively displayed on an open rack. But it was much like the other items I put away or raise up, hide, give or throw away. Like other parents and other issues, I have a plan. A vision in my head… the crib goes here, the diaper changes will work like this, the bassinet will go here, the guns will get locked away…
And like everything else, everything went to shit practically the moment the baby came home….
