Why guns? Why the (relatively) sudden interest?
This question has been asked of me, and sometimes I ask it to myself.
I was born in Kansas City, Missouri and grew up in a suburb on the Kansas side. I had school friends who hunted and whose parents owned firearms, but my parents grew up in Queens, NY and were largely not exposed to guns growing up. For much of my life I viewed hunting as a "redneck" activity and, I'm ashamed to admit, somewhat looked down on those who did it. My parents, my mother especially, were horrified at the idea of my being in a friend's house where guns were present - that I am an only child only compounded her worry. Other than that, guns just didn't come up in conversation, and I didn't think about them much. I really didn't even have that many friends whose parents had guns, that I know of. Perhaps they hid them well, but I never saw them or heard about them when playing with my closest friends.
In the seventh grade a friend's father took my friend and I shooting at the local indoor range. This was my first time handling a weapon and I remember it well. I shot a .22, a .40, and a .45, all handguns, a mix of semi-automatics and revolvers. It was a brilliant time and I proudly displayed my targets and some spent brass in my room for a good while afterwards. But again, after this, the magic faded and I didn't really think about guns beyond recalling the fun time at the range. The concept of actually owning a firearm was pretty foreign to me.
In 10th grade I worked for a time at a local big box sporting goods store as a cashier. I recall once or twice someone paying for a gun at my register, but the process of a "gun deal" seemed so complex and esoteric that I still didn't think of it as a common thing. I was becoming more familiar with guns, in a sense, through video games. The Nintendo 64's Goldeneye 007 prominently featured realistic (for the time) depictions of firearms, with the names slightly changed, and I remember eagerly learning about the real-world analogues for James Bond's arsenal. As the technology got better and the games got more realistic, I continued to gravitate toward games that prominently featured real-life firearms, but they remained the stuff of games.
I went to college and later law school in Massachusetts, not the friendliest state for guns as I eventually found out. I eagerly embraced liberal causes while in college and, while I did not take part in any protests or anything of the sort, I recall thinking that gun control was not a bad thing, that lay citizens had no use for powerful rifles (beyond - ugh - hunting), and that allowing civilians to carry a concealed firearm something from which no good could come. I recall a conversation with friends shortly after the Virginia Tech shooting in April, 2007. One friend thought that if VTech students had been allowed to carry, the situation would have been resolved faster and with less loss of life. Another friend and I, however, believed that your average CCW holder is more likely to injure or kill an innocent party, create a crossfire, or simply be useless in a firefight.
While in law school I regularly visited my fiancee's (girlfriend, at the time) family in Pennsylvania. Her younger brother, toward the end of his college career, purchased a Sig Mosquito .22 pistol. I had a pretty good time racking the slide and playing with it, and we shot it in the backyard a few times. We also, on several occasions, visited the Sunset Hill range, a range largely intended for city folk (it's only an hour and a half away from New York City) that, with plenty of supervision, allows firearm newbies to play with an immense variety of vintage and modern arms. It was always a great time, but it never occurred to me that I would enjoy firearm ownership, and I never even looked into it until the end of law school.
This question has been asked of me, and sometimes I ask it to myself.
I was born in Kansas City, Missouri and grew up in a suburb on the Kansas side. I had school friends who hunted and whose parents owned firearms, but my parents grew up in Queens, NY and were largely not exposed to guns growing up. For much of my life I viewed hunting as a "redneck" activity and, I'm ashamed to admit, somewhat looked down on those who did it. My parents, my mother especially, were horrified at the idea of my being in a friend's house where guns were present - that I am an only child only compounded her worry. Other than that, guns just didn't come up in conversation, and I didn't think about them much. I really didn't even have that many friends whose parents had guns, that I know of. Perhaps they hid them well, but I never saw them or heard about them when playing with my closest friends.
In the seventh grade a friend's father took my friend and I shooting at the local indoor range. This was my first time handling a weapon and I remember it well. I shot a .22, a .40, and a .45, all handguns, a mix of semi-automatics and revolvers. It was a brilliant time and I proudly displayed my targets and some spent brass in my room for a good while afterwards. But again, after this, the magic faded and I didn't really think about guns beyond recalling the fun time at the range. The concept of actually owning a firearm was pretty foreign to me.
In 10th grade I worked for a time at a local big box sporting goods store as a cashier. I recall once or twice someone paying for a gun at my register, but the process of a "gun deal" seemed so complex and esoteric that I still didn't think of it as a common thing. I was becoming more familiar with guns, in a sense, through video games. The Nintendo 64's Goldeneye 007 prominently featured realistic (for the time) depictions of firearms, with the names slightly changed, and I remember eagerly learning about the real-world analogues for James Bond's arsenal. As the technology got better and the games got more realistic, I continued to gravitate toward games that prominently featured real-life firearms, but they remained the stuff of games.
I went to college and later law school in Massachusetts, not the friendliest state for guns as I eventually found out. I eagerly embraced liberal causes while in college and, while I did not take part in any protests or anything of the sort, I recall thinking that gun control was not a bad thing, that lay citizens had no use for powerful rifles (beyond - ugh - hunting), and that allowing civilians to carry a concealed firearm something from which no good could come. I recall a conversation with friends shortly after the Virginia Tech shooting in April, 2007. One friend thought that if VTech students had been allowed to carry, the situation would have been resolved faster and with less loss of life. Another friend and I, however, believed that your average CCW holder is more likely to injure or kill an innocent party, create a crossfire, or simply be useless in a firefight.
While in law school I regularly visited my fiancee's (girlfriend, at the time) family in Pennsylvania. Her younger brother, toward the end of his college career, purchased a Sig Mosquito .22 pistol. I had a pretty good time racking the slide and playing with it, and we shot it in the backyard a few times. We also, on several occasions, visited the Sunset Hill range, a range largely intended for city folk (it's only an hour and a half away from New York City) that, with plenty of supervision, allows firearm newbies to play with an immense variety of vintage and modern arms. It was always a great time, but it never occurred to me that I would enjoy firearm ownership, and I never even looked into it until the end of law school.
Maybe it was graduation into a tough legal economy with a lot of loans, or maybe it was just getting older. Whatever it was, my thoughts and political positions began to turn more conservative. This included handgun ownership, and upon researching Massachusetts' and particularly Boston's onerous firearm laws, a feeling grew inside of me. This is a tough feeling to describe - a mix of frustration, anger, and hopelessness perhaps approximates it. Why, in the city that was the flash point for America's revolution, could I not obtain a gun without a complex dance of licensing, taking a class that I would certainly need to rent a car to get to, and paying untold sums of money, simply to obtain something that the Constitution says I am entitled to?
It seems silly but the visits to Pennsylvania and home to Kansas City became more painful. When I would return to Boston, my heart would sink. I hated East Boston, where I lived. I spent probably too much time regretting my decision to attend law school where I did, and not just because of the loans and the crummy job market, but because at times it felt like I had imprisoned myself in a place that I really, really didn't want to be. Somewhat irrationally, I will admit, I envisioned what I would possibly be able to do in the event of some kind of societal collapse. No police, no running water, no food - what chance would my fiancee, my hypothetical kids, and I stand, disarmed? I thought about all of those "rednecks" back home who would be armed and at least somewhat skilled in the event of a dangerous situation and I began to think that my choice of lifestyle - to be "car-free," to live in a state that was about as strong in social welfare as you can get in the USA, to eschew my roots in pursuit of the young professional urbanite life - was wrong.
So I took the Kansas bar. I, despite finding some work in Massachusetts, positioned myself and my job search to focus on Kansas. At the end of April, 2012 I accepted a position as corporate counsel with an IT company in Prairie Village, and that's where I'm working now. I've spent a lot of my spare time (and some work time) over the last 6 months reading about firearms - about laws, policy, history, and the weapons themselves. Guns interest me - on a mechanical level, on a policy and political level, and on a "let's go to the range and put some holes in paper" level. This blog is about all of this, and more.
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