Thanks to my father's history with handguns––and, by extension, mine––firearms are a sore spot for me. I'd prefer that they didn't exist, but since that's impossible I have to coexist with them. Pretending they didn't exist was fairly easy around Boulder, where there are a lot of "anti-gun" folks (and quite a few fanatics). 

But living in South Dakota, where very few people come across as "pro-gun" because they have almost no opponents, has been a lot harder to stick my head in the sand about guns. Here, as in much of the rest of America, shooting stuff is just part of being a guy––an almost casual by-product and demonstration of one's masculinity. Boys (and some girls, too) get their first gun at eight or ten year old and bond with dad by hunting. My kids aren't going to do that, but heck––maybe they'll go hunting with somebody else's dad.

I don't want guns around because they up the ante on your life. I believe it was my ex-cop uncle George (the one I've always liked) who told me early on that when you point a gun at someone, you're giving them an invitation to shoot them in self-defense. And although I don't want to get into the infinitely alterable statistics on gun violence and the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" debate, I hope that we can simply agree on this: 

a crazy person with a gun is vastly more likely to shoot you than a crazy person without one. 

So the boys and I won't be bonding over taking down our first elk. That avenue to becoming a man is closed to them. It's not the guns that bother me as much as the things people do (or can do) with them. I love guns as aesthetic objects (as I've written)–– especially old ones, which I would collect if I had the room and the space.

It's a quandary, I have no way to resolve. I'd fill my house with guns if I had the money (though I'd keep the ammunition out). Having boys who are interested in guns hasn't made my ambivalence any easier, because I don't want to cut them off from shooting and hunting, since:

1. So many of the kids they're growing up with will be doing it without even thinking about it, and
   
2. I don't really have an objection to guns, as long as the owners aren't criminal and/or insane.  
   

I make it crystal-clear to the kids that my feelings about guns are messed up and convoluted, and I let them know precisely why: your grandfather tried to kill another man with a gun. But I don't try to prevent them from playing imaginative games with guns, and I won't prevent them from taking 4H shooting sports classes if they want to. I don't really encourage them, but I don't forbid it either. 

So ultimately, they'll probably end up in a limbo just like mine about. Which is not an accomplishment. Which is not progress through the generations. Which is not helping them become more manly, or making them any less. Any discussion involving guns included the phrase

You know daddy's all screwed up about guns,

 right???

But does it help? Does it merely create piles of confusion or top of other, more ancient and rotted confusion?