Guns!?

At the end of summer, before school began, my 19-year-old took her two siblings camping.  It was to be my three kids and a few of their older sister’s friends.  I have known these friends for many years and they are good kids.  The day of the trip my daughter approached me to ask if my son may shoot guns with them.

I cannot express in words my initial reaction, other than to say, it was a complete mental freak out!  “They’re bringing their guns!?”

“Yeah, and they wanted to know beforehand, like, if I could get your permission to let Cole shoot them.”

“Where are they shooting them?” Images of a group of boys wandering into the woods and just taking pot shots filled my head.

“There’s a place there for shooting.”

“Like a gun range?”

She squinted. “Not exactly, but it has a big backdrop of dirt to shoot into and there’re marked areas and targets and stuff.”

I don’t know much about guns; I’ve never owned one and never shot one.  I’m not anti-gun, but since I have no frame of reference, this sounded iffy to me. 

I couldn’t believe that just the night before I was worried about the guys bringing swords so they could play fruit ninja. This was something they had done before, and it sounded wildly dangerous to me.  I hadn’t considered guns.

“The guys are outside packing up the truck if you want to talk to them.”

I started by letting my son know he may not get to go on this trip. I felt awful, he’d been looking forward to this for weeks. But I wanted to prepare him just in case. Then, I went outside.

“I want to know why none of you thought to tell me about the guns, weeks ago when you were planning this!” I said, approaching the young men with both barrels loaded and ready. “Instead you put me in a position to snatch away the one thing Cole’s been looking forward to for weeks!”

At least the boys had enough sense to look guilty. My daughter’s boyfriend stepped up to take on the mommy beast. “We didn’t want to go against your wishes; that’s why we asked if he can shoot and didn’t just let him do it.”

I had to close my eyes and take a breath.  Was he missing the point on purpose?  “I’m not concerned about that.  Heck, if he’s shooting, he’s on the safe side of the gun.”

I explained my concerns.  The possibility they would be taking pot shots from the camp fire. That my son would stumble back to camp in the dark after a midnight trip to the latrine and stumble into a tent.  “What if one of y’all come up shooting, thinking it’s a bear?”

The boys looked genuinely horrified.

“No, the guns won’t be in the tents.  They stay in the truck, separate from the ammo, in a lock box until we go shooting.”

Another boy stepped up. “Having a gun is serious, we’re very aware of that, and we’re very responsible gun owners.”

I took that with a grain of salt.  This was my baby we were talking about.  There was about ten minutes of back and forth, and my daughter repeatedly assured me that they are very responsible with the guns. My husband weighed in and swayed me. I let my kids go camping.  We had agreed that the young men would pretend like they were keeping a secret from my boy.  The reason for that was that I’d laid down the law: “Cole does not see the guns, does not touch the guns and stays in camp when you go shooting.” 

I was nervous, I worried, but they returned and had no extra holes in them.  My son was disappointed he didn’t get to shoot a gun, but I was happy they obeyed the rules. 

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At least, I hope they did!