Mostly now I'm vegetarian.
I've never let anyone I'd care to shoot live in my head.
I used to be pretty good at shooting. Maybe I still am but I don't care.
When I was a kid my Wild West grandmothers and great grandmothers were the property owners. Their husbands were dreamers. I'm probably a dreamer too. My wife's family is similarly Wild West matriarchal.
I remember with stark clarity when one of my grandfathers was developing a gun fetish. He'd been in Army Air Corp officer in World War Two for Christ's sake until his mother-in-law told him she'd poison his dinner if he brought any guns into the family city house which she owned, the house which he and my grandma lived in, the house my dad grew up in.
When his mother-in-law passed my grandfather's foolish interest in guns was rekindled briefly until his wife and my mom brought the hammer down. He was a brilliant engineer who'd landed men on the moon, but he was a bloody fool with guns.
I think one of my most terrifying moments as a child was watching my grandfather ride a bicycle... grandpa is going to die! It's the same reason the Army never trusted him to fly an airplane, not more than once or twice. But he had some mad skills in dealing with high technologies and other eccentric people similar to himself, people essential to the war effort.
My dad, and my wife's dad both served in the military, and both refused arms. My dad was a Radar O'Reilly medical clerk, my father-in-law was a Navy medic assigned to the Marines. It was just dumb luck neither ended up in Korea. My father-in-law was used as a guinea pig in nuclear weapons testing. He's one of the few people I've met who have witnessed an atomic bomb explosion up close and been marched around nuclear wastelands that were still on fire.
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