Gun Etiquette

If the father didn't let the kids handle the gun, and observed good gun safety rules while handling it himself -- setting a good example -- then I'd say no big deal.

idk man it depends on the targets, if there was substantial, actionable evidence suggesting they were terrorists then i guess it's fine?, but if it's just hearsay or some kind of ethnic profiling i think it could be setting a bad example

I think that is 100% regional context dependent. In Chicago "gun culture" is totally different than gun culture in, to use examples from places I've lived, NC or southern Delaware, where a bb gun is No Big Deal. Here, though, I could definitely see a lot parents having a fit about ANY exposure to guns. People just don't own guns in Chicago the same way they do in other places.

I told him to wait while I thought about how I felt about guns

― good webinar (ha ha I'm having a fantasy), Thursday, December 1, 2011 11:17 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Permalink

lol

a bb gun? i'd say nbd. if said father was safe about it, sure. since it sounds like neither kid shot or even touched the gun, yeah ok.

the only quibble i guess is what kind of bb gun? there are spring-loaded ones that are very close to being toys (but not), and others that are pump or even CO2 charged shooting shaped pellets that can be a lot more dangerous. not to introduce more worry to your mynd.

I guess I was thinking about it from an ideological perspective rather than a safety one (although that would be my first concern). Lots of parents don't want their kids around guns (BB, toy) at all, so I would clear BB gun activity w/ parents because of that. But again - totally regional.

yes i have heard of these parents who do not allow toys with anything weapon-y at all. don't know what to say about that other than i am glad my parents were not like that.

lmao http://goo.gl/C92Fx

Thanks for the input guys. We aren't anti-weapon, but we are pro-safety. I'm not all busted up about it, but I still feel like I would have been totally cool with it if the dad had just called over and been like, "By the way, this is what's up..."

My wife is freaking out a little bit because before the kids interrupted him, the dad was using the bb gun to shoot squirrels for dinner. I think that's great and also somewhat hilarious; Lisa thinks it's terrible. We are two different types of vegetarian, I think.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/12/travel/gun-carryon-atlanta-airport/index.html

um

"I was grazed by a pellet fragment on the left side of my face," Phillips wrote. "However, there were no visible injuries; the pellet safely entered my brain without cosmetic damage."

yes i have heard of these parents who do not allow toys with anything weapon-y at all. don't know what to say about that other than i am glad my parents were not like that.

I was not allowed to have toy guns. But when I was in second or third grade, my dad taught me how to shoot an actual rifle. Also he used to stand on our back porch and shoot squirrels for dinner.

See, I think that's the ideal, correct attitude to teach your kids about guns. By the time I came into my son's life, he had already amassed a little arsenal of toys, so trying to start over again toy gun-less wasn't really in the cards.

how suburban was your home back when your dad used to shoot squirrels from the porch? My personal perceptions of how suburban/rural our neighborhood is factor into why I think it's sort of hilarious. : )

maybe you should start a thread about your perceptions of your neighborhood

ahhhhh, that came out all wrong. my point being that my town feels pretty suburban to me now. And I'm not at all bothered by the hunting of squirrels for meat. I think it's probably at least reasonable meat and I'd love to try it. But we all live on pretty small plots of land in our neighborhood, such that the discharging of a weapon in your backyard seems weird to me, is all.

entirely not meaning to stir up shit in the way that iatee implies, and if so. I'm sorry.

cool thread, toys shaped like weapons are the best but irl guns should be banned forever, even so, if a guy wants to chill with his guns out nbd it's just hat you have a substantially higher chance of dying in that house than in most houses

maybe you should start a thread about your perceptions of your neighborhood

― iatee, Tuesday, 13 December 2011 04:56 (7 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

we should do this!, i have such a ridiculous ad-hom view of my neighbourhood (/town), i feel like the way you feel about a place exemplifies the kind of difficulty of separating your empirical experiences w/the fact that you still can't generalise about a place because you know like 0.001% of it & its inhabitants, and are usually judging it on the basis of very personal experiences

i.... don't think you can really kill a squirrel with a BB gun? sort of have to think he was using a .22

squirrels are fucking hard to shoot, btw, props to gun dad

although negative props for maiming squirrels with an underpowered firearm

how suburban was your home back when your dad used to shoot squirrels from the porch? My personal perceptions of how suburban/rural our neighborhood is factor into why I think it's sort of hilarious. : )

We lived in a housing development with tree-named lanes and a pool and a community center but plopped in the middle of rural swampland in southern Delaware (I had a loooong bus ride to school and it was a 15-20 minute drive to the grocery store). So not suburbs, since there was no urban area, but not really rural, either, since if my father aimed low, he would have taken out a neighbor's back window/cat/child. So yes, it was actually very hilarious (in hindsight. At the time it was awful because I hated squirrel and the whole endeavor drove my mom crazy).

xxp: Naw, you can kill small animals (maybe up to a squirrel?) with a bb gun. I think I would have heard a .22; this was right down the street.

xp: Okay, so that sounds like a similar dynamic as I've got here (just south of Annapolis, MD).

although negative props for maiming squirrels with an underpowered firearm

― his venerable escutcheon, Tuesday, 13 December 2011 13:22 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

great sentence

xp probably very similar, especially given the proximity and shared swampiness!

http://dontevenreply.com/view.php?post=84

^^^^ best concealed weapons

it's p disturbing seeing that because when i saw the one about the cats - http://dontevenreply.com/view.php?post=95 - i was hoping that the pics had just been sourced from some astute google image searches. but like i guess he actually has a bunch of guns around. and cages.

The cage is a humane animal trap - v common.

ah okay. still though. the covering it in red sauce &c, & the having a bunch of guns. idk. maybe i should just be saluting the effort.

you should be saluting the stars and bars itt imo

My elementary school didn't care that I brought my pellet rifle to school for a 4th grade Thanksgiving play, circa 1990, along with one of my grandfather's pipes - kind of mind-boggling now, since either would probably get a kid in serious shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfWzgzby_hM