“The older I get, the more, I find myself faced with the task of trying to understand the terrible things that people do with guns.”
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DiaryDad tries to find balance with his son’s love of guns.
I am in a bit of a pickle, my youngest loves guns, and I don’t. It is not quite as easy as all that, nothing ever is. It is not that I don’t like guns so much as I am very concerned about what people do with them.
As I kid I remember going to Cub Scout camps and Boy Scout camps. I remember with great fondness getting to shoot at the BB gun range, and later at the rifle range. I remember earning my Rifle and Shotgun Shooting merit badge. These things were big deals to me and were part of a very happy childhood.
…how worried should I be that, if I let him explore and/or encourage his love of guns, I will have to worry about him doing something very wrong with a gun?
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So here I sit as a father with a kid that loves anything that has to do with a gun. He wants the toys, the video games, and more chances to shoot at something. The truth is I get it. At his age my passions were similar, I wanted a BB gun like many of my friends had. I played the original first-person shooter games. I enjoyed them. They were fun, and here I am a dad who has no desire to own a gun, and with deep concerns about how guns affect our society.
He is a very good, very caring kid. He is the first one to notice if someone is excluded and try to include them. He will set aside what he wants to do to make sure kids younger than him get the attention they need and have a good time. He wants to help those less fortunate than he is. He is a very good kid. Why is it that this one passion of his makes me so uncomfortable? As his father, I want to engage his passions, but how worried should I be that, if I let him explore and/or encourage his love of guns, I will have to worry about him doing something very wrong with a gun?
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The older I get, the more, I find myself faced with task of trying to understand the terrible things that people do with guns. All too often I am confronted with another story of how someone has been the victim of a violent and senseless gun crime. Instead of intelligent discussion about the problem over and over I see two camps quickly form. There those that respond in fear that they will lose their rights to own guns as a result of the most recent incident, and another that responds in fear that if they don’t affect some change that someone they love could be the next victim.
I am concerned that the right to bear arms trumps the right to be alive.
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Real debate and real conversation about this problem never seems to happen though. Both sides seem to get their 15 minutes of talking points out until we are no longer entertained and something else grabs our attention. Nothing changes and then when it happens again, we all seem surprised by it and then we repeat the cycle.
I am concerned. I am concerned that so much of the focus of our video game/entertainment content we enjoy is focused on violent conflict resolution. I am concerned that when I turn on the news it seems that the world would rather threaten or actually fight wars rather than sit down and talk out differences. I am concerned that when it comes to conflict resolution that de-escalation is less emphasized than balance of lethal force. I am concerned that the answer to how to find peace and safety is by increasing the amount of deadly force available to everyone. I am concerned that the right to bear arms trumps the right to be alive.
There is a very rational part of me that understands that since the beginning of time it is sex and violence that sells. In high school and college we all knew the result of the latest football game, we never knew how the debate team fared or how well our school performed in the model UN. Homer knew it when he told his epic poems, Shakespeare knew it as he wrote his plays. Video game makers, television networks, and the entertainment industry know what sells and they are in the business of making money and they are very good at it. I just happen to be in the business of raising good men, which means I need to be aware of what my kids are passionate about and what they are engaged in.
If you started reading this hoping that I could tell you what the best way to deal with this issue is, I have to disappoint you. I don’t know the answers. I enjoy violent movies and TV, I play violent video games; but I am cautious about how I raise my kids how much of that kind of entertainment they get exposed to before I think they are ready for it. I am just a man in the thick of it struggling in a violent word to raise boys who value peace. I don’t have the answers, all I can tell you this is a difficult problem, and there is no easy solution.
The bottom line for me is that I want the best for my children. I want to encourage their passions. I want them to grow up happy. I want them to have a childhood they look back on fondly. I want to help them develop the skills and talents they will need to be successful in life. I desperately want to help them avoid making a mistake that threatens their future or the future of someone else’s child.
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Eric Bennion can be found writing about fatherhood at diarydad.com and Tweeting @diarydad.
Photo Credit: the author.
I saw your article and I simply had to comment on it. Now I am what some people will call a gun nut. But my love of weaponry began when I was 9 more or less. This love involves any weapon be it blunt, sharp, or fast. But I always was more fascinated with fast aka guns. My parent were not very in to guns or weapons but I was. As a kid I would sit for hours simply reading on weapons and laws. Technical explanations on how to fight armed and unarmed. I would study how guns work and… Read more »
Thanks for your comment, I believe that telling them no just compounds the problem. There is a balance somewhere that we need to strike.
Eric, great topic. I think Mike is on the right track saying that guns won’t “make a kid violent” but probably not in the way he intends. Humans are a very violent species. You don’t have to look very far into the history books to see this. I venture a guess that most fathers would, under certain circumstances, kill to protect their children if necessary. I venture to guess that everyone, at some point in their life has had a fit of rage deep enough that they have felt the desire to kill someone (and depending on traffic, it might… Read more »
Excellent observations Daniel, I think you are approaching the root of the problem in a great way. Our capacity to do violence may indeed be rooted in our DNA, but so much of what has made us the most dominant species on the planet is our ability to harness ourselves and overcome our natural instincts. I don’t think guns, per se, are the problem they intensify and become an efficient tool that exacerbates our ability to do violence. So the conversation can’t ignore guns but it needs to focus on the bigger issues of our violent nature and how to… Read more »
Rock music isn’t going to make your kid suicidal and playing guns isn’t going to make a kid violent. Rather, imagination and play are important ways kids experiment with emotion and action in a harmless manner.
-M
I appreciate the comment Mike. The point of this piece is to start a conversation. I’m glad you are willing to join it. Black and white is rarely a luxury we are afforded, it is the shades of gray that make things complex. Guns may not make someone violent, but as a parent I don’t think that I can just turn a blind eye to that interest, rather it means I must be more vigilant and engaged to see that the passion remains healthy and safe. Thanks again!
I appreciate your point of view Richard, I have found the martial arts a very worthwhile pursuit personally. Thank you for the comment.
I don’t know how old your son is. There are kids who dream of having, say, a lion as a pet when they go to school. They’ll be powerful and nobody will bother them. I’d be interested in whether your son feels danger around. Instead of guns, maybe he could get into martial arts. I did, because I like competing and there was a war coming on. Thought it would be useful. It’s been a long time and I couldn’t possibly say if I’d feel less secure if my interest were tennis. Or how much less secure. Thing about martial… Read more »
Thanks for your comment Richard, 500 years ago I don’t know what I would have done. I would hope that as I am today I would be concerned about my children’s fascination with anything that has the capacity to be destructive and violent at the expense of diplomatic and peaceful solutions. I can’t speak to what I would do in such a hypothetical situation as so many other factors would contribute how I would feel obligated to respond. Today, however, gun violence concerns me a great deal, and as my son has shown such keen fascination in them I feel… Read more »
What is there to “understand”? Do you perhaps mean something else? Would you, five hundred years ago, been struggling to figure out what terrible things people do with spears?
Do you mean “why?”?. Same old reasons, newer methods.
If your son is not of age, you’d better get over this and see he learns to handle them responsibly.
It may be easier to deal with reconciling “the terrible things people do” and eliminate “with guns.” Is shooting another person worse then stabbing them? There are bad people that do bad things, does it matter what they use?
The difference is though is that I have never done bad things with my gun but in the event I need it to
protect my family, it will be a “good” thing that it’s used for.
I appreciate the comment Tom, you point out one of the many reasons why this is such a complicated issue. The intent of my piece is not to minimize the other terrible things that people do, but to focus on the struggle I feel inside at my son’s love for guns, and how I approach that for myself. Unfortunately as of yet I feel like I end at a place with more questions and without a clear cut answer.
Perhaps if you read the following, it would make you feel a little better …
http://mwkworks.com/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html
Thanks Tom it is a very interesting read. I still feel that this is a bigger and more complex issue than just classifying people as wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs. We need to have a conversation that is going to be difficult for all sides and look at some bigger problems in society that are contributing factors. My intent with this piece is to be a catalyst for starting what I feel is a very important conversation to have. Thanks for being part of it!
Eric, I wish I could understand where you want to go with this? When you look at this issue on its surface, it appears relatively simple. How deep do you want to go with it? May I ask how old your son is? It’s one thing when you have a small guy that likes to play cops and robbers or is he fascinated with the gun as an instrument that can be used for a variety of good and bad things? IMO, and I’m not saying this to tick you off but it appears you’re focused on an object rather… Read more »
I think the problem is to often we get mired in the object or proposing policies. Trying to demonize or undemonize guns. But the reasons that make things like violence of any sort worse are much bigger and much more difficult to deal with.. I don’t know where this conversation needs to head, but I think it needs to starts. Part of it needs to be discussing guns and how we interact with them but there is a lot more we need to talk about besides gun rights, gun laws, etc… that is like trying to put a bandage on… Read more »