The year is 1995. I am sitting at the bar in the Tin Angel with my, now husband, then boyfriend. We have come to hear Richie Havens. He is singing about Peace and Freedom and playing furiously as he does lighting the darkened room with a catalytic kinetic fever. The passion in his voice is plaintive and fits my mood as I sit nursing a beer. This is not a good date. I have just opened my eyes enough to finally realize that this guy, that I am beginning to feel serious about owns a gun, and well not just one, but two. We’re at a Ritchie Haven’s concert for God’s sake. But serendipitous absurdity is nothing new in my life, so here I am staring at my beer, feeling the weight of choices, my choices. He is not a cop yet in fact he won’t be one for another two years. We are in Art school. He is an Artist and so am I, at least that is what we are working toward. That is what we discuss, Art: changing the world with soul crunching, mind opening visionary experiences or not. We draw, we print, we carve, we paint, we dream, that is what we are about.

The bartender is aware, I can tell, that our conversation is not a happy one. I feel his closeness, dark and warm and somehow reassuringly objective, on the other side of the bar. I know my face is weighted and sullen. I am not good at hiding my spirit. I don’t like guns. I don’t believe in war, in violence in conflict. I don’t like men with guns and yet here I am sitting at this bar, on this night, with this man. He is uncomfortable. There is an invisible wall between us. He knows this is a deal breaker. He placates me by saying he will sell them. I believe him, I want to believe him. It is so easy to just reach through the bubble that separates us and merge.

He is not surprisingly the first man I have dated who owned guns. In fact, my first official boyfriend in college was a hunter. He showed me the variety of guns given to him by his grandfather and I didn’t really have any feeling about them a the time. He took me shooting too. He let me shoot a 12 gauge shot gun and a 22. The shotgun was heavy and kicked back a bit, but it felt good and I was a decent shot. The 22 was lighter and harder to aim. I was 19 at the time. After we shot at some cans we walked in the woods outside his parent’s property. He wanted to show me where he went hunting. As we were walking, a rush of pheasants flew out of some nearby bushes, “ shoot them!” I said. Like challenging targets I couldn’t wait to see the system in action. “ No, we can’t shoot them now silly.” he answered. “It isn’t pheasant season.”

My mother’s father was a hunter too. He hunted deer and had several heads displayed in the basement, where he also had a bar set up. This was my grandparent’s social room. It was the room where we often played and the room where my father asked my mother to marry him. As I recall his gun was displayed in the room as well.

My mother hated guns. She would not entertain the buying of guns for her sons and I don’t really recall too many play guns. My brothers found a way of course and one of them ended up with bb’s in the rear-end. Today one of my brothers is a hunter, who has raised his own pheasants to kill, and the one who was the graceful recipient of the bb was a soldier in the army for 10 years.

My discomfort with guns probably coincides with my becoming a feminist. At 19, I didn’t really think much about anything except the drama of my pre-marital excursions. When a girl from the suburbs of Long Island sheltered in a college campus wakes up politically to the violence of women’s lives around the world, weapons and war suddenly, become the symbols of narcotic savagery and male oppression. I saturated myself with the words of Andrea Dworkin, Margaret Atwood and Audrey Lourdes and painfully forced myself to read Women’s Lib. I wept into their pages, crippling myself with their sacrifice, hoping it would empower me. Outrage in the face of violence against women and children is always righteous and I believed I had armored myself well with this knowledge. I thought I was strong and fierce. A later boyfriend would describe me in his poetic manner as an unopened rose. Like the Little Prince’s rose, I had but a few thorns.

15 years later I am living with my family in a city that rates the highest in violent crime as charted in the Philadelphia Inquirer’ s Sunday December 13^th, 2009 edition. My husband, then boyfriend, has been a police officer for 14 years and I have lived with guns in my home for 15 years. So what is different? The kids. The kids change everything. For ten years I could just pretend they; the guns didn’t really exist in my home. I didn’t think about them unless we had guests and then of course they would need to be locked up as they always were anyway.

After the birth of my first son my husband and I had our second real gun conversation.

How many do you have? More than I wanted to know.

It would turn out that as the mother I suddenly wanted to be sure there were less and as a father he felt the need to have more. We both have a family to protect….our methods are often at odds. Do you recall when I wrote about the war between a feminist and a soldier? So how did I do? If I had really wanted a chance winning this war I would have won it 15 years ago.

We must teach gun safety I would say, not really knowing what that truly means. He agreed. Then I would hear him upstairs with his son. I know what they are doing. He is teaching his son about his guns. The blinders want to go up. Don’t look, whatever you do. If it is painful just look away. You trust him. You married him. You knew that night at the Tin Angel. You said, “yes” then. But my head is screaming…my sons,….my babies…..not yet. And this is only the beginning. I know because some day it won’t be a conversation about cleaning or handling an unloaded gun, it will be about shooting or owning a gun and I need to be ready, Now. I need more than fear and outrage to be relevant in this campaign.

And so I begin. What is my goal? To eradicate the use of all guns by my sons.

Won’t happen. Think broader.

I’m exhausted. Why am I having this battle? Why can’t I just be worrying about ..I don’t know my son’s athletic abilities.

Didn’t we just go over that?

Ok then, keep my sons safe.

Better. How do we do that? What are our strategies?

Well, in terms of parenting I always research. The internet, books and primary sources i.e. talking to other people. I also find ranting and glowering pretty effective. Meaningful glances and heavy sighs also can pack a punch when nothing else seems to work.

( sigh….) though they are not much good in this case.

40% of American Households with children have guns.

At least one third of those owners admit to having a loaded gun accessible to children.

1.69 million kids 18 and younger are living with loaded and unlocked household firearms.

What the statistics show for Pennsylvania is that most gun related deaths among children and youth occur through some kind of homicide, 99 deaths, specifically among the 15-19 year old youths. The second largest number, 28 deaths occurred by suicide in the same age group. There was only 1 accidental death in the 0-4 yr old group for the year and 3 in the 15-19yr old group.

The other gun safety program touted by many sites is the one funded by the NRA. It is called Eddie Eagle. The Eddie Eagle program is specifically geared toward educating children prek - 4^th grade on some basic principles: Stop! Don’t Touch, Leave the area, Tell an Adult. They also advocate talking to children about gun safety and the difference between toy guns and real guns. Finally, they present some basic gun safety rules ( That is for those learning how or already using guns): Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction, Always keep your finger off the trigger till you are ready to shoot, Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.

When I queried, When should I teach my son how to shoot? I only found two blogs; one really right wing and scary and one more reasonably second amendment, but the blogger really advocated teaching a 7 year old because he believed that they are developmentally ready to learn the skill of gunplay? …I would need more convincing. The NRA does have youth and junior shooting clubs, but they don’t say on the website how old a kid needs to be to start training. I found the lack of specific information disturbing. I imagine it is something they want to leave up to their members.

What I learned from this research is that gun safety education today is much like an abstinence campaign. Lock them up! Don’t touch! Walk away. It is possible that the gun safety campaign is more effective, but they are theoretically working the same principle. The “enemy/danger” is out there, know that it’s there and stay away. As an educator though, I don’t think this educates anything except fear. Naturally, I support these strategies as strong safety measures, but what if the child/teenager in this case because clearly they are the more at risk, is holding the gun? What if they know how to access the gun in spite of “safeguards” as many youths statistically reported they could? What then? The problem for me personally is…well I don’t believe that abstinence or fear are particularly good strategies and since my household is already armed, where do I go now?

I finally find some relief in talking to my neighbor. He gives me a flip book by Massad Ayoob titled, Gun Proof your Children and on the flip side, Handgun Primer. It is a slim book with 44 pages of vital information I need to read, but I let it sit on my table for a week. It isn’t just information; research. I need more psychological time. So I take my time.

What he also addresses is the education children today are receiving about guns. He does not offer the pat conversation of , “ well son that gun on tv is not real.” Instead he discusses how through the flood of media children learn that guns are powerful and empowering. For children and adolescents whose lives are directed by parents and adults the fantasy of power is very real and should be recognized. In answer to this for gun owners, he recommends dispelling the mystic and allowing your children supervised access to the firearm. He suggests having the child help with cleaning of the parts. I would not personally recommend this activity with a child younger than 4.

I would also add that while learning about the parts the parent has a great opportunity to discuss with their child the following: What is the gun? How does it work as a machine? Why do I choose to have it in my house? When is it appropriate to use? Ayoob suggest two basic gun handling rules: TREAT EVERY GUN AS IF IT IS LOADED and NEVER POINT IT AT ANYTHING YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO DESTROY. He also adds later, if you find a gun or are with someone who finds a gun, WALK don’t run to find a parent. The uneducated child is easily startled and unpredictable. I would add part of the NRA’s rule, NEVER PUT YOUR FINGER ON THE TRIGGER. All these questions and conversations, I believe help better educate children about guns. Does this require the parent/gun owner to have good thoughtful answers? Damn right.

Ayoob also recommends offering to take the child to the shooting range and to open that invitation to the child’s friends with parental permission. If status is the matter then just as we offer our children safe options to explore their own power this is a way to keep their interest in the open and validate it, safely. Shooting a gun does not have to involve a love of hunting or killing. There are clubs that teach firearms training and target shooting can be a very rewarding and fun activity. (Did I really just write that?) He does qualify this suggestion with an vehemenant, “ your child does not have to become a target shooter to be gun proof.” A solid education in the gun parts, how it works, and how to safely use and disarm one, Ayoob poses is as necessary as teaching children about power tools or knives in the home.

And finally, when is a child ready for learning how to shoot? When they are mature enough to responsibly take care of a pet or to have a key to the house. I agree with this answer because realistically if my child is trustworthy to be home alone he should be trusted to be home alone. And my fantasy is this that if and when my sons find themselves alone or in the company of peers with a gun: a. they take the situation seriously and rely on their education/training and b: they are able to know how to disarm and dismantle the gun and render it useless. I guess it really isn’t such a fantasy. It is just what I need.

Wow that was hard. I promise the next blog will be lighter.