I own guns. Two of them. A 12-gauge shotgun and a .22 calibur rifle. I've been shooting since, well, for as long as I can remember. My dad taught me all about guns and gun safety and shooting at a very young age. I don't hunt. I don't think I ever will. I don't intend my guns for home defense. I keep them at dad's house, but even when I kept them in the apt, the guns were waaaayyy under the bed and the shells were waaayyyy up in the closet. I enjoy target shooting. Something about the quietness, the still ness, the quest for an almost-attainable accuracy. How one errant breath or twitch can throw your perfect aim off - how too much caffine at lunch can make you too jittery...a convergence of all the right kinds of circumstance is required to land that eeeensy little bullet on that even eeensier target. I like skeet shooting - matiching speed and motion of the clay with the speed and motion of th shotgun. Shooting not where the clay is, but where it will be.

I was brought up with guns the right way. I do not fear them, but I do respect the hell out of them. Dad taught me never -ever- to point a gun at anyone, loaded or not. He hunts - I cannot. I don't see the need, I don't see it as sport, I too can go out and find quiet in the woods, but i don't have to be armed to do it. Guns are not toys and are not for people who do not understand or respect them. I debated purchasing a handgun for home defense. My stepdad set me straight. He said "even if you never intend to use it, even if its not even loaded, if you pull a gun on someone, you better be prepared to kill them, because you have just started a new and deadly game. If someone breaks into your apt and you pull a gun and tell them to get out, you'd best be prepared to kill them, because that is exactly what you are saying by pulling the gun in the 1st place." I am not, and so I don't have a handgun for home defense.

This week on the news, I saw two differen stories on kids who brough guns to school and killed their classmates. My own friend was shot by a 16 year old outside a bar. Too many people, indeed it seems like most, do not respect guns, do not understand them, did not get the love and discipline instilled in me by my parents. I've been in several fights in my time, I've been embarrassed, I've wanted to hurt people, but never, not once, did it cross my mind to go home and get my shotgun.

We have a problem in this country. Things like violence are symptoms of the larger issue.

I like my guns. I believe the constitution grants us all the right to own a weapon if we so desire.

But if it becomes neccessary to disarm the public in order to assuage the symptoms of our culture of shortsighted-nonresponsibility, If it requires the law abiding gun owners to give their weapons up so that the non law abiding don't hurt the innocent; would I do it?

In a heartbeat.