Gun Owners Club is a new series here on Gun Carrier where we will be sharing real, true stories from gun owners just like you.
Gun Owners Club: My Life as a Not-So Gun Girl
This is the girls side, female’s side, daughter’s side, wife’s side, and mom’s side, of a not-so-gun girl.
OK, we all know that there are differences between males and females. Not inequalities, DIFFERENCES! I am also different than my daughter, physically and in personality. I am just talking basics here, between the female and male, simply humanly speaking, and I am not going to go through the obvious. We have enough confusion it seems today to have to go to the intricacies of the differences. In my opinion, the conflicts in this area are sometimes due to the luxury of more time at our disposal and we can “overthink” or “overemote” these differences. I like to trust that “it is what it is”.
I have been around guns since I can remember, and I am a 50-some-year-old woman. My father, along with my two brothers and myself, used BB guns, shotguns and .22 rifles probably since I was 10. I acquired my hunter’s safety certificate at 12 years old. Some of the other outdoor activities I enjoyed growing up were using slingshots, fishing, and riding bicycles and horses. We grew up in a medium sized town in Colorado. I was the oldest with two younger brothers. I, along with my younger brothers, was taught respect, safety and hunting skills from both my father and mother. At a young age, I noticed that my mother was more interested in safety than any of the other skills, but she treated me no different than my brothers in supporting me going with them to learn these skills.
We have established what I mean by differences, I hope. I have established where I am coming from with respect to my early environment where guns are concerned. Now fast forward to my marriage to an extremely passionate “gun guy,” hence my writing on the subject.
First of all, we met as we were both competing in the rodeo sport of team roping. I was unaware of his gun acuity. I thought he was the “coolest” of course, hence 22 years of marriage. Team roping entails mostly horseback riding skills alongside roping skills, lots of athletics for both animal and person – yes, he was a cowboy, straight off the ranch! Not the cowboy from the not-too-distant past when a person needed constant vigilance to protect a business and property from either a hungry predatory animal or roaming peoples with territorial differences or criminals with only their own welfare and prosperity on their minds. Which brings me to my subject: he was very different and very passionate in the area of firearms, and it was very curious to me how I could have missed this. How could I have missed this in my guy?
“We met as we were both competing in the rodeo sport of team roping.” (Image source: accessmontana.com)
To get back to my missing something, I think I missed it like we miss other differences and take them for granted. I think I missed it because I did not think it important to me at that time like it is now.
I have pondered these differences, between the girl and the guy alongside the freedom and empowering choice to own and use a firearm. I know that there should be a conclusion to this but I am really just enjoying the pondering of my mystery and the differences that at one point I thought were not really differences or important at all. I do not want to put my “girl-ness” in some sort of box that I or someone else might put it in; nor think I am “sooo-awesome” because I think I am outside of some other box. I think now I can say, because I am a not-so-gun girl does not mean that I cannot enjoy the freedom, the challenge and the protection firearms can offer a girl.
Should I go into shoes and clothes? How about cars? Houses?
What do you think? Are men and women different when it comes to gun ownership? If you have kids, do you train your girls and boys differently? Let us know in the comments!
And if YOU want to join the Gun Owners Club by sharing your personal experiences with our readers, email your story to [email protected]!
