Sunday, July 24, 2011

A bad memory renewed

Carteach0 has a post on cleaning up an old scattergun, and it reminded me of something kind of painful.

Woman I was dating a couple of years ago had mentioned she had 'her father's gun'. She was very ambivalent about firearms, being a Methodist of the 'peaceful at any cost' attitude, but had decided I was of a 'proper' mindset about the nasty things(yes, that was a warning note). So one day I asked about it and she dug it out.

It was a Remington bolt-action .22 rifle, badly in need of care: it wasn't too bad, but there were patches of rust where it'd been handled and not cleaned since he'd died. So I offered to bring some stuff next time I came over and clean and oil it, and she looked at me kind of funny and asked why?

It was a shock. I mean this was her father's rifle, she'd kept it, but the idea of actually doing anything with it, even to keep it from rusting, had not only not occurred to her but actually bothered her. She has two grandsons; the idea that they might someday enjoy firing Grandpa's rifle had never come into her mind. It was just a thing that used to belong to Dad, so she kept it around.

No, didn't see her much longer after that. It wasn't a cause, it was a symptom of the real problems. I do hate to think what that poor rifle looks like now.

1 comment:

Mattexian said...

Hey, don't blame her pacifism on being a Methodist, tho the national level of the church does have "Guns are bad, m'kay?" as a platform. (I think part of some global "social justice" agenda against weapons among non-official-gubmint groups.) My dad is a lapsed, lifelong Methodist (me too, tho I'm looking for another church, maybe a different denomination), and he instilled in me a deep respect and love for firearms ownership. I'll point out, every organized church that I've looked at, has "reduce international gun violence" as a platform. And usually, that means reducing PRIVATE gun ownership. It's a big part of why I'm not much of fan of those churches.