So You Want To Own A Gun

Advice for the first-timer.

PJ Media actually hit me with a pretty tall order with what appeared to be a simple suggestion for an article: a step-by-step process for those who know absolutely nada about guns yet want to arm themselves.

My immediate response — “Sure, I’ll get right on it” — was tempered roughly .00093 nanoseconds later by the realization of the task ahead of me.

Getting a gun — especially the first one — is a pretty big deal.

For those of us who grow up in “gun cultures” where firearms are merely another tool and fact of life, getting your first gun may consist of getting a pint-sized .22-caliber single shot rifle almost as long as you are tall when you are a child. It is a simple and expected rite of passage that is a mark of growing expectations, trust, and new-found maturity.

We’re generally accompanied by an experienced and patient relative — a father, grandfather, aunt, or older sibling — and the time we spend with those first firearms fills us with nostalgia in later years. The adventures spent afield plinking at cans and paper targets or hunting is remembered as much or more for the bonding and the fellowship as it is for the experience of shooting a gun itself.

Over time, if we have good and patient instructors, we learn and apply the rules of gun safety religiously, develop an appreciation for the joy of marksmanship, and find a reverence and respect for nature that those who choose to remove themselves from the circle of life will never know. It is the sort of upbringing I experienced with my father. It is similar to the stories captured by fellow North Carolinian Robert Ruark in The Old Man and the Boy, his much-loved classic.

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