Way of the Gun

I grew up around guns. My dad has always owned numerous guns, including hand guns, antique guns, and guns of questionable ownership. My brother and I were allowed to play with toys guns of all sorts, with one unbreakable rule: you never, ever, on penalty of an ass-whipping, pointed the gun at a living thing and pretended to shoot it.

Sometimes, my dad made his living thanks to guns. My dad operated a guide and outfitting business. Every fall, people from around the country paid my dad big amounts of money to camp in a tent and hunt deer and elk. He finally quit doing this because the combination of regulation on federal land and the dwindling access to private land made the business cost-prohibitive. He did not quit this business when any of the following occurred:

A hunter failed repeatedly to use the safety feature on his gun. While leaning back to ride under a low-hanging branch, the man's gun went off. It spooked his horse, who took off. The man, being about as good at horseback riding as he was at responsible gun use, slipped off the horse and got dragged for a ways down the trail. He stood up and threatened to sue my dad for negligence in keeping a dangerous animal. My dad pointed at where the shot had taken a chunk out of poor Bonnie's butt, and informed the man that there would be two horses asses in court if that was the case. The man shut up, and did not come hunting with that group again.

Another hunter drank too much one night in camp, and decided to play William Tell. He managed to fire off one shot at the coffee cup his friend was holding up at the other end of the cabin before he was ordered to pack his gear. My dad brought him out that night and dropped him off at the airport.

That was the most serious offense. There were also many other stories over the years, plus a semiannual event that didn't even involve guns. With every group, my dad would warn the clients about building too big of a fire at night, or getting their gear too close to the stoves. About every other year, one of them would either forget or not pay attention and manage to light up their ammo. This is sort of entertaining in a controlled environment, but as you can see, deer camp is sometimes hard to control.

The point is, I was raised to have a lot of respect for guns. I also learned the importance of avoiding people and situations who do not have that same respect. Mostly I learned that people with enough disposable income to pay to hunt with my dad also tended to be assholes.