Orange is the New Black

In the days before I was born, my father was a hunter, but he eventually decided what he enjoyed most was time in the woods, and that would be even more enjoyable if he didn't have to carry all the hunting paraphernalia. He stopped hunting. Still, he kept the two guns he owned, a 12 gauge shotgun for deer hunting when it wasn't bow season, and a small .22 caliber rifle for target practice.

My sister and I knew where the guns were, but we were raised such that we absolutely obeyed the rule to never touch them. Then, when I was in middle school, my dad said if I wanted to learn to fire the rifle, he would teach me. I thought about it as carefully as a middle school boy can and agreed, yes, I'd like to learn. That night, my dad and I went down in the basement and he showed how to opperate the gun, starting with all the safety protocols, finishing with wiping everything down with gun oil to avoid contaminating the blued steel with our finger oil.

The next night, everything went down in the basement again, but I was expected to explain everything I had been taught the night before. That weekend, we headed outside with the rifle, and once I had again explained the safety protocols, I was handed a bullet. That is how I was raised around guns, and my exposure to hunters was my uncle, who had trained my father and was equally safety conscious. I grew up thinking hunters were safe people who respected the danger of their activity.

And being a middle school kid raised as a boy, I became a gun enthusiast, and I went to a gun show in my high school gymnasium. What could possibly go wrong mixing a school and firearms, right? One of the conversations I had that day was with a NRA representative, and when he learned the kid, who, given my late development, looked barely double digits age, was shooting, he recommended taking the state's hunter certification course. When I replied that I didn't want to hunt, he said to take it anyway, for the formal gun safety instruction.

I had a lot of faith in my dad's instruction, but my mother encouraged me to take the course, and she even joined herself so I wouldn't be a little kid alone in a group of unknown adults. Well ok, except my mom, the class was all men, and they thought they were being chivalrous by cautioning her against viewing the photo of a firearm suicide. She explained that she had worked as an emergency room nurse and seen it all.

I did learn a few new nuances to add to the training from my dad, but the most important exposure was to the other students who were taking the course, some for their third, or more, time. One needed to score an 80 on the final exam for hunting license certification. My mom, with no prior exposure or personal interest, scored a 92 after simply sitting through the class, and as a middle school kid, I answered one question wrong.

A handful of our classmates didn't pass again, but I realized, they would keep trying, eventually have a good day, and then be licensed to hunt in Connecticut, with a gun. When that happy day, for them, arrived, they would immediately forget every safety instruction, and they would be hunting. I learned to exercise much more caution during hunting season, making sure I wore lots of blaze orange, and even hanging bells on my bike, although that did potentially increase the risk of being mistaken for one of Santa's reindeer. Sigh. Shotgun deer hunting season started in Massachusetts yesterday. Be safe.

3 seconds after uploading this photo

 I heard a gun report.