Did you have access to guns when you were in high school?

[marble falls]

21. Got my first shotgun at 14 and had NRA gun safety classes in Jr HS ...

... over 55 years ago, when the NRA did not get into politics past cooperating with officials on natural resource conservation and game protection.

We always had firearms in the house.

I got rid of mine right around the time I joined DU. I believe the current "understanding" of the 2nd Amendment is bushwa. I believe we have the right to own arms and that it doesn't derive from the second amendment.

However: guns and gun violence threatens public safety and it constitutes a public health threat when one of the top five causes of death for children comes from a firearm. This is a national emergency and we need to disarm.

I've given up mine with the intent to surrender them until this nation gets its brains wrapped around the violence and making progress to stop it.

I've come to know this will not happen in whatever many years I have. I have kept my Daisy CO2 pistol to look at and remember plinking cans with my daughters. They had popguns as children. I told them firearms are tools and not toys. That If I saw them aiming at a pet, or another person, I'd disarm them ... and did. As a kid I had more toy guns and 'shot' too many other kids to count.

I also remember answering to others who said toy guns made for more violence: girls had baby dolls and that didn't seem to be making for less child abuse: as if apples equal oranges, as if women were the sole source of child abuse. Some of the things I've said embarrass me still.

No one in my family has firearms except a nephew, who "is different" about weapons, the government, foreigners ... etc.