I grew up in Minnesota during the depression years and hunting for food was a common thing to do. Dad had a rifle that he used to hunt rabbits with and a shotgun that he hunted pheasants and geese with. We always had some wild meat every week that dad had hunted. The meat my parents bought, when there was no wild meat, was most often liver, because it was cheap. When I was about 12 dad bought me a 10 gauge shotgun to hunt with, I only remember going out a few times with him as the World War II was on and ammunition became almost impossible to purchase. I do not remember ever killing anything with that 10 gauge shotgun. I was more interested in hunting pigeons and catching them alive. I built a haphazard cage for them in our backyard. After being put in the cage eventually they became homing pigeons. Letting them out of the pen and watching them fly away and by nighttime they were back home in their cage. We would catch the wild pigeons at night, while on their perching places underneath Spokane, Washington’s Monroe Street bridge. The bridge spread across the Spokane River and we could hear the deafening roar of the river passing under us. We would shine a flashlight in the pigeon’s eyes and while they were blinded we would grab the prettiest ones, bag them and take them home. Trading them was a common practice, too. Pigeons were my preferred kind of hunting, I guess because I didn’t have to kill anything. When a teenager, I served three years in the National guard and I was later drafted for two years in the army during the Korean conflict. I learned to use and care for several different weapons and earned a sharpshooter status. As an M.P., I carried a 45 Caliber pistol on my hip every day while on duty. I also became very much aware of the damage they can inflict when used.
After I married and started raising a family I did buy a 22 rifle for family protection, even though I never really thought that I would ever have to use it. When my boys became old enough and curious, as is their nature, I took the bolt out of the rifle and hid it in a safe place. The bolt is the part of the rifle that inserts a bullet into the firing chamber. By doing so I essentially neutered it, making the rifle no more dangerous than a toaster or any other appliance we had in our home. I hid it so well, that I never did find it.
However, I am grateful for that citizen’s right to bear arms, as it provides a powerful deterrent for a dictator to ever control a country by force. It has always been a controversial American right to bear arms, because there have been some who have misused the right and caused other individuals and families a great deal of pain. The left has always opposed that right and think it should be controlled much more closely than it is. A little of the history of that right: Right to keep and bear arms in the United States, and Overview of gun laws by nation. “The right to keep and bear arms is the people’s right to possess armaments (arms) for their own defense, as described in the philosophical and political writings of Aristotle, Cicero, John Locke, Machiavelli, the English Whigs and others. Inclusion of this right in a written constitution is unusual. In 1875, 17 percent of constitutions included a right to bear arms, yet, since the early twentieth century, “the proportion has been less than 10 percent and falling.” In their historical survey and comparative analysis of constitutions dating back to 1789, Tom Ginsburg and colleagues “identified only 15 constitutions (in nine countries) that had ever included an explicit right to bear arms. Almost all of these constitutions have been in Latin America, and most were from the 19th century.” Generally, where modern constitutions refer to arms at all, the purpose is “to allow the government to regulate their use or to compel military service, not to provide a right to bear them.” Constitutions which historically guaranteed a right to bear arms are those of Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Liberia, Mexico, Nicaragua and the United States of America. Nearly all of Latin American examples were modeled on that of the United States. At present, out of the world’s nearly 200 constitutions, three still include a right to bear arms: Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States; of these three, only the last does not include explicit restrictive conditions. That information came from the Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I believe the right to bear arms is a legitimate right. However, I personally prefer not to have a weapon in my home.