I grew up in California in the Gun Culture of the 1950s. My Grandfather shot bear and Elk and Deer in the early 1900s until at least the 1930s and 1940s when he retired. My father was given a .22 rifle at age 6, his brother 4 was given a .22 pistol and their older brother was given a small gauge shotgun when he was 8 or 9 and the 3 of them went out to hunt doves. But, they didn't know what doves looked like and brought back robins instead. She cooked them for the proud little boys but my father said there wasn't a lot of meat and they spent the whole time spitting out shotgun pellets from the meat.
But, today most people don't grow up in the gun culture that I did then. The way it was done before my time was at 4 or 5 or 6 a boy that was considered to be responsible and obedient enough was given the honor of having a gun and bullets in his bedroom to protect the family from harm and to hunt with. This was a very great honor because it meant they trusted you to shoot only people who needed to be shot in an emergency which meant they considered you to be sensible enough. IT was also understood if you used this gun wrong and anyone was hurt or died that you would be beat within an inch of your life and possibly even killed.
So, being given a gun a 4 or 6 or 8 like I was when my grandmother gave me my father's .22 pump rifle and bullets that it was both an honor and an awesome responsibility and that somehow you had become a man in some respects that day because of what was expected of you was awesome in all ways.
And you felt the full weight of this responsibility and it was both wonderful and simultaneously terrifying.
Then boys put a knife to my throat and cut my throat some and told me they were going to cut my head off then at age 9 who were older than I. When they finally released me and let me go after torturing me for 1/2 hour to an hour with a knife at my throat I went home and loaded my gun and was planning to kill them. But, before I killed them (I would have been capable of this) I decided to call a friend who hadn't been just tortured and cut for the last 1/2 hour or hour and he said these older boys were insane and I should let someone else kill them because they weren't going to survive to 20 anyway doing shit like this. I realized I didn't need to kill them because someone else would and realized he was right. I didn't need to go to jail for killing people who deserved it. That would be stupid. Let someone else kill them. So, I had to calm down enough from all this to be rational to make a rational not a stupid decision.
However, if they had come to my house and done this to my MOM I would have had no problem at all killing them both. That's just the way we were then even at age 9.
But, generally this isn't the way people are trained now. And without the whole gun culture most people are babies and couldn't think this way as adults let alone as children.
So, for this reason most people would be a danger to themselves and to their children because it takes this Gun culture attitude to have children and adults safe around guns.
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