If you are growing up in a city today it wouldn't make much sense to you likely. However, Imagine that cars and trucks and planes haven't been invented yet. Imagine that law enforcement either was miles away or non-existent where you were. Imagine bears and cougars being pretty normal where you live. imagine, varmints like rats and mice being much much more normal than now. Imagine people being much more ignorant and crazy than now in general. in this situation often children were trained from ages of about the youngest being 4 and the oldest being 10 trained to use long guns and pistols for personal protection and the protection of the family as well in various situations.
I know today this doesn't make sense to people living in most cities. But, imagine that you have no cars, no trucks, no planes, no helicopters, nothing powered that way at all and only horses and carriages and maybe if you are really lucky about 50 to 100 miles away a train.
So, who is going to protect you with no phones? and no one to call even then? to protect you?
So, this is why our gun culture was the basis of why we even exist now as the United States. It was mostly farmers and shop keepers who shot the British during the revolutionary war to be free from King George III, the mad King!
So, without farmers and regular people having long guns the U.S. would never have existed in the first place.
Also during most of the last 400 years you didn't really know whether law enforcement in general was going to shoot you or help you. And depending upon your race this is still true.
The other thing that might not make sense is that not everyone was given a loaded gun to take into their bedroom, only children that proved they could be trusted. And along with this it was understood that if you shot someone you weren't supposed to your parents might choose to kill you in response.
This was just how it was. And around the world in many countries it is just like this still today.
IN 1956 my grandmother who was from Texas gave me my father's first rifle which was an early 1900s Remington Pump rifle, a .22 Long rifle gun that could shoot 17 or 18 bullets by firing and then pumping the rifle once after each discharge. I was 8 years old at the time and felt very honored that an adult in my family saw me as being worthy of this responsibility. Was it scary too? Of course!
I was scared I might do something I shouldn't and then my parents would have to kill me. This is was a part of the deal.
In the 1950s children (especially male children) were treated like full adults often. But, if you made a mistake you might be knocked across the room for your mistake too and bloodied. It was just the way it was then. And it is still like this (with or without guns) in most of the world. Likely 5 billion people at least are still like this (with or without guns but almost always with knives or machetes for defense.)
I remember my children being defended by Tibetan boys aged 10 to 14 when 25 of them drew their knives on someone who wanted to kidnap my boys in Dharamsala, India. My sons are now 44 and 47 years old so this happened likely in January 1986. I wasn't there at the time but my boys told me what actually happened. No one was injured but this is just how things are done around the world when law enforcement is nowhere to be found when you need them.
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