Before receiving my gun safety license, I wanted to go hunting with my dad. Mostly I wanted to shoot a gun, but a small part of me also wanted to hang out with my dad.
Before I get into my first time hunting, I want to give you some details about my life.
My mom is an alcoholic, and because of that my parents are divorced. The situation is complicated because my dad didn’t want to divorce her, but my mom met a d*** nugget who supported her drinking habits, so my parents divorced.
A little bit before my parents divorced, we bought a big house and my dad was promoted to a management position at Brooklyn Park Subaru. When my parents divorced, my dad had to work overtime to pay the mortgage and feed us. He was rarely home.
After the seven-year tumult of my parents' divorce, financial instability, my mom’s drinking, and bullying, I then met my parents as I know them today. My mom is about four years sober, just built a beautiful house, and is working a high-management position at Met Council. My dad is remarried, working a mechanic job at Met Council, and stable.
There is a lot that I am leaving out, but that’s okay. This is the story of how I met my dad.
To prepare for the moment I was able to hunt, I accompanied my dad on his duck hunting trips. Almost every weekend I would get home from school, pack my bags, and head off to the cabin. We’d wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning, pack up the boat with decoys, his gun, and food, and head out to our special spot in the back bay. When we arrived at our spot, we'd set up our 70 decoys in formation, our hands freezing in the water on the cold November morning, and wait for sunrise.
The stars were always sprinkled across the night sky. My dad would point out constellations to me.
“There’s Orion’s Belt… there’s the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper… there’s the North Star,” he'd tell me.
We’d talk about everything—how I was doing in school, what friends I had, what I did in my free time, etc. We’d also talk about my mom, girls I liked, and just general life lessons.
When sunrise hit, we’d scan the sky for ducks. They didn’t come around very often, but when they did my dad and I would get excited. When he'd shoot one, I'd think it was cool.
But that wasn’t all that happened. We'd continue talking—getting to know each other. We also would talk about the weather and the serenity of the water when it stood still against the sunrise.
The first time I shot a duck, I was ecstatic. My dad congratulated me, saying “Good job, that was awesome!”
Hunting brought my dad and I together. Every year up until I went to college, my dad and I would go out into the bay every weekend during hunting season and hang out.
I am not an NRA supporter. I am not an idiot who thinks that a home defense weapon is a good way to defend your home from intruders. I am not a vigilante, a criminal, a crook, or any of whatever stereotypes are smashed against gun owners.
All of the guns in my family’s possession are in heavy safes, and same with the ammunition. We treat our guns as dangerous tools, recognizing that guns can kill people. We follow the laws regulating hunting and guns, we respect nature, and we don’t poach. We are the vast majority of Americans who own guns.
However, there are a huge amount of mass shootings in the United States. We have the most out of every country, relatively and absolutely.
But every time a mass shooting happens, we always blame the gun or we say that the shooter has a mental illness.
The latter is the most garbage deflection of responsibility in America’s political discourse.
It is not a problem of mental illness! Saying that is only a scapegoat, a cowardly way to shift responsibility from one problem to another! Not every person who kills another is a fucked up deviant who needs mental health counseling—in fact, the vast majority of them aren’t! It is not a question about the availability of assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, red dot sights, or any other military-like accessory that can be added to a gun! It is about the underlying squalid of American exceptionalism—poverty, racism, sexism, barbaric individualism, etc.
We ignore the fact that the vast majority of violent crime occurs in urban areas stricken with poverty. We try to ignore the misinformation spewing from the mouths of America’s talking heads—politicians, corporate news networks, Facebook pages, etc. We brush off the stupid stuff that we hear at family dinners about politics, no matter how wrong or egregious.
America needs to wake up to its ignorance.
I am an angry millennial, signing off.
