Free For All Friday 2-13-2015: The “other”…
Things are calming down a bit on the home front and I’m finally getting caught up on work. One of the things I had started working on before things went nuts and have since resumed working on is trying to set this site up in a way that could ultimately lead to my working on it as a full time job. It’s a slow process and, frankly, I never expected the site to get as big as it is now in the first place. Admittedly, it was a fun hobby in the beginning. Now, it’s still a load of fun but it’s no longer a hobby. I remember back in the beginning I wrote an article about getting out of your comfort zone. Let it not be said that I don’t follow my own advice. This whole process is so far outside of my comfort zone that I could probably qualify as an astronaut.
I promise that, no matter what happens, Gun Noob will always be Gun Noob. The stuff that keeps you coming back to this site won’t change. It’s the side stuff that most people don’t see that will evolve and needs to evolve to meet my goals.
Speaking of goals…which is a terrible segue because this question isn’t really about goals:
What can I do to help convince my wife to support me purchasing a gun? She is afraid that I will accidentally kill either her or my daughter. She is also afraid of how other families might react if they know there is a gun in our house. -Scott M.
Take comfort in knowing that this is an age old problem in which you are not alone. The bright side of that being that there is a tried and true way to handle it. It’s not a guaranteed success route, mind you, but it works more often than not.
You first need to understand where this is coming from and that’s a lack of knowledge. I’d be willing to bet her only experience with firearms is movies, television shows and countless “accidentally shot _____” news reports. In movies and shows, guns accidentally fire all the time. Heck, it was a major plot point of “Pulp Fiction” and I can think of a dozen other movies right off the bat that used the “oops” as a gag. We already debunked this concept last November so I won’t dwell on it much here.
Ultimately, it’s a lack of accurate knowledge that has lead to her opinion. Fortunately, we in the firearms world don’t follow the “knowledge is power, guard it well” mentality of Terran Imperial Inquisitors. Step one would be to find a good firearms instructor who doesn’t require you to have your own weapon and hire that person to give some lessons to you and your wife. We all know that our wives are immediately suspect of anything we say when it pertains to something we want. Having a 3rd party explaining things will have much more weight.
I say this because the first thing any instructor worth their salt will do is drill in the safety concepts. They’ll focus on exactly why you’re unlikely to accidentally kill someone. They’ll show that the gun is nothing more than a mindless hunk of metal that is no more dangerous in the grand scheme of things than the chef’s knives in the house.
After that, the instructor is going to ease her into shooting and get her comfortable with the firearm itself. That goes a long way to alleviating fears and, if handled correctly, is likely to get her interested in firearms herself. If that happens, be warned, you will spend more money on her guns than you will on your own. It’s just the way things go.
After that, look into a good drawer safe. This will help to keep a child’s curious eyes away from the gun until you’re ready to introduce them to firearms as well.
Finally, as to her final concern, there really isn’t any reason to tell someone you have a gun unless A) you trust the person and know they’re interested in firearms/own guns as well or B) the person is a criminal trying to kick in your front door.
As I said, knowledge goes a long way to getting rid of fear. The more you can educate her, the more likely she is to relent. Don’t push, just gently nudge at the most. She’ll come around eventually.
Thanks for the questions!
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