Guns, Responsibility, and a Changing World

Reflections on a Lifetime of Firearm Experience

The topic of firearms often evokes strong emotions and passionate debates. This piece is not about taking sides in that debate, nor is it a call for specific policy changes. Instead, it’s a reflection on personal experiences with guns—growing up with them, learning from them, and understanding their place in both recreation and responsibility. While the world has undoubtedly changed, perhaps there are lessons to be drawn from the past, as well as opportunities to rethink how we approach the complex issues surrounding firearms today. Let’s dive in with an open mind, leaving judgment aside, and explore what responsible gun ownership truly means.

Memories of a First Pellet Gun

I can’t quite remember how old I was when I got my first pellet gun, but I know it was long before high school. Oddly enough, I don’t even remember asking for one or having some burning desire to own it. One day, it just appeared in my hands, like some rite of passage I didn’t even know I was going through. It might’ve been a gift from my father, or something we picked out together. The details are blurry, but what’s clear is how much I used it. I shot that thing so much, it eventually fell apart from sheer exhaustion (or maybe I was the one exhausted). For those in the know, it was a break-barrel type with a scope, because obviously, 12-year-or-so-old me needed that level of precision.

Living on an 80-acre farm, there was plenty of room to shoot at inanimate objects, though hunting anything of substance wasn’t really an option. I wasn’t exactly out there stalking deer with my trusty pellet gun. Target practice, though? Endless. Every rock, tin can, or suspicious-looking tree branch became a potential target.

Some of my friends had BB guns, most of them powered by CO2 cartridges, and a few could rapid-fire. That sounded fun in theory, but I didn’t like them much. BBs were these tiny metal projectiles—probably copper, or at least something that looked like copper. The problem was, they had this annoying tendency to ricochet off anything solid, turning a peaceful target session into a game of "Dodge the BB.” Pellets, on the other hand, deformed on impact, like a responsible projectile should. They hit their mark and stayed there, which was a much more comforting thought when you’re the one holding the gun.

To be fair, the BB gun kids seemed to love their rapid-fire fun. But I liked the focus of a single shot—one pull of the trigger, one chance to hit the target. It felt like an exercise in patience, not just spray-and-pray chaos. Sure, my friends’ guns could shoot a dozen BBs in the time it took me to reload, but where’s the fun in that?

In the movie A Christmas Story (1983), Ralphie’s desperate wish for an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle brings to life the iconic childhood dream of owning a “real” gun. The scene where Ralphie faces Santa, only to freeze under pressure, resonates with anyone who’s ever felt the weight of their own desires momentarily slip from their grasp.

The dialogue is priceless:

"How about a nice football?" suggests Santa.

“A football?” Ralphie’s inner monologue screams in disbelief.

Finally, he musters the courage to say what he truly wants: “I want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!”

And Santa’s now-classic response: “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.”

It’s entirely plausible! I find myself agreeing with Santa on this one. Thankfully, none of my friends or I ever ended up with any injuries from our youthful target practice. Still, the warning echoes a timeless truth about the perceived dangers of these childhood "toys."

Stepping Up to the .22 Long Rifle

At some point, I graduated from the pellet gun to a .22LR (long rifle). Just like with the pellet gun, I have no memory of how it ended up in my possession or which came first: my desire to have it or the enjoyment I found in using it. Most of my time with it was spent in target practice, though I did attempt to take out some farm vermin on occasion, though I can't recall ever being successful. Looking back through the haze of time, I realize I never gave much thought to things like bullet drop over long distances. But back then, there was no one to teach me those details. These were the days when you learned by doing—and sometimes failing.

This was all happening in New Jersey, where you could buy ammo at the local Food Lane grocery store. I’m pretty sure firearm IDs didn’t even exist at the time. Or if they did, no one I knew had one. Then again, no one I knew had a handgun either. What would anyone need one for?

As I write this, I think I’ve finally pieced together how that .22LR came into our home. My father was a tool-and-die maker at the time, working in a machine shop. He got his hands on plans for a suppressor (or silencer), though I’ve no idea where he got them—there was no internet back then to pull up blueprints. He wanted to build one and needed a .22LR for experimentation. That’s why the rifle I had came with a threaded barrel at the tip. Thanks to my dad’s machine shop skills, of course.

Before you alert the authorities, rest assured I never saw the final product. From what I remember, he abandoned the project when the suppressor caused over-pressure in the chamber—a clear sign things weren’t going well. What it looked like or what ultimately happened to it are details lost to time.

We also had a shotgun in the house, though it was never fired. It was bought before my time, and the family story behind it was that it was for protection after our family business had been robbed once. It was a hunting shotgun—so long that I used to joke you wouldn’t even need to aim; you could just point it toward any would-be intruder and the barrel alone would scare them off. But it stayed in storage, more a relic than a real tool for defense.

By the time I was in high school, there was a memorable incident in which someone brought in what I think was a deer liver to home economics class, of all places. The goal? To learn how to cook it. Now, how exactly this unfolded is a mystery to me. I didn’t take home ec, nor did the other students involved, but somehow it ended up being just me, the student who brought in the liver, another friend, and the teacher. What I do remember clearly is seeing the hole in the liver, courtesy of a shotgun slug, and the teacher remarking that it was a good shot. The whole experience wasn’t gross or unsettling. It felt like a natural extension of life on a farm in New Jersey, where encounters with hunting and nature were commonplace.

Guns in School? Welcome to New Jersey… Many years later, I found myself reminiscing with Gary Vaynerchuk in his Manhattan office. Though he’s about ten years younger than me, we both went to the same high school in Hunterdon County. As we swapped stories, Gary shared a memory from his freshman year that really stuck with me. It was fall, and he had just moved to the area. One day, while walking through the school hallway, he was stunned to see a student casually strolling by with a gun strapped to his back. Bewildered, Gary asked the kid what was going on. The response was matter-of-fact: “It’s hunting season. Don’t you know that?”

For someone who had just moved to rural New Jersey, this was a shock. But for the rest of us, it was just another day. In a place where farm life and hunting culture intersected, seeing a student bringing a gun to school wasn’t the cause for alarm it would be today—it was simply part of the rhythm of life.

From Farm Life to Firearm Debate: How the World—and Guns—Have Changed

Growing up in rural New Jersey, guns were just a part of life. That’s how I came to know firearms from an early age. On our farm, there was only one death during all those years of deer hunting, and it wasn’t because of a gun—it was a heart attack. No I knew one was ever hurt by a firearm while hunting or doing anything else. Back then, the world seemed different. Guns were tools, hunting was routine, and firearms were treated with respect, but never fear.

Fast-forward nearly forty years, and it’s clear that the world has changed. Firearms are at the center of a national conversation, one that’s often emotional, polarized, and complicated. I’m not here to offer the ultimate solution to the complex issues surrounding guns today. But one thing stands out to me: in many cases, these mass shootings seem tied to people who believe they won’t live to see another day. It’s a form of suicide—one that suggests there’s a deeper issue at play than just access to firearms.

I’m not a huge fan of regulation in general, but when it comes to firearms, what exists today feels like a patchwork of laws and restrictions that often don’t make much sense. Licensing, for instance, binds people to specific weapons for self-defense. The logistics and legalities surrounding firearm features are so convoluted that it feels impossible to navigate without a lawyer translating the laws into plain English.

A lot of these laws seem to be based on emotional reactions, crafted by people who don’t fully understand firearms. And that, in my opinion, is where the disconnect lies. Instead of creating laws grounded in real-world application, we’re left with restrictions that confuse responsible gun owners and do little to address the real issues.

Another part of the problem, as I see it, is that more people are becoming gun owners without having the experience or mindset necessary to handle them responsibly. I hear it all the time: “I know how to use it—I took a class.” But that’s not how this works. Owning a firearm is more than just taking a class; it’s a journey that requires continuous training and comfort with the weapon.

I like to compare it to flying a plane. Sure, anyone can learn to take off and land in perfect weather conditions, but that doesn’t make them ready to start flying passengers across the globe. The same principle applies to firearms. You need to know how a gun works, how it doesn’t work, and most importantly, how to use it safely—not just for yourself but for those around you.

When I’m teaching someone to shoot for the first time, I focus on three key areas: touch, visual, and auditory. I want them to physically feel the right way to hold the gun, walk me through how they go from safety mode to firing and back, and verbally explain every step they’re taking while their eyes are tracking them. I make them engage all three learning modalities because I don’t know which one will click for them. But one of them usually does.

Whether it’s target shooting or hunting, shooting can be an enjoyable sport. Self-defense should be a natural extension of these skills, not something you hope to figure out in the heat of the moment. The Second Amendment grants us a constitutional right to bear arms, but with that right comes great responsibility. Instead of stripping away that power, we should be focusing on how to increase the responsibility that comes with it. Right now, it feels like no one wants to tackle that challenge head-on.

Think about it this way: the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) meticulously dissects plane crashes from every possible angle, examining both mechanical failures and human errors. Their goal is to keep planes in the air safely. They learn from each tragedy and improve systems, procedures, and designs to prevent future accidents. We should be applying a similar mindset to gun issues. Rather than imposing meaningless restrictions or emotionally driven laws that create more confusion than solutions, we need to dig into the root causes of these events.

Any engineer will tell you that solving problems at their endpoints doesn’t work. Yet, that’s where the focus tends to be—on the tragic result, not on the series of events leading up to it. If we continue down that path, we’ll never truly solve the problem. Unfortunately, it feels like the system in place doesn’t want to explore those root causes, perhaps because the answers would force us to confront uncomfortable truths.