I work part time in a retail store. I was shocked the other day when a youngster and his parents came into the store. The boy was wearing a cowboy outfit, including a couple of pearl handled six guns in a belt holster rig. I was "shocked" not because of the toy guns, but because I suddenly realized that it had been years since I had seen a boy carrying his guns. Literally years!
That's what political correctness and the generally sissified culture we live in has done to us. Children are no longer seen playing cowboys and (Native Americans) or cops and (Victims of Society) or Americans and (Misguided Germans or Japanese) or even North versus (Southern Slave Owners). But in my youth in the 1950's I spent untold hours of make believe shooting with my boyhood friends, hiding, and "killing" the enemy. I learned about using cover, setting up an ambush, and choosing the high ground. I became intimately familiar with the feel of a gun in my hand and my eye to the sights. When I was old enough, probably around 10 years of age, I was taught firearm safety, how to shoot a rifle, and how to clean it properly. From then on throughout my teenage years I went shooting for real. When I lived in New Mexico I enjoyed days of walking across the plains with my trusty 22. After I moved to California, it was occasional drives out to the desert for target shooting with heavier rifles and handguns.
When I enlisted in the Air Force I went to basic training at Lackland AFB in Texas. We recruits were taken out to the firing range to qualify with the M-16, a fairly new rifle at the time. I recall how I thought it looked and felt like a plastic toy. Not a "real" rifle like I was used to. In any event I followed the instructions of the range master and quickly qualified as "Expert." I was puzzled why so many of the others shot so poorly. More recently, I was out in the Nevada desert with some friends for a day of shooting. One of them approached me with an old WWII rifle given to him by his grandfather. I think it was a 1903 Springfield. He regarded it as something of an antique, and was reluctant to fire it. I immediately took the weapon, visually inspected it, loaded it, and hit a small target with it at about 100 yards. I handed the rifle back to the young man saying that it seemed to work just fine. I remember the look of amazement on the fellows face, mostly because what I'd done seemed like nothing special to me.
My object in telling this is not to impress the reader with what a good rifleman I am. I'm not, or at least I've never thought I was. I've never competed. And, praise God, I've never had to fire a shot in anger. My point is that because of my childhood experiences, both with toy guns and real guns, shooting feels natural and easy to me. If you hand me a gun I can shoot it, just like if you hand me a bicycle I can ride it. No different.
Now for the serious message.
We live in a world full of guns. Guns are here to stay. Armed conflicts continue to occur and there is always armed combat taking place somewhere in the world. And that's how it's going to be during your child's entire life. None of us know if or when we may be thrust into a gunfight. No matter how peace loving and gentle we may be, armed adversaries may take the initiative and force us to defend ourselves and our families. Armed criminals, terrorists, and maniacs are a real threat. Our children may be conscripted or enlisted to fight in our country's future wars. It is a very real possibility that your child may someday have to stand and fight with a rifle or handgun. Will he or she live or die? That may well depend on how familiar he or she is with a gun. And that will depend on how you raised your child.
The May 2011 edition of the NRA magazine, "American Rifleman," contains an article by Barrett Tillman titled, "Marksmanship Matters." The article discusses the problems faced by the U.S. military in fielding competent riflemen in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the article, Maj. General Merritt Edson, USMC, is quoted as saying, "If parents wanted their son to have the best chance to survive combat, see that he learns to shoot a rifle as a boy." Better advice was never given. Our opponents in the 3rd world, and especially in Afghanistan, are products of a gun culture. Many Afghani boys grow up with a rifle in their hands. Many young Afghani men carry rifles as a matter of course. We westerners have been unduly influenced by stories and pictures of young muslims shooting wildly and acting in an undisciplined manner. We laugh at their antics and come to believe that they don't represent a serious threat to our elite military. That is a dangerous stereotype. Would you want your son or daughter having only a few weeks of training with a rifle going up against an enemy who had been using their rifles for years? I certainly wouldn't.
My advice is that parents should forget all those politically correct niceties about guns. Parents should allow their small children to play with toy guns and compete in friendly war games with their peers. Parents should make sure that their teenage children are given firearms training and plenty of opportunity to go shooting. Learning to shoot should be one of the "must do's," of child rearing, just like learning to swim and learning to drive a stick shift car. It is, after all, a survival skill. And under pressing circumstances, it is the ultimate survival skill.