Gun control is using both hands

I hate that slogan. But at the same time, it always makes me laugh. I support the right to 'bare arms', however I do believe in waiting periods and keeping guns outta the wrong hands. As I was driving off to meet my new buddy Morti, to go shoot with him and his friends, I was trying to figure out what "right hands" meant to me. There was a long mental dialogue, but what I finally came around to was that if you hadn't grown up on a ranch, then you didn't have the necessary respect required to handle firearms. At the moment, I have decided that if you have been in law-enforcement and aren't a prick, or if you were in the military aren't suffering from a psychosis, than you too can have a gun.

My preference is still for ranch-folk to be the primary gun holders. The thing is, we grow up really getting how dangerous things can be...we know the story of the neighbor who looses a hand in an auger, or...gets shot 'accidentally'...and because we know these people, the dangers are REAL. Also, when we are kids, dangerous things are taken seriously, not so dangerous things aren't. My friend Tokyorosa was just discussing how kids should be sent out a little more often without helmets (that is the edited, "I'm sleepy" version). The point being that ranch kids get brought up in a rough-and-tumble sorta style, and they get when things are dangerous, versus the kids who are get "oh! look both ways before you cross the street...or you'll die" type of constant sheltering where everything is of equal danger to the point that they become desensitized to all levels of potential danger. Add to the mix a weekend spent in front of a video screen "shooting" things, and we have a recipe for disaster when this kid picks up a real gun.

If you don't truly understand consequence and risk, then you have no business picking up a gun. There is no test to determine these traits, so once again, my answer to gun control is letting only folks who grew up on a ranch have guns.