Moment of Sadness Today

Yeah, what cnimrod said. If you see the parents say, "hey, I was cleaning my Garand and your boys were interested in holding it. Would that be okay next time?
 
There's the problem, we run and hide and are afraid to let a kid hold a gun. Legal action? When my kids were young every one of their friends got to handle guns at my house. Some got to go shooting and hunting with us.
It might be time to grow a set and not go hide in the bedroom.
'You wanna hold this gun, we'll call you Father right now.'
 
You could have invited them to go shooting with you some time, with their parents permission. You did the right thing at the moment but all is not lost. I'm sure you prolly have a 22 rifle also so next time you see the boys, give em the invite and perhaps you can get them out to have some fun. Maybe the dad will go too.
 
You folks really must live in a different world from mine. Oh, I live in a suburb of Washington, DC, and nobody goes out their backdoor and hunts (which is why there are so many deer around). My son really doesn't care anything about guns but he served in Iraq as a tank crewman. And now my brand new son-in-law is on orders to go to Afganistan. Oddly enough, one of those in the family who's never been in the service is actually in Afganistan this very minute.

So when the time comes, the army will teach anyone everything worth knowing about guns and shooting. Just be patient. They don't teach fishing, though.
 
It's not just a matter of firearms. The British actor Tom Baker-the 4th Dr. Who-said that after he took that role he was the only person who could buy a child ice cream and not get arrested. Unfortunately some people have ruined things for the rest of us.
 
There's the problem, we run and hide and are afraid to let a kid hold a gun. Legal action? When my kids were young every one of their friends got to handle guns at my house. Some got to go shooting and hunting with us.
It might be time to grow a set and not go hide in the bedroom.
'You wanna hold this gun, we'll call you Father right now.'
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as a gun owner I would be pretty angry if a neighbor allowed my child to handle a gun without my consent. it's about boundaries imo and they shouldn't be crossed
 
You did the right thing and avoided unpleasant repercussions. But as cnimrod, berettaprofessor, Edward429451 suggested, the next step might be to contact their parents (or wait until the next time you see them), and suggest a "firearm safety introduction" that includes holding the rifle.

If you mention "The Four Rules" one of the adults is going to ask what those might be - that's your opening. Explain, and point out that demystifying is one of the best ways to satisfy curiosity - their sons are less likely to do something stupid later in their childhood years if they get some reality now. If the parents are liberals, you mention that people need sound information to properly make their own informed choices - can't argue with that.

If the parents go for it and the kids come for the lecture and seem to have a clue what it is about, you now have an opening to suggest a range trip with a .22 rifle for an introduction to marksmanship - single load, single fire, "just like the prone slow fire stage in the National Matches", spoken to give an aura of safety/control, and "respectability".

I'm sorry to babble like this but 1) I'm an old man with no kids to teach and envy your chance to get a couple of youngsters interested in shooting, and 2) it has given me great pleasure to watch a couple of our Junior shooters - specifically two teenage girls whose parents drive them to the matches - climb from Marksman to Sharpshooter and Expert, and one on to Master!

The shooting sports, and the ideas of self-reliance and independent responsible action, are not going to die out if we encourage and support these kids.
 
Some of you guys are sounding like a defeatist attitude. The world is what you make it. So don't even try to teach the kids anything, or be neighborly because of what they might do? I think this is a poor show my friends. No wonder you feel sad about it, because you know you had a chance to do something real and dropped the ball by not even trying. No offense, but hey.
 
Pretty sad indeed, but I think you made the right call. You don't know if the kids' parents might get upset with you letting them hold a gun w/o their permission.

I definitely miss the good ol' days. When I was a young child I still remember holding a real M16 rifle from one of the soldiers in my hometown. I think this was one of the biggest influences why I like firearms today, particularly AR15's.
 
Not sad at all. Absolutely right and necessary 1956 or today.

Don't anyone give a firearm of any kind, loaded or unloaded, to my kids without my express permission or there will be hell to pay. You did the right thing. It's all about respect and you acted respectfully.

In the words of the Larry Potterfield who happens to personify tradition and family values... "And that's the way it is."

-SS-
 
So don't even try to teach the kids anything, or be neighborly because of what they might do? I think this is a poor show my friends. No wonder you feel sad about it, because you know you had a chance to do something real and dropped the ball by not even trying

That's silly, man. If the mom has an irrational fear of guns, she may have FREAKED. Maybe called the cops, whatever. Some people are just not cool with guns. He absolutely did the right thing.
 
Don't anyone give a firearm of any kind, loaded or unloaded, to my kids without my express permission or there will be hell to pay

Agree 100%. My own dad started to hand my son a .22 to look at. I intercepted it and said "let's check it first". As my dad was starting to say "it's not load...", I ejected a live round.

My kids, my call. That's it.
 
Code: 
Anyone else wished that we could live permanently in 1956? Sure, that was way before I was born, but I miss those days My father has similar stories about being young in the late '50's and early 60's and how everyone in small town Idaho where he grew up hunted and fished. How things have changed.

True that, Frasier....

In the late 1960s in Salt Lake City Utah where I finished high school, we showed up to high school with 30-06 rifles and shotguns in our pick-up rear window gun racks. No one stole them, and no one questioned their presence. And, we didn't miss-use them.

Not so much anymore.....
 
In the FIRST place, there is no way I am going to sit in my yard cleaning a gun in public view. There are just too many Liberal Trained Ninnys who will freak out and too many crooks who would mark me for theft.

My old house required that I carry gun cases to the car in plain view. I wonder if that might not have contributed to a burglary with six guns stolen. (And recovered the next day when the thief wrecked his stolen car.)
The new place lets me load up in the garage.

Sad, though. I well remember riding the city bus to the range with cased Remington 513T in hand. But that was about 1960. As Jeff Cooper said, "The past is a different country, they do things differently there."
 
Im not all that old, though if you saw how broken down I am(former mechanic, now disabled) you would add about 20 years. That being said, even though I live in IL I live in a rural area. When I was in high school the principal would announce the day before deer season started that if we were going to bring out guns to school with us they needed to stay in our trucks(whate most of us drove, lol) or in our cars locked up and unloaded. He then thanked us for our cooperation.

I would like for some of you to guess the decade that this happened in, here in IL. See if anyone can get it right.
 
ljnowell,

Rural Illinois, maybe downstate? If so the 1990s would not surprise me.
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Yep you hit the nail right on the head Bobcat! I had a friend who was a few years behind me, he told me that after the Columbine incident they put a stop to it. Its a real shame to be honest, but I guess it was something that was going to happen no matter what. I remember our shop teacher going squirrel hunting with some of us after school too, I can imagine that a school district would fire a teacher for going hunting with students after school nowadays. Like I said, I'm not that old, but I'm old enough to know what used to be and miss it.

My son is lucky though, at 12 years old he goes shooting with his teacher twice a week and is allowed to have a gun at school. He is homeschooled.:D
 
Ah, the good old days. I recall back in 1959 when I was in high school, I found a junkyard with a lot of cut-up .50 BMGs, and I bought a couple to play with. When I got home with them, a neighbor, WWII vet, saw me trying to take one of them apart, walked over, and showed me the correct way to disassemble a .50HB. We worked on that gun several days, removed everything, cleaned up all the parts and ground smooth the cut in the side plate, and reassembled it.

Well, at one point a couple of years later (This is all pre-1968 amnesty, OK?) I took a welding class and decided to weld up the gun and see if it would function. Did that, ground off the extra material, cold blued the weld, and got the gun into working condition and took it out to the sand pit one weekend with my dad and shot it. I registered that gun during the '68 amnesty. That really got me interested in automatic weapons, and I'm still collecting them.

I wonder if any of that would/could happen these days?
 
Nobody's going to call the cops over a neighborly invite. What would the charge be? Menacing kindness? LOL. If the mom was overly irrational like you purport and starts freaking out, you simply say sorry, I wont bring it up again, and leave. If she calls the cops she will show herself to be irrational to them.

You scared she'll lie to the cops? Do it in front of the kids so they can witness.

This really is the age of the ninny, like Cooper said.
 
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