"My brother was killed by a gun..."

P

pax

New member
A few weeks back, I was at a TRT event here in Washington state. As I handed out leaflets, a number of the gun controllers turned away in distaste, and not a few of them declined to read my materials by saying,

"I don't want to see that stuff. My brother (father, husband, boyfriend) was killed by a gun."

Of course this is a hard statement to respond to on the spur of the moment like that, and I let most of these people walk on past without any further attempt to engage them.

However, the guy standing next to me was quicker on his feet than I was. When someone used that line upon him, he immediately looked as sympathetic as a sympathetic could be and responded, "Oh, that's too bad. I'm sorry I wasn't there to prevent it."

pax




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"Is there anything wrong with a woman preferring the dignity of an armed citizen? I don't like to be coddled and I don't like to be treated like a minor child. So I waive immunity and claim my right -- I go armed." -- Longcourt Phyllis in Beyond This Horizon by Robert Heinlein
 
By them saying that "__________was killed by a gun" gives the thing a life of its own and there was no human action involved. Of course they believe that guns ae evil and if there were no firearms there would be no crime, murder etc,, etc so they can never say that "__________was killed with a gun."

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"If there be treachery, let there be jihad."
Ne Conjuge Nobiscum
 
pax,
I "owe" you this one as payment for your posts.
My Grandfather shot himself. My Father, being a devote Christian, could never deal with the fact that his father had commited the unforgivable sin of suicide. He turned to a hatred of guns as the only way out. *sigh* Some of these you're just not going to win. My Father, who makes Ghandi look like a war-monger, would have turned on your friend like a man possesed. IMNSH, you did best by letting it drop.
 
RAE, you make a good point.

In fact, given the high suicide rate, I wondered if many people who say, "My ______ was killed by a gun," say that because they can't bring themselves to admit that their loved one killed himself. That consideration, btw, is what kept me from replying as hube1236 suggested.

My condolences about your grandfather.

pax

"Emotional sickness is avoiding reality at any cost. Emotional health is facing reality at any cost." -- M. Scott Peck
 
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine told me that he was selling his plinking gun (he had a 10/22), because one of his students had been cleaning his shotgun, and it had a shell stuck inside it, and it went off and killed him...

I told him that I was sorry for his friend, but, hey, and I know no other way to tactfully put this, I don't know how he could clean the gun with it loaded, and I don't know how he could manage to shoot himself while cleaning it. Frankly, shotguns are fairly hard to shoot oneself with - It generally takes a bit of planning. Instead, the officers/coroner may have felt badly for the family, and written a suicide down as an accident. He seemed to accept that.
 
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