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[theinevitable]

I am trying to find a way to tell this story without sounding like a dude saying girls my age are very silly, but... yes. I have multiple facebook friends who are "in a relationship" or "married" to their female friend as some kind of dumb joke.

[wombat]

Even speaking as someone who does her best to fill in her FB profile with dumb jokes instead of real answers, that seems like a lame kind of joke.

[pmcd9]

In your place you have dads afraid to take a bb gun into the woods. Round here we have loonies trying to carry assault rifles into Chili's and Home Depot. Somehow I feel like things are out of balance slightly and we perhaps need to find a happy medium.

[theinevitable]

In your place you have dads afraid to take a bb gun into the woods.

Or maybe they just... don't want to?

[pmcd9]

It's because they don't own a bb gun because guns are dangerous.

[theinevitable]

I don't smoke cigarettes because they are dangerous, is that the same as being "afraid" of cigarettes?

[pmcd9]

Yes Inev I think a lot of people are very fearful of guns.

[wombat]

A lot of the kids were disappointed with the reality of shooting, compared to media depictions it's kinda boring. Good!

Interesting point.

did I forget to tell this story? I have been living in the same place for like 20 years now. There are two stores that have been here that whole time that I never set foot in till last month, because the cultural gap was so wide. One is a gun store - I went in to look for ear protection for my taiko class. The other is a comic book shop.

I finally went to the comic shop on Free Comic Book Day and I was unsurprised they didn't have the free comic I was looking for, proving that I hadn't missed anything. The gun store was more successful. But both, I had to kind of work up my nerve to walk in the door.

[Carlos del Vaca]

TBogg had a real good piece on how hunters have changed since he was a kid.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/25/i-was-the-nra/

A comic book store opened up in the mall across from my office. This, in principle, is a good thing. However, I don't actually read comic books. I want to support them, but when I go in and look around I have a hard time finding anything I actually want to spend money on.

[wombat]

A postscript to that story is that when that store was useless, I went to a different store listed on the Free Comic Day website and although they also didn't have the free comic I wanted, I ended up spending fifty dollars there - I think that is doing free comic day wrong, but I was glad I found it. I've also gone back to buy another couple of things. They have lots of webcomics books and a big selection of translated Japanese stuff which my local shop doesn't have any of - they are mostly superheroes etc with just a tiny section of graphic novels and indie comics. Whereas when I walked into this other store I immediately found on the first shelf I looked at a half dozen things I already owned, which is a good sign.

I buy most of my books online and I buy nearly all of them as ebooks now, except for comics, which are not fun to read as ebooks. Even the Amazon samples often aren't really useful, so it's good to have a place to look at them physically.

[AugustWest]

I look at guns the same way I look at power tools or motor vehicles.  They'll all severely injure or kill you (or somebody else) if you aren't careful with them, but as long as you approach them with respect they are very safe and extremely useful.  And fun.

[pmcd9]

Also...I think what I was really sniveling about with my original bb gun post is how dads just seem to half-ass it too often for my taste. I mean, these guys knew the opportunities of the area and no one was prepared to take advantage of it. It double chaps me that, when I set up shop for my kid and friends, they were more than willing to let their kids gang in on the experience. How about a little initiative?

And my original post was meant to create a juxtaposition between two radically different views on guns. I don't think that Ash's friends are necessarily fearful of guns, but those people definitely exist. It's why "You'll put your eye out" from The Christmas Story has such currency.

[theinevitable]

Actually, you're right, guns are very different from cigarettes-- cigarettes take years to kill you.

[jaydub]

I look at guns the same way I look at power tools or motor vehicles.  They'll all severely injure or kill you (or somebody else) if you aren't careful with them, but as long as you approach them with respect they are very safe and extremely useful.  And fun.

L,B,T,T
Loaded, Barrel, Target, Trigger
Four simple little rules that every kid should learn before they're out of 6th grade, IMO (or depending on your environment, before they're old enough to encounter one in their day-to-day)

[theinevitable]

Yesterday biking home from work I was stuck in mysterious stopped traffic through several red/green light cycles. Finally decided to do the bad thing and bike between the cars-- at the front was someone trying to turn left at a no-left-turn light. Are you kidding? No one was even honking or yelling at them. The midwest.