Canadian - no kids. Best friend is American - lots and lots of guns.
It was strange at first when we went to gun range but, after you got used to seeing them, it was a hobby, that’s all.
Don’t hide it. That would make me more nervous than the hobby itself.
You sound responsible. After all, guns don’t kill people, people do.
Another Calgarian.
I wouldn’t hide your hobby - it’s just a hobby. I’m not sure I would go crazy showing parents around the place showing them your gun locker and weapons, etc. that might freak people out, but I think you could mention it in a usual way.
FWIW, my dad was an award winning hobby marksman while I was growing up and I only found out about it about 4 years ago (I’m 35). It’s possible to have it as a hobby without it being a huge deal.
American, very liberal socially, pro-gun control, no children yet.
My position on gun control is mostly predicated on my distrust of the average person’s intellegence and level of responsibility. So, if you told me about it and explained your precautions as you have here, and you didn’t seem crazy and/or stupid (which you don’t), I would absolutely be fine with it. In fact, if we became friends instead of just our children being friends, I’d probably try to get you to teach me to shoot (at a gun range), just because I always wanted to try it.
I would, however, be unhappy if I found out that you had guns of any type in the house without informing me, for any purpose, secured properly or not. Everyone has different risk tolerances, and you should allow the parent to make the call about whether or not they trust you in this. (At least for the “your house” part - forbidding the friendship at all would be insane.)
Plenty of people, though they’re obviously not anything like common in most places. For ethical reasons, “crunchy granola types”, pacifists, certain religions, people with phobias, etc.
Just think about how many people in the world would have a problem with their child receiving a vaccination, playing with a child from a different religion, playing with a child of a homosexual couple, or drinking soda containing aspertame. I think they’re all idiots, of course, but plenty of them exist.
Yep, Buffy fan. Actually, more of a Bad-Accent-Mocker, but Buffy fan, too. I’m pleased someone recognized the reference.
As a bit of a hijack, I have a 13 year old with an ASD. You sound as if you have lots of resources and supports in place, but if you ever need any more information, I’d be happy to help, if I can. Social skills training, in particular, has been wonderful for my son, and I hope yours finds it just as beneficial.
Locked up and unloaded, I don’t think you have an obligation to tell me, but it would be nice if you did. (We often tell parents of kids coming over that our kids play video games - some of which are violent - although we aren’t the type of household to play or permit Grand Theft Auto. When other people’s kids are over at our house, movies are limited to PG - my kids are now nine and ten - it isn’t necessary to tell parents I own a copies of Secretary and Bound - my kids aren’t even aware of them). A little of it depends on the extent of the “gun culture” inside your home…if guns are a hobby activity for your whole family, talked about, everyone goes out shooting - and I’m likely to hear the stories filtered through an eight year old, I’d rather hear from you before a misunderstanding occurs. If my eight year old is never going to know about the guns because your own children are barely aware they are kept in the house, I don’t care.
Another Calgarian, beyond liberal (more like NDP) and a 5th generation Albertan.
People in my family own guns, shoot guns, and I have no problem with your hobby, and if I had children, I would not be worried at all. The locals (what is left of us) won’t care one bit, because many of us have grown up with the cowboy culture, and it is almost a given that either our parents or grandparents have guns. Another three quarters of Calgary’s population comes from Saskatchewan and Newfoundland which shares a love of guns. Almost nobody would even blink at the thought of your hobby.
I don’t see this as a problematic lie but rather more of a polite fiction. If you’d been away at couples therapy or a religious revival or a Renaissance Fair, you might similarly decide that it was too personal or too embarrassing to discuss with others.
Sask farmgirl, liberal. I grew up with the rifle in the porch closet with the winter coats and the ammo in a cardboard box on the shelf above it.
The machete (!) was in the storage section of the porch bench as well. So, um, you can guess my answer.
Once my aunt called my dad up and just said ‘There’s magpies!’. So, of course, Dad hops in the truck to go shoot down some magpies. Hee.
There are ways to answer impertinent questions - you say “oh, I was off at a retreat” - and immediately ask a follow up question of them “what were you doing last weekend?” to make sure it isn’t pursued.
There are some things that shouldn’t be pursued by polite people “I had a family thing” - “I was off with friends” - but since many people are not polite enough to understand a vague answer means “none of your god damned business” - immediately changing the subject is as critical as the vague answer - and doesn’t require any actual lie or polite fiction.
The problem with an outright lie (golf vs. gun range) is that if you get caught people feel betrayed.
The problem with not coming clean to start with is that people are often more reasonable about these things than you expect. See the lack of liberal outrage in this thread regarding having guns. We’ve discovered - after two years - that our daughter’s best friends’ father is an atheist - as is Brainiac4. Suddenly the dance both sides have been doing has been discovered to be unnecessary.
Yes, but . . .
There is another problem with this polite fiction over the truth–trupa has passed over the opportunity to say “One of my hobbies is shooting handguns” in a non-threatening context. Not the end of the world, no, but a casual mention of his interests might be a way of gauging whether the reaction of the actual parents he’s dealing with would react like many of us in this thread or by shunning him.
Now, maybe I’m over thinking this, and I’ve already admitted to my childless state and my lack of Canadian-ness, but to me, finding out that someone has guns or an interest in guns when I don’t have to decide if that’s a threat to my kid’s safety is a good thing. Sounds better than “Um, hey, my kid wants yours to come over for the afternoon, but I think I should warn you, I’m a gun-owner” which itself beats “Hey, Mom, guess what? Friend’s Dad has an awesome collection of hunting rifles!” as a way to find out.
Now maybe the details of this particular event are such that trupa would have sounded more like he was saying “Hi, My name is Trupa and I’m a Gun Nut” rather than “Oh, by the way, I’m a responsible gun-owner with a special interest in target shooting handguns”. In which case, yeah, a polite fiction may have been the way to go.
Thanks lexi, I knew about the large numbers of folks from Saskatchewan and Newfies (God bless’em-I love Newfies) in Calgary, but I didn’t know about their cultural take on guns. Ignorance fought.
Oh, and you’ve got to come to our next Cowtown dope fest too.
This.
I’m a bleeding heart liberal and have well above-average skills with firearms. Mostly I get a great amount of satisfaction from target shooting, never having shot an animal. But I also think it’s foolish to believe we will never (although admittedly unlikely) need to form civil militias and so I’m all about reasonable gun stewardship.
I think you’re conflating “Liberal” and “Naive Pussy.”
That’s probably because of the current leader of the Liberal Party in Canada. 
I’ll second (third?) the Saskatchewan cultural take on guns. Every farm has them (gophers don’t just kill themselves, you know), and a lot of people hunt every fall. The school I went to in a small Saskatchewan town had a firearms safety course available to teenagers when they were going to start going out hunting with their dads. We had a couple of rifles or shotguns in my house growing up. The gun registry was NOT the idea of westerners who have attitudes towards guns very much like what you’ve seen in this thread. It’s a little unusual to meet someone who shoots handguns recreationally, but we’re not a bunch of gunophobes.
My reaction would be, “Does my Timmy need to bring his own ammo or do you have enough for everybody?”
Dammit, sqweels, you nearly cost me a new keyboard!
(it frequently is 
)
Whatever replies you get here are not what you need to be thinking about - if you lived nearby, I had a kid your son’s age, they wanted to play…
Well, you don’t, I don’t, they don’t.
What you need to concern yourself about is the neighbor who’s going to freak, and start a don’t-let-kid-play-with-pgun-nut’s-kid campaign.
The weapons are in a safe. Nice. WHAT THE HELL KIND OF “SAFE”?
I know what a gun safe looks like. Your nightmare neighbor doesn’t.
I’m hoping the safe is small and innocous-looking.
Would a couple of pics:
Once other kids come inside to play, some are eventually going to ask “what’s that?”. Hopefully, the truthful answer will evoke the same “oh, so that’s what that is” response kids often have - they get around to moralizing/condeming when they are older.
If there is a parent for whom “gun = demon spawn, owned only by psychopaths” , this problem will erupt - whether or not it does in this thread.
Message board <> reality. Be ready for reality
You just never know. One of the best shots with a handgun I ever met was a woman who was a professor of philosophy at a university. She looked like the last person you’d find who enjoyed such a thing; but she did, and she was good at it too. I don’t think her hobby or her accomplishments in it or were well-known outside our gun club though.
Left-wing gun nut checking in.
My daughter…a tall, blonde, esoteric Interior Design major…turned me on to shooting. She packs a Bersa Thunder .38 semi-automatic pistol (MO is a conceal and carry state). She and her boyfriend took me to the range a year ago and the rest is history. The girl can get seven rounds within 6 inches of critical mass on a target at 25 yards…the first time we went she showed me her “real” ammo…hollow point rounds. “Dad,” she said, “I live alone…if someone comes into my place and they don’t belong there, they won’t get a warning shot.”
Come to think of it, my school near Toronto had an indoor rifle range, and I participated in a few shooting competitions in Boy Scouts. Presently, at the other end of the province, the building two doors down from my office is a shooting range and gun shop. OH NOES!!! ME’S GONNA DIE!!! Or maybe not.
My guess is that having target shooting or hunting as a hobby will not phase many Canadians.
Saskatchewan is more rural than Alberta. Of course guns are common.