Already testy, each of the rounds got deeper under my skin until I was compelled out of the back door and two doors down to Phil's place. All of the day’s aggravation wound up and let loose onto these relative strangers as I began yelling over the latest blast, "Okay, now you’re fucking with my quiet enjoyment!" I also said some other choice words, The response I received from Phil's girlfriend Jen, who I'd not yet been introduced to, was, “You could have asked nicer.”
"You're right," I answered, embarrassed (to put it mildly). I added some additional words of contrition and then made my way back to my cottage.
I was so mad at myself for losing my temper; I carried that feeling around like a rock for two days, until I saw Phil again and was able to apologize further. But, I can't unshoot that gun now.
A few summers back my husband and I gained a reputation for being anti-gun activists because we'd proposed a rule wherein campers would only discharge their guns on their private weeks but would refrain from doing so on weekends when there was a great deal of drinking going on, children running about and many more people around. This prompted another member to write a twenty page diatribe about us and how we'd gotten the language for our "manifesto" from an anti-gun website. I can't tell you how absurd this was to us. First of all I am not an activist anything, oh I did attend “The Rally to Restore Sanity/and or Fear,” if that counts. And I’m opinionated and politically informed and a flaming Liberal. But that's the extent of me being "active." I'll add that I'm pro-second amendment. Although I do believe there should be more discretion used with regard to who is permitted to buy weapons, this cause is really not something I get all worked up over, or give money to, for instance.
This is not the case, however, with my gun owning friends who cast any objection to their shooting their weapons into, "you’re a communist freedom hater and you're tryna take away my gun” territory.
I'm so mad at myself for feeding this beast.
Do I think shooting fish over the bridge is stupid? Do I think it’s really dumb for an adult man (mid-sixties minimum) to fire shotgun rounds into the opposite creek bank? Do I think it's sad for a little six year old boy to be allowed and encouraged to shoot his BB gun killing a hapless baby finch? Do I think you should not be firing your gun at 4 am after eight hours of drinking? Do I prefer guns be used for hunting and believe you should be hunting for food, not sport? Do I wish you'd refrain from shooting your gun until there aren't people around or to off hours, other than a Sunday afternoon?
Yes. Yes, to all of those questions. But I don't care if you own a gun. Obviously I'm not that seriously worried or why would I march down to a man with a loaded weapon and start cussing him out? Okay a lingering death-wish might enter here but I think it's more to the point that I wasn't afraid and I yelled because I was mad and it was noisy and I wanted to be heard.
I simply wish I hadn't been so rude and I promised Phil that the next time I would approach him rationally if I had a problem.
As I said, I can't unshoot that gun. Already, word is spread among nearby 'gunnies' like wild fire (and I'm here to tell you that men are some of the worst gossips I've ever encountered) that Meg is up in arms about guns, again.
Phil said to me, “Well we were just drinking some beers and though it’d be okay to fire some rounds.”
I think of the term cocksure, as relates to guns. And of the men I know who feel a need to shoot guns. “I have three in my car right now,” one said. And here’s where I go off half-cocked and begin thinking more about cocks, and maybe that some of these fish-shooting-dirt-shooting-bird-shooting gun owners feel a little small and therefore need a gun to compensate. Not me, I’ll fire my mouth off at your gun any day of the week!
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