Saturday, 9 December 2017

Growing Up Guns Are Bad

I want to start by putting it all on the table.  I think it is important to be transparent about where I come from so that no one thinks I have some agenda other than sharing my interests and passions.  To be clear, this is a blog about Food, Hunting, and Firearms in BC.  So lets get down to it...

I grew up in a house where guns were equated with bad.  What's interesting is that it wasn't a hard and fast rule that guns were bad in my house growing up, but just that modern looking military guns were bad.  This meant I could have cap guns that were orange or neon green, cowboy revolver or pirate musket cap guns, and super soakers, but I wasn't allowed to have G.I. Joe.  For that matter, I wasn't even allowed to watch Ninja Turtles because it was too violent.

Generally, what I think is that my parents were, and still are, very worried about violence in society and unnecessary wars.  I know that for both my parents, watching the US go to war in Vietnam was very formative in their young adulthood and that the gun culture in the states is seen as responsible for much of the violence and murders we see south of the border.

Through university I played a lot of World of Warcraft.  I ran a guild of over 100 paladins at one point.  It was a great inexpensive way to pass the time between classes.  Eventually I graduated and decided to start leveling myself rather than my character.  I began running regularly and I took up a martial art called iaido.  It is the ancient Japanese samurai martial art of drawing and using the katana sword.  I love it to this day and practice as much as I can.

Through friends I made in iaido and through a colleague at work, I was slowly introduced to firearms and decided I wanted to learn to shoot and get my gun license.   We'll get into that whole process later.

Next up... why I love food.