LDB415 wrote:I'm sorry but children, and teenagers are definitely children regardless of how much of an exception everyone thinks their own child(ren) is/are. I have two genius daughters who are brilliant and perfect. I would not have let them carry when they were 15/16 because as superior as they were to anyone else's average child they still were not ready for that responsibility. Neither are anyone else's less superior teenagers.
But that is
your decision about
your daughter. My own son has been shooting since he was 5 or 6 years old. He has been working on guns since he was 18, which is also the age at which he made his own firearms purchase....a Mossberg riot gun. I gave him his first pistol at age 18, but he had been shooting mine for years. He had his first AR at age 19.....which he built, by the way. He was already married at 22, and is a father today at 24. Today, he works at a Class III gun dealer where he works on everything from .22 caliber Chipmunks to antique buffalo rifles to select-fire suppressed SBRs.
He has understood from day 1 that, while guns are fun, they CAN and WILL kill somebody if they are misused. Since he was an infant, he has seen two cherished pictures of my dad dandling him at 4 month old on his knee, 4 months before my dad died of cancer.....and he has even cried about it as a young boy, wishing that he had known his "Grampa Dave"......and he has understood from an early age that death takes people away from their loved ones (perhaps permanently, if they have not put their faith in eternal things)....and that stupidity with a firearm can cause that grief in someone's life.
When he turned 18, he asked me if it would be OK if he kept his shotgun in the trunk of his car. Other than a "rules of living under my roof" thing, he didn't need my permission, because he already had the legal right. He asked, because even at "only" 18, there are larger considerations than the merely legal ones. Because he was mature enough to
ask, I judged that he was mature enough for me to say "yes". Sometime around that time, he similarly asked about having his handgun in the car. I told him that,
regardless of what the law says in the matter (or does NOT say, which is equally as important), the same cop who might not be too concerned about finding a shotgun in the trunk of his car might be far less understanding about finding a handgun in the glovebox. He would be out $400 in the unlikely event that the shotgun was confiscated, but he'd be out almost a grand over the price of a Kimber 1911 that would almost certainly be confiscated.....was that worth the risk to him? He's never been rousted by the cops, and he's only ever had one warning ticket as a teenaged driver, but that scenario was a distinct possibility if pulled over. He decided on his own not to carry his pistol in his car......EVEN THOUGH he had the legal right to do so. In other words, he was mature enough to make the right decision on his own, without having to be TOLD what to do. I say "right decision" meaning the "common sense decision".
We never needed the state to tell us what was right and what was wrong. IN FACT, a large part of our discussions were focused on how my son and I should navigate the
roadblocks put up by the state between us and the full expression of our rights.......and not so much on the morality or ethics involved in the exercise of those rights themselves. I wasn't concerned about what he might
do. I was concerned about what might happen
to him. He ALREADY knew that theft, murder, rape, and assault are wrong, he didn't need to be told that doing those things with a gun is what makes them wrong. We
began with the premise that he has a right and he should exercise it, and we considered only the consequences of navigating the infringements upon his rights. EVEN IF one wants to tie that right to militia definitions rather than as a universal right, then my son's right—which shall not be infringed—begins at age 17, not at 18 or 21. But we all know that our right is not restricted to only the able-bodied men, at least 17 and under 45 years old (10 U.S. Code § 311 - Militia: composition and classes). The Constitution itself does not place age limits upon the applicability of the Bill of Rights, thus the 2nd amendment is not restricted to members of the organized militia, and thus any laws which place limits on those rights are de facto infringements.
There is a fundamental principle at work here, one which we all use when we talk about possible legislation to restrict magazine capacity, or universal registration, or limits on the personal ownership of firearms. We argue.....RIGHTLY.....that these restrictions punish the law-abiding and are ignored by the criminally-minded. Well, what about the law-abiding "minor" who shows good judgement? Should he or she have his or her rights infringed because some
other minor did not?
LDB415, I mean no disrespect to either you or your wonderful daughters, but I submit that you are making a
PARENTING decision, concerning
you and
your family........and that is how it
should be. But
your parenting decisions have no place in rearing or controlling the behavior of
my children, anymore than I have any business telling you how to rear yours.
My son amply proved that he had the maturity to handle firearms at an early age. As I've already stated, my concern wasn't whether he was mature enough to have a pistol in his car at age 18, it was about what police might do to him for being so brazen as to exercise his legal right to have that gun in his car.
That is why I advised him not to.
I'm not saying that you raised yours wrong. I
AM saying that we raised ours differently, and I think that this difference in how we raised them is at the core of whether or not we think they are
mature and responsible enough to be trusted in public with a firearm. I've trusted him implicitly with guns for years.....in no small part because he
values and pays heed to my advice about them. Now he is old enough and independent enough to make his own decisions without having to consult me.....and yet, he still does on occasion.
The Christmas before my son's 21st birthday in January, I gave both him and his then-fiancé (now wife) their CHL class for a Christmas gift. Now they both carry daily, and have ever since they got their plastic.
I just think that this is a paradigm shift that some people are not going to get past, and others are. For my son and me, guns and shooting were always a father/son thing, just like fishing or other activities. We didn't bond over AYSO soccer or Pop Warner football. We bonded over range trips and fishing trips. Maybe you did or didn't with your kids, but whatever the case, you never developed that confidence in your child's judgement that I have in mine........but does that mean that my son's rights should be curtailed because of your lack of confidence in your own daughter' stability to exercise good judgement with a gun?
I very strongly disagree with you.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT
) a firearm to their child without violating Texas law, as long as the firearm isn't loaded when the child gets it. (46.13) 
