Gun-hating Grandmother Tries
to Divide Loving Family
by Michael Z. Williamson
daggers@indy.net
"Well,
yes, there was one small detail. I own guns."
February 6, 2001
As I write this, I am faced with the (hopefully
slim) but real chance that my children will be taken away from me.
Morrigan Kayleigh, age 3. Eric Bryan, age 10
days.
Why? It seems their maternal grandparents don’t
approve of how Gail and I live our lives. "I reported you
to Child Protective Services today," says my mother-in-law to my wife of
ten years. "And I hope it makes you mad that I did it."
At one time, we lived in a 1700 square foot
house. We now live in an 800 square foot house. There simply aren’t any houses
that size in our rental price range in this town. Ironically, the smaller house
is cheaper here. While we were able to dispose of much excess baggage and
furniture and two cats, we still have a lot of personal property. Over 14,000
books, office clutter and gear, my machine tools, Gail’s sewing shop and
crates of fabric, my guitars, bass, keyboard and signal processors. Add the
usual clothing, stuff, and household bric-a-brac, and this place is full.
They made this threat previously when Morrigan
was born. To be honest, that house was a mess. Papers, fabric, computers and
equipment scattered throughout the common room. However, trash was removed
daily, food kept refrigerated as needed, dangerous objects put away. I make a
weekly effort to clean and organize my stuff. I can’t organize Gail’s stuff
though, and she’s a slob.
Why is she a slob? Well, let’s look at the
record:
Whenever we have visited her parents’ home,
her mother follows around picking up dishes, misplaced items, and dropped
packages. Gail never learned to clean up, because it was done for her. While I
certainly could go through her stuff and sort it for her, anyone married or in a
long term relationship will understand that such actions do not help relations
any.
I cook, take care of yard work and trash, do
repairs and maintenance.
Gail is tasked with general cleaning, dishes,
vacuuming and pickup.
With a three year old, that last is a full time
chore all by itself. Two months of gestational diabetes (she lost weight during
the first half and last month of her pregnancy) and the subsequent recovery from
squeezing out an 8 lb, 9 oz baby boy made any recent efforts impossible.
Likewise, I can either work at my store, or pay someone to do it. I choose the
former, not being made of green folding stuff.
So, the house is a mess. Anything else?
Well, it seems that after turning down an
invite to dinner for her birthday, Grandma "stayed home" with her
grandkids, and snooped about the house. I neither know nor care if she found
copies of the erotica I write and publish. Likewise, I don’t care if my
reference books on religion, politics, tribalism, warfare, the occult or
cannibalism meet with her approval. The point is, neither Gail nor I gave her
permission to dig through our belongings. Silly of me as a child of 34, I
suppose, but I assume I will be granted the same consideration of privacy I give
them or anyone else in their own home.
When all this hit the fan, Grandma being on her
way to an early departure at the airport, I called her husband. He admitted to
"Some knowledge" of what was going on, and stated that it was up to me
to "force" my wife to do the housework.
Really now.
I suppose since their upbringing failed in this
crucial feminine role of housekeeper and cook, that I should take over the task.
Perhaps I should also follow the Biblical theory of not striking her with a rod
thicker than my thumb? No, they are not particularly religious, but their
assumptions are appalling in their archaicness.
Well, I confess to being a lousy traditional
husband and father. For the first seven years of marriage and two years of my
daughter’s life, I stayed home weekdays and traveled weekends, and sometimes
took my daughter with me. I find nothing unmanly about feeding a baby, changing
a diaper, and keeping my children near me and not under a babysitter.
So, the house is, by their standards, a mess.
But it’s not unsanitary, it’s not dangerous, so there’s no issue here. Of
course, their home is a brand new 3500 square foot home in the Tucson Mountains,
with a maid. That is the standard they judge by, and it just isn’t going to
happen here in the next five years.
Some mess? That’s all? Nothing else?
Well, yes, there was one small detail. I own
guns.
Now, I have owned guns since the day I turned
18. I have been in the military, either active or reserve since I was 18. I
shoot competitively in combat pistol and combat rifle, as well as civilian
archery. I hold trophies and medals from both the Army and the Air Force. To
this end, I have target rifles and pistols. I have hunted on occasion, and I
shoot trap on occasion. To this end, I have shotguns.
Before my annual military rifle qualification,
I put a few hundred rounds down range for practice. On the rare occasions when
the weather is nice and I have a day off, I drive to Camp Aterbury Reserve Base
and utilize their range to hold off an invading horde of Evil Communist Soda
Cans. I’m proud of the fact that I can dispose of ten cans in ten seconds at
100 meters. Standing. Right handed. (I am a lefty.)
I also collect antique firearms dating back to
WWI and even to the last century. Few of those see action, as ammo no longer
exists for most of them, and I can’t afford a custom load.
None of this justification is necessary,
however. In Indiana, I have the right to own and carry anything from a Deringer
to an M-60 machinegun. I have the right to own but not carry (for obvious
practical reasons) field artillery, interceptor aircraft, or just about anything
short of a nuke. I don’t need a justification. In this state, people who don’t
own weapons are in the vast minority.
My weapons are stored in a large pantry. Most
have the bolts removed or are otherwise deactivated when not in use for several
reasons—I am a trained professional, after all. The ammunition and any
relevant loaders, clips and magazines are stored on an upper shelf. Since a 3
year old can’t even lift a Remington 870 police shotgun, much less assemble,
load, and point, even if all parts were present, I see no risk. Nor does the
State of Indiana. The only exception is my carry weapon, a Colt 1911A1 .45
pistol, which when not on my person, is in a fannypack holster on top of the
refrigerator. I am confident a 3 year old cannot reach it, open it, unsnap it,
take out the weapon, remove the safety, handle it so as to open the grip safety,
and pull the trigger while I am in the house. As the children age, I will take
appropriate precautions relevant to the situation. I am in compliance with all
Federal, State, and reasonable safety standards, and no one with lesser
qualifications on the subject of small arms has any right or business suggesting
otherwise.
Now, Gail’s parents have known since day one
that I have weapons. It was never an issue until…that magic day.
That magic day when we visited, and her father
was told that his daughter had a breakaway holster built into her purse, a
Taurus model 606 ported snub .357, and the training necessary to use it. Since
we sell weapons (knives, swords, police supplies and martial arts gear), and
carry large amounts of cash, any civilized jurisdiction grants us the same right
as a courier or armored car driver. But this was his little girl. 27 years old
at the time, but his little girl.
At this point, we got media canned speech
number 1: quoting self-styled Professor Arthur Kellerman’s statistical
masturbation that "A gun in the home is 43
times more likely to be used against you than against a criminal."
First of all, it’s bull. Not only was this fool discredited, he later admitted
himself that he was wrong.
Second of all, owning guns is far safer than
smoking in bed, using candles or space heaters, or sticking 50 appliances into
one outlet.
Third of all, it’s my home, and if I want an
opinion, I’ll give it.
Two otherwise intelligent people -- brainwashed
by the repeated lies of the rating-seeking news whores -- took it upon
themselves to dictate what legal activity I may engage in, based on an
assumption.
The assumption, that because I own guns, I’m
a deranged lunatic waiting to go on a killing spree. The assumption that I must
have seething inner hatred and must be waiting to explode at any time. Never
mind that most cops and veterans own guns. Never mind that 83 million people own
guns in the US, and that less than 1/100 of a percent of those commit actionable
crimes in any given year. Never mind that Gail’s father owns a gun -- and has
done so longer than his daughter has been alive.
"He owns a gun? Isn’t that
hypocritical?", you ask. Why yes. Of course, his gun isn’t my (plural)
guns. His gun isn’t the gun his daughter carries for protection when she
carries a bankroll, and his gun is handled by an "adult."
Now, one
would think that if I really were a threat to human existence, simply by owning
a gun, that I would have raced this meddling, intrusive grandma to the airport
and gunned her down. Or perhaps I’d rush home to create a bizarre
murder-suicide for the evening news. I could poetically climb the Veteran’s
Memorial tower and treat the city to a Valentine’s gift of a Charles Whitman
Sampler. Did any of this occur to the concerned grandparents?
No. Why not? Because after 10 years, they know
inside that I am a decent person, that I rarely raise my voice, never commit
violence except in defense of the helpless, and hardly have any speeding
tickets. They know I stop after two beers, that I never use drugs, that I hold
that individuals -- not upbringing or inanimate objects -- cause crime.
But, they also know I’m a gun owner. And for
their daughter to marry a "gun owner" in the 90s is morally equivalent
to her marrying a "nigger" in the 50s. Back then, the bigots were
racists; now they are gun-bigots. One must assume the worst. Simply for the good
of the family, of course.
So, in a house that is kept clean of filth and
unsanitary conditions, due to my years as a restaurant manager; where kitchen
knives are kept on a 5 foot shelf, due to the fact that I own a cutlery business
and know what knives can do; where household chemicals are kept 8 feet off the
ground or outside, due to my concern about my children; where there’s a fire
extinguisher and field surgical kit in the bathroom, kitchen, basement, shop and
both cars, due to my military training; and where the weapons are stored safely
and with care, due again to my military training; a little clutter and the
epithet "gun owner" warrants a call to Child Protective Services. I
suppose I should count myself fortunate that my wife’s choice of religion, my
lack of religion, and the details of our personal and social lives—all legal,
and irrelevant here—aren’t known to these meddling fools.
If I were a praying person, I’d pray that
when the CPS people show up, whenever they deign to grace us with their
unwarranted presence, we get the reasonable ones who understand overreactive
relatives, and not the "for God’s sake take the children now before this
lunatic blows his top, and he can hire a lawyer to get them back" inept
idiot accompanied by two armed deputies to seize my weapons.
Because, in America today, despite any talk of
rights, independence, and due process, the accusation is all it takes. One is
presumed guilty, assumed guilty, maintained guilty until overwhelming,
incontrovertible evidence and legal fees prove otherwise, and then the resulting
financial insolvency may be used against you. And even if one wins, THEY may
return whenever and as often as they wish. Refusing to allow them in without a
warrant will simply cause them to obtain a warrant, armed officers, and assume
once again that you are unworthy of someone else’s definition of "good
parents." I repeat: these are otherwise rational, intelligent people—an
engineer and a CPA—who truly feel that they know better what is good for my
family, and feel inclined to violate my privacy, my authority, demand fealty
from me and demand that I "force" my wife to comply with the standards
they neglected to instill in her as a child.
Neither of us are children. Neither of us will
be treated as such, and neither of us will stoop to their sociopathic level.
I asked KeepAndBearArms.com Founder/Director
Angel Shamaya for input today, and after we talked, we discussed my sharing this
story with you. He urged me, under these circumstances, to be as polite and
circumspect as possible for this article. I’m afraid I can’t quite
accommodate his request. I firmly believe that these people are intrusive,
elitist, paranoid, obsessive freaks.
I will play this out as the law requires. I
will retain my children.
And the grandparents have simply chosen an
exotic means of ensuring that they never see their grandchildren, never cross my
threshold, never pollute my property with their shadows again.
Copyright 2001 by Michael Z.
Williamson. All rights reserved. See other articles by Mr. Williamson at http://www.KeepAndBearArms.com/Williamson
and http://www.jules.org.
