I was two years old when I first pulled the trigger of a firearm.
It was a leafless time of the year -- spring or autumn, I don't remember. What is vivid in my mind is the walk into the woods behind our house in rural Massachusetts. All four of us -- my mother, father, sister and I -- crossed the small, southern-facing field that tilted uphill to the right and then entered the fringe of the woods that started before the rim of the valley. The path to the valley floor was steep and passed a huge boulder on the left and then, below the boulder, a sheer rock cliff ten to twelve feet high. At the bottom of the cliff, the land sloped down gently to a swamp. Slender maple trees grew there among the hummocks of grass, and a seasonal stream flowed around the hummocks during the leafless months and into budding springtime.
My father, known to all as Archie, carried the weapon, a .22 calibre Colt pistol nicknamed the "Woodsman". My mother could have carried it just as easily. Before Janet and I were born, my parents hunted together in the forests of northern New Hampshire, and our mother wore a .38 Special, another, larger Colt pistol, strapped to her thigh.
I would have to assume that our trek out behind the house that day when I was two was part ritual, an event designed to indoctrinate me in the family bias for firearms and my father's belief in the wisdom of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
If that was the purpose, it apparently achieved half of its goals.
I no longer own a firearm of any sort, having made a decision against ownership many years ago.
But I believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an important right in any representative democracy.
My good friend Elaine Foster recently introduced me to a quote by James Madison, the fourth United States President, who is credited with being the author of the Bill of Rights. He said, in part, "Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, as well as by the abuse of power."
The wisdom of Madison's observation can be seen in the recent events in Arizona. In a gun-friendly state, the alleged assailant had no problem buying a firarm and ammunition. His abuse of his right to purchase those items is now being used by those thoughtful individuals who believe firearms should be more heavily controlled.
(I make no comment on his mental health. Gun control advocates would no doubt argue that the question of his mental stability did not enter into the decision to sell him a weapon, and that it should have.) The desire of gun control advocates is, of course, to take away one of our liberties because they see it as a threat to society.
I do not own a firearm because I have seen how the availability of such a weapon to one whose judgment is temporarily or permanently impaired can lead to tragedy.
But I believe that I should be able to own a firearm and that government should not be able to prevent me from ownership.
An armed citizenry is a psychological check on government officials at every level, a reminder to them in brute terms that it is the public who elected them or their bosses and the individual members of the public who, ultimately, are their bosses.
We have sufficient laws that make the improper use of a firearm illegal. The proof is on display in Arizona. The alleged assailant is in jail, facing a life of imprisonment.
But there is a natural, and understantable, reaction to that young man's actions, a thought that had he somehow been prevented from acquiring a weapon, his attack would never have come about. The easy method to prevent his acquisition of a gun is at hand, one thinks. Pass a law.
But you cannot prevent insanity -- either temporary or permanent -- with a law. If guns are manufactured, they will be available. If they are not, then our Arizona assailant could have accomplished his initial purpose -- an attack on a member of Congress -- with a hatchet.
You cannot prevent human imperfection with laws.
On that leafless day in the swamp behind our house, Archie took an empty tin can and placed it upside down on a stick he had jammed into the mud. Then, twenty feet from the can, he wrapped his arms around me. He closed my small hand around the grip of the pistol, placing my right index finger on the trigger. He told me that we were shooting down, into the swamp, because then the bullet, when it passed through the can, would disappear harmlessly into the mud. He told me you never shot a weapon if you did not know what was behind your target. And he told me to never, ever point a weapon at another person.
Then he told me to pull the trigger.
What I remember most vividly is the smell of burned gunpowder. It was a wonderful smell.
And then there was the sight of that small hole in the can, our target.
In the years to come, I looked forward to getting my own firarm. It happened to be a Mossberg .22 calibre carbine with a carrying sling, like a military rifle. I believe I was fourteen when I received it -- probably as a birthday present. (There was a BB gun before that.)
I was allowed to roam the woods and the rural roadways with my rifle, for by then I had been taught an appreciation of the dangers it posed. I'm absolutely certain that my possession of that rifle, or the shotgun I got later, or of my father's 30/30 rifle that I took deer hunting in Vermont when I was in college, never was a threat to any other human (and very few animals.)
I don't know whether my mother ever shot anything more animate than a tin can. By the time I knew her, she was more intersted in looking at nature than in killing it. When she went in the woods, she brought binoculars with which she hunted birds to identify and put on her life list.
I probably was influenced by her when I decided I didn't need or want a firearm in my home.
But like James Madison, who authored the Second Amendment, I want to be able to have one, and I don't want a law in our land that tells me I can't.