Growing up in rural Texas, I should have been hunting deer from the time I could carry a gun. But, my dad wasn't around to do any kid-raising, and my mom's father, the male authority figure in my life, was not a hunter, although he was a rifle-carrying soldier in WW1. A couple of times when I was a teenager, I was invited to go hunting with friends. This turned out to be an excursion with a 22 rifle through some country acreage they owned, basically shooting anything that moved. I shot a red-headed woodpecker... he stayed there on the tree for a moment, then fell straight cold dead to the ground, not even flapping a wing. I shot an armadillo, who started leaping in the air and doing flips, landing on his back or side. I was mortified to realize what pain I had put him in, and tried to get closer so I could finish him off, but he ran off into the woods. And that was about it for my momentous hunting trip.
As an adult, for a while I kept chickens for eggs, and for the fun of it. I discovered that a possum was visiting the henhouse at night, eating eggs and killing chickens, so I bought a gun, a 22 pistol. I went out after dark once and found a possum on a limb of a tree overhanging the henhouse. I shot him twice, killing him. Then I looked around at the apartments nearby and wondered if anybody would call the cops because of the gunshots. They didn't.
Another time, I went out to the henhouse and shone my flashlight inside, to find a possum poised right beside one of the hens up on the roost, which was about shoulder height. I shot this guy twice, too, and killed him. After shooting, I looked at the wall of the henhouse and wondered if the bullets had gone through the possum and through the wall, and if so, what did they hit on the other side of the wall? I had no idea whether or not anybody happened to be walking along the stretch of land behind the henhouse.
After I dispatched the two possums, I didn't need the gun any more, but I didn't get rid of it. I disassembled it. I took out the cylinder, which was held in place by a screw-in pin. I put the cylinder in a secret place in my bedroom, the pin in another in my desk drawer in the living room, and the gun up in the top of my closet. I locked the bullets in a drawer out in my workshop. One day just outside my workshop I found a spent 22 shell. I checked the bullets in the locked drawer; sure enough, one was missing. I confronted my sons with the empty shell and demanded to know what was going on. They admitted to having dug around through the house until they found all the parts, assembled the gun, got a key to the drawer, put a bullet in it, and fired it into the ground "just to see what would happen."
The next day, I took the gun to the police station and gave it to them, asking for a written receipt which identified the gun and stated that I had turned it over to them. I don't remember why I chose to do this rather than sell it to a pawn shop; I just remember that it seemed like the best thing to do at the time. No doubt it served some officer well as a throw-down in a shooting somewhere.
I haven't owned a gun since, and don't particularly care to.
About injuring or killing other humans:
I would prefer not to. If there's a way out of it, I'll try to find it. But there are conditions where it would be necessary, in my mind.
For example: if my child were being attacked with the obvious intent to kill him. If my daughter were being attacked with obvious intent to rape her. In such circumstances the chance that talk will accomplish anything is slim. Assuming that I had the means to shoot such a person, I would give him one verbal warning. If he understood me yet didn't immediately back off, I would shoot him. If he died, his death would not cause me any guilt. I'm sure I would have emotional trauma from the incident, but not due to guilt over it.
As an agnostic, I understand that reality is not determined and held in check by the tidy set of rights and rules of behavior that we've created for ourselves. We have no God-granted or Universe-ordained "right" to be here, to be living, to keep living. My child can die, and the universe will not so much as bat an eye. My wife can be raped and strangled afterward, and God will not lift a finger to stop it. My own life can be threatened, and neither God nor angels nor universal destiny will intervene to save me.
And so it comes down to this: of this world, of life, of continuing existence, I will have exactly as much as I take for myself. If a man threatens my life, the choice is: stand by idly and let him kill me; or keep my life by fighting him. Life, to me, is enjoyable enough to fight for. I may not have any particular right to it; it may not be God-given or universe-sanctioned; but it exists--I have it right now, whether rightfully or not--and I'm going to keep it. I'm going to fight for it. The guy who wants to take it from me will attempt to do so at the risk of his own.
I would kill to protect my children. My own life is worth as much as my children's; I am not less than them. I would kill to protect my own life. And I would not feel guilty afterward, either. The attacker will have known the risk he was running when he made the choice to attempt killing me. And if he didn't know the risk... oh, well... somehow, I just can't get upset over it.
COMF
