My paternal grandmother was by all accounts a saintly woman. During her life she raised or partially raised twenty children—six from her husband’s previous marriage, six from her own marriage, and eight from my father’s first marriage. I was told that she was at one time staying with a family member in Knoxville who lived in a shotgun house. For the less enlightened, a shotgun house was narrow and had a door in front and a door in back, arranged so that a bullet fired from a shotgun could go in the front door and out the back without hitting anything.
“Mother Mincey”, as she was lovingly called, took sick and had to be transported to the hospital. The ambulance drivers were having a hard time getting the stretcher through the doorways in the small house. My father said, “D--- a shotgun house! Looks like it could have been a ten gauge!”
My dad was no stranger to guns. I remember him going rabbit and squirrel hunting. Dad slept in the living room year-round, in the winter because the Warm Morning heating stove was also in the living room, and in the summer because he was a creature of habit and hated any of the furniture being rearranged. When I was growing up, Dad kept a shotgun on a rack above his bed in the living room. Dad had many shotguns over the years. He had one gun that became his after his friend Tom Arwood died. Dad said he would never part with that gun; however, Dad was a trader, and practically anything he had would at some point be traded for something usually of less value than what he traded away. There was also an incredibly long nail in the wall just below the gun rack. Dad kept a pistol hanging on that nail.
Whenever I hear an advertisement, commercial or other piece of propaganda about the need of keeping guns locked up to keep children from hurting or killing themselves or others, I think of my father. Why, even though those guns were in my plain sight and reach every day, were they not a threat to my safety?
It wasn’t lack of accessibility. I could have, at any time I chose, made like Ma Bell and “reached out and touched” or picked one of them up.
It wasn’t fear of the guns that kept me away from them, either. I have always had a healthy, fearful respect for firearms. I shot a couple of guns, always with proper adult supervision. I presently don’t own a gun, never have, nor do I have a desire to ever own one.
So what kept the guns safe from me and me safe from them? It was fear—fear of and respect for my father’s discipline. I was made to understand that guns were dangerous, lethal weapons that could injure or kill someone, even me. Dad was a product of the “old school”, and it wasn’t fear of accidental injury or death that kept me away from those guns. It was the fear of surviving an accident and having to face my father’s wrath. Those guns were as safe from me as I was safe from them. My father only whipped me once when I was in second grade, but that whipping was reminiscent of an old Domino’s Pizza commercial—one call [did] it all. Until the day he died, I never needed another yardstick broken over my behind.
Please understand, Dear Reader. I do not recommend that guns to be accessible to children. Though I was immune to the lure of touching or playing with a real firearm, not all children are so inclined. Keeping guns locked out of the reach of children is definitely the wisest, safest measure.
I also favor anyone’s right to own a firearm legally. One of my elderly cousins was able to scare robbers away from her secluded home in the middle of the night because she scared them away with a gunshot in the dark.
I remember once that Dad let me hold his shotgun. I put the butt to my shoulder and scanned the living room. I wasn’t aiming at anything, but Dad hit the floor when he came within the gun’s sights. Dad took the gun away from me, telling me to never aim a gun at any person, whether loaded or unloaded.
In our house there was reason for this concern. I was in the yard one day when I heard a shot from inside the house. I rushed into the living room and found Dad with the pistol in his hands. He had been cleaning the gun when it fired. Even Dad wasn’t foolproof with the gun. He thought he had removed all the bullets, but one remained in the chamber. There was a hole in the wallboard that stayed as a constant reminder of the value of gun safety. Even though there was no exit hole for the bullet on the outside of the house, Mother fretted that Dad could have killed me if the bullet had gone through the clapboard siding while I was in the yard.
I leave you, Dear Reader, with some of the tidbits regarding guns that I have received in emails throughout the years. I share these only for reflection, not to speak for or against any political persuasions or individual choice to own or not own a gun.

During WWII, U.S. Airplanes were armed with belts of ammo, which they would shoot during dogfights and on strafing runs. These belts were folded into the wing compartments that fed their machine guns. These belts measure 27 feet and contained hundreds of cartridges. Often times, the pilots would return from their missions having expended all of their bullets on various targets. They would say, "I gave them the whole nine yards," meaning they used up all of their ammunition.

Someone once said, “No true Southern boy would say, ‘We don't keep no guns in this house.’”

Someone else gave the following opinion: “We have enough gun control. What we need is idiot control.”

Yet another opinion: “If guns kill people, then:
pencils misspell words,
cars make people drive drunk,
and spoons make people fat.”

A United States senator was credited with saying, “I believe love is the answer, but you should own a gun, just in case.” Additionally, “Free advice friends, if government tells you not to buy a gun, buy two.”
How long has it been since you thought of a shotgun wedding? Riding shotgun? Shotgun Red?