The other day I was on FaceBook and I read an article on a gun site I follow.  The article was about how people should let there kids play with toy guns and not be afraid to let them around real guns.

I made a comment that because we have real guns and we let our children around them and because we care deeply about gun safety, we do not let our children have toy guns.  The rule in our house is, if you see a gun, don’t touch it and find an adult.  I mentioned that I did not want to leave the detriment of what is real and what is a toy up to our children.

In return a whole bunch of people basically said if my kids are so stupid that they can not tell the difference between real and fake, they are in fact stupid and that we as parents are stupid for raising such stupid children and because we are all so stupid, probably shouldn’t be allowed to have guns at all.

I would like to share with you a little bit about one of my children.  Our daughter was adopted from China when she was almost 4.  When we got there, she could not walk, too weak.  Could not hold a cup.  Did not know how to feed herself.  She is deaf and had zero language, nothing.  She had never heard a word and was never taught even the most rudimentary sign.  She did not even know to shake her head yes or no.  She was so traumatized by her life experiences in that place, that she had completely shut down and went inside herself.  Basically, all she did was rock, stack cups, and scream bloody murder.

We spent the first year she was home just trying to get her to not be afraid.  Trying to convince her she was safe and that here she not only wouldn’t be hit or abused, but that she would be loved and cared for.  It was a long, painful, and tiring process.

We had some progress that first year and by the time she was 5, we decided to get her the cochlear implant to help her hear.  This child had never heard one bit of sound ever.  My husband, myself, our audiologist, our ENT surgeon and the 2nd in charge of the entire Bethesda Navel Medical Center were all extremely concerned how hearing sound might effect this child.  We wondered if the shock of noise might traumatize her further, and while we all felt it was in her best long term interest to have the surgery, our immediate concern was her spirit.  We did not want to set her back in her emotional process.

I posted a video on my Face book page if your interested.  Video

This is a long video(I would love to have any skill whatsoever in terms of computers, but I don’t, so I could not edit it down), about 29 minutes, but I think it is worth the time to see just how amazing this child is.  Just how not stupid she is.  This video is of her activation of her cochlear implant.  It is the first time she ever heard any sound at all.  It is about 6 weeks after her surgery to have the implant put in her head.  At that surgery the doctors found hundreds of bone fragments embedded in her skull and tissue.  Those fragments were caused by repeated blunt force trauma.  She has had a bit to deal with.

This child, this precious amazing child, is now 7 and has completely caught up to her peers in language, and in academics.  In 3 years she fought back from a very tragic life to not only overcome emotional sadness, but has excelled and blossomed into a full fledged carefree, loving, kind, funny, right on target miracle.

Guns are important.  They are fundamental to keeping our safety and our freedoms.  It is paramount that those that understand this fight for it and protect it and pass it on to the next generation, but it is not the only thing that matters.

I was not a gun owner when she came home, but I can tell you even if I was, teaching gun safety would not have mattered to me one flying flippin’ bit.  She wouldn’t have got it anyway.  My daily goal was figuring out how to keep her from having a breakdown.  It was not showering or eating or sleeping and certainly wasn’t guns.

She has come a long way and now she knows about guns and how to shoot and all about safety and she mostly certainly can tell the difference between a real gun and toy one.  She in fact is not stupid.

After she came home we brought home another child, a son, and while he is not emotionally traumatized, he is behind in language and like her, has other things more pressing to worry about than whether or not a gun is real or fake.

We do now have guns in our house and because we do, we feel it is important to teach gun safety.  Regardless of what other issues these kids have going on, they need to be safe and aware, so we are giving him what he can handle until he is ready to handle more.  Safety is our paramount concern.

Unfortunately for my children, they have had to make up for the lack of care they should have received by the people who should have been responsible enough to care for them.  His lack of understanding about real guns verses fake guns is not an intelligence issue, it is a lack of responsibility issue.  People failed him and it’s gonna take him some time to catch up, but he will. 

Many adults lack responsibility and I feel it is very irresponsible to call a child you know nothing about stupid.

Life is not black and white.  It is not absolute.  For me the entire 2nd Amendment fight is about much more than just guns and the right to bear them.  It is about personal freedom.  The freedom to make choices that are right for you and your family and for your choices not to infringe on mine.  It is about respecting the choices of others and understand that what you do may not be right for someone who is very different from you.

I will end with the statement I left to these rather rude and inconsiderate folks…

Blanket statements about children and/or their parents, or well anything, are like gun laws…ridiculous.

Last night I went to a meeting held by an organization that is very active in preserving and fighting for the rights of gun owners in my state.

I loved it.

I loved every minute of it.

I may be in some kind of honeymoon state, that might wear off soon, but I sure hope not because I am having way too much fun.

The meeting was pretty basic, the president called it to order, gave a brief overview of the evening, then turned it over to someone else.

Elections are coming up, so a few candidates spoke.  None from my district, but I was still encouraged by the things they said they stood for.  All of them spoke about fighting actively for the Castle Doctrine and that made me very happy.

I would say there is no real way to know if they mean what they say, but I think this group is pretty thorough in vetting those they stand behind. 

Then a gentleman spoke about his youth rifle shooting team.

LOVED THIS!!

I absolutely loved seeing these kids!!  They were being taught about so much more than guns, but let’s face it, the gun part was way cool.  Not a cheap sport to get into though.

Money aside, I think my 8 year old would love to get involved in something like this someday.

Unfortunately, being the mother of 5, I had kid drama mid-evening.  Phone calls to my husband and text messages to me and well, we left the meeting earlier than we had hoped to head back to Shangri-La where I dawned my referee suit and settle a whole host of issues.

We drove a little over an hour to the meeting and one of the guys joked, “That is a long drive.  These meetings are not that exciting.”

I said, “yeah I might not ever go to another one, but I am coming to this one.”  And, I don’t know if I will go to another one, but I am glad I went to that one.  It was fun and very informative.

Generally people meet at Starbucks before the meeting, then attend the meeting and then go to a restaurant after.  Since we had to leave early we did not make it to the restaurant, but we did make it to Starbucks before hand.

Let me take you back to the beginning.  Pre-teenage drama.

As luck would have it, there was zero traffic and we arrived in a timely manner, so we beat the people we were suppose to meet.

We went into the coffee shop, ordered our iced soy lattes(no judging) and waited.  Ok, I waited and my man went to the little boys room.  But if he asks, it was the big boys room.

As I waited, 2 gentlemen came in, open carrying, and walked up to the counter to order.

The young kid making my coffee, looked at me and said “oh boy, here we go, guns.”

I said, “Don’t worry, we won’t shoot you.”

He looked me up and down and was completely perplexed.

I was also open carrying and can only assume that I looked so not like a gun person he did not notice the Glock 27 on my hip.

I turned so he could see my gun and he just shook his head and said “Oh, no.”

I said, “Your fine, I swear, we will not shoot.”

He said, “Promise?”

Me, “Yes, I promise.”

He said, “If a bad guy comes in, will you still protect me?”

I said, “Of course, yes, absolutely.”

A few minutes goes by, he looks at me, laughs and says, “What are the odds?”

I giggled, smiled, grabbed my coffee and went to find a seat.

I love this because even though I did nothing, I think I might have, inadvertently, helped this kid see that people with guns are not so scary.

If you have read this blog very long then you know I am a big fan of conceal carry, but I am starting to see the positive side to, every once in a while, leaving my Glock out for all the world to see.

I met some very nice people, learned some interesting things about people who hope to be involved in running my state, drank some killer coffee, possibly helped break a stereotype, and all this before 10pm and in 100 degree heat.

All in all, a fine way to spend a few hours.

First, let me apologize for the comment sent by me under a different blog.  Someone else used my computer, so when I went to reply to the comment, it put it under their blog name.

Second, I am very excited to be going to my first “gun” meeting tonight.  I belong to a group that works at the state level for the rights of gun owners.  They have done quite a lot to promote and defend the rights of folks in my state who have and carry guns.  I volunteered at their table at the last gun show in my town, but this is an actual meeting where they have a speaker and discuss gun related issues.

I hope to meet some more gun friendly people as most of my friends, who I love, are not gun folks.  In fact, I do not have a single local friend who has a gun, shoots a gun, or has ever touched a gun.  Although, I have convinced my workout partner to accompany me to the range a week from tomorrow!

She is coming to my house a few times before for some safety sessions and then we are going shootin’

I am working on something that I think will be very exciting for you all and I am praying you will all  want to get involved, but the details are still be ironed out.  Hopefully, in the next few weeks I will be announcing it.

Lastly, thank you to everyone who has left a comment and/or sent me encouraging and thoughtful emails.  I am overwhelmed at the number of incredibly nice people who have reached out me.  I am having a blast doing this blog and conversing with all of you.  I am learning so much and feel very fortunate to have “met” each of you. 

You are most appreciated!!

I went to carry my Ruger the other day, but when I got it out of the safe, I noticed that the magazine had rust on it.  Then I took a look at my gun and there was rust all over the barrel and inside.

It was stored in a safe with a felt cloth.  It was not wet when I stored.  I had carried it a couple days before, so it was not stored for very long.

Does anyone know what I did wrong?

My son cleaned it last night and the rust appears to mostly be gone, but I am concerned about shooting it.

Thoughts, ideas, help, suggestions???

What is the most valuable thing you have learned since you got your gun?

This is such a vast question and there are so many ways I could go with trying to answer it.  I have learned so much about guns and laws and holsters and the undead, but the most valuable, what is the most valuable thing I have learned?

I guess the most valuable thing I have learned is a deeper understand of me.

I have learned so much about myself.  Not only about who I want to be, but who I already am.

I have learned that I have an aggressive side and I like it.

I have learned to stand up for myself and not just when my life is in danger. I am not super good at this, but I am on my way.

I have learned I can be feminine and carry a big gun.

I have learned that I love to learn about guns.  I seriously can not get enough.  I thought it was all driven by fear, but it isn’t.  It is a passion. a passion I never ever knew I had.  It is not a passing fancy or a fad, it is me.

I have learned not to be afraid and when I am, to face it.

I have learned  that asking for help can be the most empowering, freeing, beneficial, gift one can give themselves.

I have learned to take risk and do to thing just for the sake of doing them.

I have learned that I am worth the fight.  I always believed I was valuable and never thought I deserved any harm to come my way, but I never actively fought for it.

Now, I do.

Everyday, in all kinds of ways, I fight for my life.  For it’s safety, but also for it’s joy.

That fight in me, for me, is the absolute most valuable thing I have learned.

Saturday was, to most people, a gorgeous day.  Sunny, 82 degrees with a cool breeze.

For me, it was a tiny bit chilly.

The good news is that is gave me an opportunity to show a different way that I conceal.

We did not do much today.  We had plans to go to the place with the mouse who is named Chucky and he has an affinity for, you know, cheese, but someone and I will not say who, ok it was me, didn’t plan ahead and the place was packed.

We did not go in.  We left with a promise to my daughter that we would return later in the week when it was much calmer.  She was fine with this because I offered to take her to the place where there is a king and his-have-it-your-way-burgers.

My kids get way excited about this because I don’t let them eat fast food often. Really, I don’t.

We have eaten at Yellow M(brownie points if you know what that is), from time to time, but that is a treat.  Until about a month ago, they had never eaten at the place with the king.

Anywhoooooooooooooooo, on this very exciting adventure, I wore my Glock in that ever popular Crossbreed holster.

I wore my regular jeans and a T-shirt.  You can’t see it, but the shirt says “FIGHT LIKE A GIRL”  It’s written in pink with boxing gloves.  A few months back, if I had seen someone walking down the street with such a shirt on, I probably would have had an hour long lecture, umm discussion with my kids, on how we don’t fight and it’s not nice to hit people, but that was then and this is NOW!

Getting ready to leave and was “forced” to hold the baby.

 Yes, that is a Glock under there and no you really can’t see it.  That shirt is a small.

 Yep, still there.

Leaving the king of burgers joint.  It was cold to me in there, so I put on a lightweight spring jacket.

I am telling you, it is a myth that a girl has to dress like she is a guy if she wants to carry a gun bigger than a deck of cards.  Perhaps a full size Glock or 1911 would require more finesse, but I would venture to guess, most ladies are not carrying those as their everyday conceal.  Not that they don’t or that they shouldn’t or couldn’t, just that, in my very limited experience, those have not been the choice I have seen for gals and conceal carry.

Caliber Effectiveness 

Extremely interesting article.

When my kids come to me with their feelings hurt because some other kid said something mean, I always ask them “Why do you care?”  “Do you think what they think of you is more important than what you think?”

When my oldest son was about 3 years old, he came to me to tell my little Johnny didn’t like him.  Before I could answer another mother said, “Oh, I am sure little Johnny likes you, he is probably just tired.  I said, “Actually, little Johnny probably doesn’t like you and that is ok.”  Little Johnny has a right to his feelings, but that doesn’t make them right and it doesn’t mean you have to care.

I don’t know why we set our children up to believe that the whole world is going to like them and that if they don’t like them,  we should be sad.

There are plenty of people I don’t like.  I do them no harm.  I do not say mean things to them or make a voodoo doll or cast a spell on them.  Sometimes I have a good reason not to like them and sometimes I don’t.  Sometimes they just rub me the wrong way and I don’t know why.  If I can feel that way about someone, I assume there is someone that feels that way about me.  As long as they do not actively try to harm me, I say, let them feel however they feel.

I also ask my kids “Why do you think they were mean?”

For years I have believed that people who are loved and valued are not mean.  People are looking to belong, to have worth.

I, of course, know this because I was raised in a family where there was love, a twisted love, but love just the same. I was loved the only way my parents knew how to love.  However, being valued and made to feel worthy were scarce and both my brother and I were on an endless search for it.  One of us found it and the other, well, I believe he is where there is an endless supply.

I also know this because I have 3 children from China, who may or may not have been loved, but they most certainly were not made to feel valued or like they had any worth.

Quite the opposite.

Now they are loved and that has been most wonderful thing for each of our children, but it is the sense of belonging and value that has helped them face their fears and to have the courage to feel, and to be who they were created to be.

All 3 of our youngest children had walls built so high, I never thought we would knock them down.  For 2 years when our middle daughter kissed us, she would divert her eyes.  She was afraid to be loved because not being loved hurt to much.  Being of who she was, a deaf, Chinese girl, in a culture where disabilities and being a girl warranted being tossed aside and forgotten. The price for being who she was way too high.

When she came to us at the age of 3, she had no personality and she looked like a boy.  Over the past 4 years, she has had the strength and courage to fight and she has found her voice and she knows exactly who she is.

All of the kids went through transformations on their journey to being authentically them.  It was not by magic, or time, or simply being loved.  It was a long hard struggle by people who fought daily to help them see that they were absolutely valued and absolutely had worth.

Our children went from night terrors and tantrums to sweet dreams and peace.  They went from punching and screaming to caressing and hugs.  They went from pushing us away and looking away to jumping in our arms and asking for love.  They went from doubting, subconsciously, that they mattered to knowing, fully conscious, that they do.

I watched this video and thought, wow, powerful.  I also thought, this is what I have been saying and it didn’t take a breakdown to realize it, but then I thought, well, I might have had a breakdown or two or three.

I broke when my brother died and I broke again when I watched my daughter scream in heart wrenching pain from a nightmare I could not comfort her through.  I broke again when I stood in that grocery store parking lot, helpless.

But, I came back from each of those moments of despair because I was constantly reminded by people who cared that I had value and I was worth fighting for.

When people don’t have a foundation of worth, they start looking for it in all kinds of places.  Some in obviously destructive ways like drinking or drugs, but others do it more covertly.

Some do it by taking what was never theirs to take.

Stripping away peoples rights piece by piece.

Since I got my gun, I have been forced to pay a lot more attention to politics and have been made patently aware of what lengths people without a feeling of worth will do for power and control.

The constant effort to try to legislate gun control under the banner of “safety” makes me frustrated and scared.

I am frustrated because I know that most people with guns know they have value.  They are fighting for it.  They are fighting for the value and worth of their family and friends and even the little old lady down the street they have never met.

The value they place on their life and those around them makes them not the least bit dangerous.  Their fight is to protect it, not take it away.

It makes me scared because I know the answer to violence is not found in legislation or in disarming Americans, but in finding ways to help people know their value and worth.

It makes me scared because I know that even though we know what to do there will always be people who do not feel valued or loved and will turn to violence as their answer.

Love, self worth, and value are the answer.  Unfortunately, there will always be people who don’t get it.  For whatever reason: bad parenting, life circumstances, society, choice…

I believe all people should be loved and valued. I have spent my entire adult life trying to add to peoples worth.  But that belief is not a license to do harm and if one chooses to give into the despair, others should not have to pay the price.

Our right to protect our worth should not be given away to those who are unaware of theirs.

I tried to upload a video of my daughter and her birthday surprise, but it won’t load on this page.  If you would like to see it go here

This child came to us completely deaf, with no language and even less survival skills than me.  She was 2 and the first time we took her to the pool she just jumped in and sunk to the bottom.  She did not fight to come to the surface, she just sunk.  Both my husband and I jumped in immediately, brought her up and she just looked at us.  No fear.  No idea that she was in danger.

This is just one step in a on going process of consciously teaching our daughter(all of our children) how to take care of herself. 

The other day as we were walking across the street, I told her to stop and I asked her if she looked for cars(I knew she hadn’t). She said “no”  I asked her why.  She said “cuz you were looking”

I said, I was looking and I will always look, but you can not depend on other people for your safety.  That is your responsibility.  you look for yourself, every time.

I was 40 before I learned this lesson.

My son is 19, almost 20 and in our state he is allowed to have a gun.  Our law is open carry at 18, no permit needed and conceal carry with permit at 21.  So, he always open carries.  My husband and I have not always been comfortable with this, so many times if he is with us, we ask him to leave his gun in the car.

You may or may not have noticed that my husband and I are very NO DRAMA people.  I would not say we are chicken, but we really live our lives to be calm and happy.  We do not surround ourselves with gossips or people who love to argue or are grumpy all the time.  We like peace.  Doesn’t mean we won’t stand up and fight for what we believe in, but if we can avoid the fight, we will.  Most especially me.

It took a while to just get comfortable with a gun at all, let alone dealing with people who might have an issue with it.

Recently, I have been trying to step out of my comfort zone, so while I have continued to conceal, I have stopped asking my son to take his gun off when he is out and about with me.

Yesterday, he asked me to open carry with him.  My first reaction was no, but then I said, what the heck, sure.

I do not have a great OWB(outside the waistband holster), so I wore my Crossbreed IWB(inside the waistband holster), but since my shorts and shirt were pretty small and tight, it showed like a beacon.

It was me, with my Glock 27, my son with my husband’s Glock 23(my man was on a military base and could not carry) and my daughter-in-law with my Ruger LCP.  We also had my new grandbaby with us, who was open carrying a pacifier.

I will admit, I was not super comfortable and quite nervous.  I knew what I was doing was legal, but I was afraid I was inviting a problem.  It is one thing to deal with a problem that arises, but this was one I was potentially manufacturing.  Nonetheless, I felt the main reason I do not open carry is fear and we all know how I feel about fear…DO NOT LIKE IT!!

So off we went…

The first place we went to was Party America for birthday supplies for our daughter who turns 8 tomorrow.  Only a few people in the store, but no one said a thing.  No one seemed to even notice.  I left there feeling a little more confident.

Next was Target.  I was actually a little sick to my tummy going in there, but I did it.  We did get a few more stares and one young lady tapped her boyfriend and whispered, “she has a gun.”  It seemed to me that she was at the very least surprised, but I have no idea.  Maybe she is a big gun nut and thought wow, she has a gun.  Regardless, she didn’t make an issue and off they went.  We left there also without issue.  I can’t tell you about the next place we went because it is connected to a surprise and a later post, but absolutely no issue there.  Then we can home and for the rest of the day I did not carry, conceal or otherwise.

All in all a good experience.  I didn’t get any pictures of me, but I will leave you with one of my daughter-in-law, the gun toting mama.