I sit and type to you now at my mother's house, upstairs from the room where my mother was murdered. With a shotgun. By my stepbrother, who then took his own life with the same shotgun. I'm sure you're saying to yourself that I'm just another Internet kook who had no such thing actually happen. But it did. I could link you the news articles from the local paper to back up my statements, but I'm not going to for reasons of privacy. You're just going to have to judge my words on their own merit; welcome to the Internet.

Time may evolve my perspective on it, but as I write I don't blame the instrument used. The person using the instrument was insane. Yes, this sounds on the surface like "guns don't kill people, people do". And I have to admit, that's basically the core of it. I feel no differently about guns, per se, than I did before.

The gun was easily accessed, as were the other 9 long arms in the house. The weapon had previously seen uncounted game shepherded to a dinner table. There were also several axes, knives, various pharmaceuticals, and more than one chainsaw. And as you might guess dozens of fishing rods, outdoor vehicles, and the like. Yes, this is a family with a long tradition of outdoorsmanship.

Certain of those instruments could as easily have been employed as well. They just weren't. The ammunition used was under separate key but it's pretty difficult to keep a determined adult from something he is determined to get to. Yet you need to do so to the maximum extent possible. That is the nature of responsibility of firearm ownership in our day, age, and culture.

Some solid advice has been offered to you in these letters, LW. I'm kind of -eh- on what Cary himself wrote; I generally love me some Cary but the other posters have been significantly more pragmatic and I think that's what you need before the philosophical considerations. The guy who wrote to you about the cabinet first is balls-on, as are the other posters who noted the different safety and legal considerations that you need to have fully, and I mean absolutely, dialed in before you do anything resembling a purchase.

I don't know you and neither does Cary or anyone else writing here. Yet I would tend to agree with those who have expressed the opinion that you're not ready. I seriously doubt that firearms for recreation or collection is the best thing you could be doing with your money at 21 anyway, LW.

I'm 38 and an ex-Army officer who lives in a city; my house has been robbed in the last two years, as well. Perhaps my time in the service with truly big guns satisfied my adolescent fantasies and gave me a needed dosage of what these objects actually do, but I've never felt the need to own one of my own since then.

And I still do not own a gun, although someday I may when there's a clear cause, recreational, practical, or otherwise. There is some merit to other posters' suggestions of military service as a potential solution to this young man's mental and emotional process about firearms, although our current historical situation is not a good one in which to pursue such an avenue right now.

Former 1CD member here, '93-'96. I was going to write pretty much what you wrote.

I'd love to come back later and see that this thread remains relatively free from yet another manifestation of this tired line of guilty-by-association, coulda-woulda-shoulda, every-bit-as-dumb-and-rabid-as-the-far-right sort of thinking.

Kindly keep it so.