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.

This is a universal phenomenon, LW. You can see it graphically on display here from the other writers—and the song I reference in my subject line; give it a listen if you haven’t.

And me too. I’ve lived in Santa Barbara, then Connecticut and Boston, and now Portland Oregon, with a couple of other stops as well. In fact I have never lived longer than 8 years in the same rough geographical area. Generally I had little choice in these moves for various reasons; my trip to Portland from Boston and my life discovered here sounds almost identical to your journey and experiences. The people, the new money, the cultures, all of it. I know exactly where you’re coming from.

And I know at this point that it would be basically the same between any two wide points for any thinking person. You’re going to be the stranger in a strange land for a while no matter where you go. Point being the constant is you, stranger, and not the strange land itself, whichever one it is.

I myself am dealing with it this year by visiting. Plane tickets from coast to coast ain’t so bad, even if you are making next to no money. If it’s a priority you can make it happen. For you it might be enough to just visit a few times a year, and you don’t necessarily have to BE one thing or another—BE a West Coaster or BE an East Coaster in your own mind, et cetera, and that being the one means you’re not the other.

Because in the end this question is “what is home”, and how you’re tied to certain things by blood, developmental experiences, your own mental bent, and on and on and on. I won’t tackle that one here as I also still wrestle with it and I know my eventual answer will be mine and nobody else’s.

So, you know. Give it some time AND give it some visits. You may find that in the end you do want to BE that one thing or another and return to that particular place. You may not. And it is OK to feel that way no matter which way it goes. There’s nothing supernatural about either place; this is the geography of you that’s being explored. Cary doesn’t have that answer and neither does anybody else. Best of luck to you, sir or madam.