By the time I was 10 years old, my father made sure I knew how to safely handle a firearm.
I grew up in a house divided. My dad was an outdoor enthusiast and loved to hunt. My mother never liked guns or having them in the home. Even after my dad remarried, mom didn’t like that we were around his shotguns and hunting rifles, but she stomached it because she knew hunting was an important bonding tool for dad.
I’ve always been somewhere in the middle. As a kid, I never relished walking through tall grass and harvested fields on cold days with no windbreakers. My love and respect for the outdoors wouldn’t evolve until I was an adult. I was never in love with guns, but loved the time with my dad.
My father is a Marine and he takes handling firearms seriously. He taught me guns are a tool not a toy. Dad very plainly told me that a gun has one purpose — to kill something. Before I was allowed to touch ammunition, I was shown where to locate the safety.
I was shown how to hold a shotgun safely in both relaxed and ready positions. Never point it toward another human being, and always have the barrel up in the air and away from my body, he said. Wear hunter orange. When you’re in a group, know where each member of your group is at all times.
One of my first pheasant hunting trips was a sober lesson in just how important dad’s instructions are. We were in a group of about 10 hunters just outside of Story City. We drove out to a marsh, got our gear ready and formed a line to push through the tall grass.
My 11-year-old legs weren’t able to get through the thick brush as easily as the adults in our group, and I tired quickly. I fell about 10 feet behind the push line and my dad fell back with me so I wasn’t walking alone.
We scared up a rooster and, without thinking, I brought my 20-gauge to my shoulder, aimed and fired ... directly into the group of eight hunters pushing in front of us. Everyone stopped cold. I knew what I had done as soon as I pulled the trigger.
The shot missed the bird and, thankfully, everyone else. No one was hurt but that didn’t save me from a lecture and rehash of gun safety 101 from professor Dad Mendenhall.
I have not hunted since high school and when I hear a conversation about guns I think of that moment in the marsh. I’ve never been able to fully shake the feeling.
This is how I felt Wednesday morning. I turned on the radio after I washed my face and heard the headlines about Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump’s latest comments against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
He claimed she was trying to abolish the Second Amendment — which she cannot legally do — and argued she would appoint U.S. Supreme Court justices to affirm these policies. But it wasn’t the outrageous claims which returned me to the marsh, it was his nuance.
“By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks — although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know,” he said.
Trump has since tried to claim he was talking about political action and not a call to violence against Clinton. But this, like many other comments he’s reinterpreted, contradicts what the Constitution stands for. The Second Amendment is about protection not strong arming dissent through violence.
We need a Republican nominee who is passionate about their policy points but strong in their moral convictions. A healthy two-party system relies on that. A candidate strong enough to disagree with Secretary Clinton respectfully in the press and on the debate stage.
Maybe Trump was never taught firearms are a tool not a toy.
Contact Mike Mendenhall
at mmendenhall@newtondailynews.com