I confess: Part 1 was really too ambitious. It is an overview, completely lacking in enough detail to do much good, but I will get to more detail later on. Part 1 mostly dealt with equipment. Part 2 is going to deal with relationships, in similarly broad terms.
New Friends & Old Flames
As an adult, you have most likely already formed your peer group. You have friends and family who have come to know you as who you are. Your political opinions are solid. Your religious ideals are well-known and well-thought-out. Your friends and family know you the way you were before you considered owning a gun. Now it is you who is making a change. If you don't want to trade in all of your friends and family, then you need to pay attention to this.
Let me make one thing absolutely clear. When you make a big change about your attitudes or opinions about something, the natural response by many of your friends and family is going to be "he has lost his mind, he's going nuts!" You may have spent a long time making a reasoned and normal, gradual change, but it's sudden and shocking for your friends and family. So tread lightly!
First you need to consider your own family that lives in the house with you, where the guns are going to be. Remember, especially if you are like me and you are the head of your household, your previous experience and ambivalent attitude about guns may have been ingrained in your family and you have to un-ingrain it slowly. They didn't wake up one day, the same day as you did, and discover they needed to cross over into gun ownership.
So first let's deal with your spouse. If you are married, then getting a gun needs to be a team decision. Maybe you have already talked about owning guns for years and you know exactly how your spouse feels about it. I have found, after being married for 16 years and raising two daughters that women are enigmatic, and it is sometimes very difficult for men to really know what their opinion or feelings are about anything. So I don't recommend just popping in one day after work and saying "hey honey, I am going to go buy a gun tomorrow. You wanna come?"
I don't know how to advise you to do it, because all people are different and hopefully you know best how to communicate with your spouse. So I'll just tell you what happened with me, and you can decide how that may affect your plan for dealing with this.
I began thinking about owning a gun in the spring of 2007. In September 2007, I heard a news story on the radio about House Bill 823 which clarified the "traveling" clause of the Texas Penal Code regarding carrying guns in your car. Bear in mind, I had already been researching and considering gun ownership for six months prior to this time. My wife and I frequently talk about politics, so one night during dinner, I said to my wife, "hey did you hear about this new law that allows people to carry a gun in their car without a bunch of restrictions?" She hadn't heard, but it was a conversation starter. I told her what I had heard on the radio about the bill (I had also read the press release, and read the bill, but I didn't let on that I had done this lest my wife think I suddenly became a gun nut). So after talking about this for a minute or two, my wife said, "maybe we should get one".
Aha. Now, I could have said, "sure! Academy's open until 9:00, let's go after dinner!", but she would have freaked out. She said "maybe" and you guys should all know by now that often when a woman says "maybe", it means "no". So my response was more like, "ok, we can look into it". She asked if I knew how much a gun costs, etc. I played dumb, said something like "oh, I don't know, maybe $200 or more?", which is true of course.
OK, fast forward a week. We are home having dinner again and my wife said she went to the gun counter at Academy while she was in there shopping for something else, and she said some guns were just over $250 and most were more like $400 or more, and that she thought the guys behind the counter were creepy and she was really uncomfortable and left. Let it be known to all right now, this is normally the way normal non-gun-owner type people feel when they go to the gun counter at any store!!! So my fiercely-independent wife went to investigate the option of buying a gun, and was turned off by the people there, and suddenly we dropped the topic altogether.
Remember, many women are mostly about relationships, while men are mostly about doing things. So a guy has a task to do, buy a gun. He doesn't really care how he thinks other people treat him or feel about him while doing it. But getting this creepy feeling from the gun counter guys stifles many women's desire to buy a gun.
Now during the next six months, I would occasionally passively or subtly mention gun ownership or gun rights to my wife and just try and take the temperature on her attitude, making sure she hadn't turned anti-gun all of the sudden. She didn't. So when spring of 2008 came along, Smith and Wesson was offering a good rebate deal on the gun I wanted to buy, I had the money, so one day after work, I just dropped by Academy and bought a gun. The kids were staying with the grandparents that Friday night, so I knew whatever response my wife had didn't have to be amplified by reflecting it off of our two kids. I bought a pistol and a box of ammo. As I walked in my wife noticed I was carrying a blue plastic case with "Smith and Wesson" written on the side, and she said "is that what I think it is?", and I said, "yep". Then she freaked.
OK, so you see, my wife already was warm to the idea of gun ownership. She even shopped for one (once) on her own. She was definitely open to it, and we had been sort of checking the water mark for six months, and still she freaked when I brought home a gun.
She freaked, bounced between the rails of "what the HECK!" and "this is kind of cool". I opened the case and she jumped about ten feet back. You see, for those not used to being around guns, they are just plain scared of them. This is typical. I told her it was not loaded and then took it out, removed the magazine, pulled back the slide and locked it so I could show here how to check to see if it is loaded, and when she saw that I knew how to open the action, drop the magazine, etc., she was very shocked. It was kind of like all of the sudden, she saw some side of me she had never imagined. And I was a complete newbie! Then I put the magazine back in, released the slide with a loud "snap!" and gave it to her, she wouldn't touch it at first. Well this went around for a little while until I showed her how to handle it, four rules, etc. Once she settled in to the idea that I knew something about guns, I was comfortable with it, and I knew how to be safe with a gun, then she settled strongly on "this is very cool" and she told me flat out that it was a "turn on" for me to have just brought home a gun, and for her to discover I knew how to use it, even though I, myself, was a complete newbie.
OK, so here's the story. My wife is very conservative/libertarian just like me. She's very indepdent and doesn't even like having to depend on me for anything. But she was very much into the idea that I had taken responsibility for our protection.
Well we talked all about how I came to this choice and how I chose this gun and where did I buy it and all of this, like a big whirlwind that night, then went out to the range with a friend in the morning for the hands on instruction that I talked about in Part 1. We bought more ammo on the way and between the two of us we shot about 300 rounds and my wife shot very well and was totally on board.
Over the next few months I had to get her to warm up to the idea of me carrying a gun, getting my CHL, etc. This went the same way. At first she thought I was a nut. Then she just rolled her eyes when I would talk about it. She tolerated me going to get my CHL. When I got it, she thought I was a nut when I carried. Then when we took a long road trip, I put one gun in a holster in her car (we were taking two cars, long story), and carried the other with me. She thought I was nuts, and then one night in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere we stopped at a rest stop and she came up to the car I was in and demanded that I accompany her to the restroom, and that I made sure I was "packing". You see, once armed self defense becomes a viable option, it is very attractive to most people. But the initial shock to the system of dealing with making it a viable option is much more difficult to swallow.
After a year since the first mention of owning a gun in my house, and after owning guns for six months or so, finally my kids warmed to the idea, and only in the past month have they gone to the range.
OK so that's a lot longer of a story than I planned but that's the story. Now, the main thing to take away from that is that even if you are sure that your spouse thinks and that she is in agreement, she may still be shocked when the rubber meets the road.
Who's Next?
For me, I advise not to tell anyone about your new gun ownership experience unless they need to know, or unless they will find out eventually anyway. You want to be the one in control of how they find out. The more people who know, that's the more people who can go blab about it without your control. Remember the reaction of many of your peers is going to be shock, maybe outright disagreement, or they will think you are a nut. Not all of them, but many. So to avoid conflict, I suggest keeping it on the down-low for the time being.
The Rest of Your Family
You likely have other family that is going to find out about this one way or the other. If you are carrying, then someone is going to hug you and you are going to get made. You don't want this to happen when Aunt Sue hugs you at the family Christmas party and then exclaims "is that a GUN??". Instead if Aunt Sue is going to figure it out eventually, you want it to be on your terms.
Begin with relatives you see on a regular basis. Tread lightly with the in-laws, let your wife tell them (this is why it's important to have them on board). When you tell these close relatives, expect a barrage of questions and be prepared to answer them. Try not to be combative or defensive. They may suggest you are now a gun nut, or some kind of nut, they may think you are doing this out of some irrational fear, they will probably freak out about storage with kids in the house, etc. This is no time to discuss statistics or your hardline stance on the Second Amendment. Be prepared for all of the questions and stick to the facts. You have worked out the safe storage. You have sought instruction on how to safely store and use your gun. You are not a gun nut, but you wanted to be prepared in case you ever need to use a gun. You are simply taking a step in the direction of the defense of your home and family. Also, know the laws. If they ask "do you have a license", tell them that you don't have to have a license to own a gun. If they ask if you are carrying it with you right now, then tell them you are not carrying it (which you aren't, if you are new to this and don't yet have your CHL... otherwise don't carry a gun when you go to tell your folks about owning a gun for the first time!). Keep the discussion low-key and stay out of the emotional aspects as much as possible. No you are not afraid of anything. No you don't plan on shooting anybody. You just want to learn to use a gun and be prepared in case you ever have to. End of the story.
Your Friends
Now's the time to separate the wheat from the chaff. You have some peers, right? Some friends? Acquaintances? Do you have at least one friend who is a gun owner, who may be carrying or have a CHL? Is there someone you can talk to about this? Who all do you tell?
If you live in Texas then I can assure you that at least some of your friends own guns. In fact, probably most of them do. However, most of your friends who own guns probably own them for hunting, or have never shot them other than once or twice at a target, and may still think you are a nut if you want to carry. Remember in Texas about 50% or so of households have guns, but only about 3% of the adult population have a CHL. That's a big gap! Just statistically speaking then, if you have 30 or so friends, one of them probably has a CHL.
The idea of keeping quiet about gun ownership and CHLs is not just my opinion, but it's quite common. I found that I had a bunch of friends who had CHLs and I never knew it before. They just don't talk about it in mixed company, and neither should you. So you have some detective work to do. You will find out which friends are gun friendly and which are not. The majority are probably not gun friendly.
Once you begin to talk with the gun friendly peers about gun ownership, you are going to find your circle of friends getting larger quickly. I'll describe how it worked for me.
First, I had two friends I knew of who had guns. One of which had been advising me for many months about how to select a gun to buy, and the other I just knew he had one and on one occasion, he was carrying it when I was there (we were in a parking lot in the middle of the night and being approached by some shady looking folks, he mentioned he had a gun with him). So I started there. These guys were excellent resources to help me get up to speed before buying a gun. They didn't spread the word. But one of them mentioned that one of our other mutual friends had a private shooting range. That became the friend who gave my wife and I our hands-on instruction the first day we owned a gun, and I go shoot at that range all the time now.
Well one thing led to another. My wife goes and talks to everyone about her new gun and I can't get her to stop :) Finally half the county knows about it before I can put a lid on it. Well a couple of new friends begin to pop up all the time. Some guys go with me to my CHL class, one of which was an acquaintance and the other I had not met. The church security team started to recruit me. Friends talk to their friends and in six months I discover that I have a bunch of friends and acquaintances who go shooting with me, and a bunch of new friends too. And magically, none of these people talks about outside the circle of those they already know to be gun friendly, so somehow I manage to keep a lid on this so half of my friends don't even know.
The key is, be careful who you tell.
That's enough for Part 2. Part 3 will deal with the "gun culture" and issues like that.
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