"Home, home on the range...?"

Yesterday I attended the Meriden Rod and Gun Club's annual St. Jude Children's Hospital fundraiser. It was a good time. With food, raffles, and of course an open shooting range, the event was quite a family affair. But the fact that this was a family affair is what began to concern me.

Many people criticized the December 2008 incident where the father of a young boy allowed the boy to shoot an Uzi at a gun show and the boy accidentally shot himself in the head. Well, all I could picture was a similar incident occurring as I watched old men showing their grandsons and younger men showing their sons and sons' friends how to shoot various guns, or letting them shoot guns. Standing next to this site was so uneasy! Images were running through my mind of accidental shootings, as the boys would tilt the guns as they kicked back. They were essentially, at times, waving around these powerful rifles and other guns.

Then, the most convincing incident of perhaps not mixing family, alcohol, and guns occurred to me when after the raffle, my friend and I went to the car to warm up and we saw this man running to the range screaming, "The kids are in the woods. The kids are in the woods."

It was like a slow motion movie as my heart stopped and I felt sick to my stomach. The man, who was screaming just kept screaming until someone finally went running up to the shooters to tell them to stop. Two minutes later, three little boys came running out of the woods, completely unfazed, and curious as to why their fathers seemed angry at them. It was a good thing that these children were alright, but had their parents been keeping a better eye on them and perhaps not indulging in alcohol this incident would have never even occurred.

In addition, while I was at the shooting range, one young kid on an quad began driving behind the shooting range, and everyone had to stop. You would think that knowing there was a shooting range people would be extra careful, and residents in the area would not be quading anywhere near it.

Overall, I had so much fun at the fundraiser, it was for a good cause, the food was good, the people were good, I even won a raffle. But, attending this event made me think of things that never really applied directly to me, before now/then.