Just recently I had the pleasure of taking my son to the range. He’s 17 years old and has been shooting since he was five years old. After all, I’m a retired police officer who has been – and still is – a firearms instructor, certified both by the State of Maryland and the NRA (although I need to renew my NRA Instructor Cert). We were at a range set up on private property, invited by friends of ours; another father/son who share most of our political views and our enjoyment of shooting.
The shooting consisted of some familiarization fire – teaching our sons how to handle and safely control/shoot various weapons, as well as practice with the firearms of their choice. Both the other father and I are Army veterans, both of us having been Military Police officers. The weapons we shot that day included five rifles, a shotgun, two revolvers and four semi-automatic pistols. A safety briefing was given before anything was loaded and coaching/instructing for each firearm was provided throughout. The other father there took plenty of pictures which he shared with me.
Clik here to view.
What a well shot target looks like.
In today’s technology world, since it’s the easiest way to share those photos with family and because I’m proud of how well my son shot that day, I posted a selection of those photos to my Facebook page. My son chose one of those – of him shooting a lever action rifle – to use as his profile picture. I chose one – of he and I shooting pistols side by side – as my new cover photo. What struck me as a shame is that after those photos were posted – the profile picture and cover photo – I wondered how long it would be before I heard from my son’s school about it.
Now we live in a relatively conservative (still) county that embraces “the country way of life.” The county largely values how rural it is, how much of the economy is still agricultural and how family values still seem to be of greater priority than you might find, say, in the inner city. For all that, our school board seems a little bit out of balance with the majority of the county outlook in that, based on my experience, it’s largely run by folks with a more liberal slant than the rest of the county’s citizenry.
The very fact that I had to think about all that irked me. It strikes me as unacceptable that we live in a society that has grown so politically correct… so intensely aware of POTENTIAL offense… so set on cowtowing to whiny mouthed people – that an honest, educated, law-abiding, responsible parent has to worry about some pictures put on Facebook. Bear in mind that there is no act of violence in the photo(s); there is no abuse, threat of harm, or illegal activity pictured. It’s two fathers with their sons, bonding during range time, throughout which the sons learn greater safety, better skills, and the joy of improved marksmanship.
I know I’m probably being critical of my own thinking, but I find it unacceptable that the tone of our country today has grown so cumbersome as to cause any citizen such a worry. Will someone at school take offense to my son’s profile picture which shows him shooting a rifle? Will they talk to him about it? Will I get a phone call about it? Will the Sheriffs office get a call about it? Will these few pictures get my son labeled as a potential threat in the school? How silly that I would even have to harbor such questions. What might be worse is that the next step is to start planning the “defense argument” for why those pictures don’t present any threat or concern.
Honestly, in our county, I don’t expect that it would come to that. It’s my hope that those friends of my son who see the picture(s) would ask when they can come to the range with us. It’s my hope that my son’s teachers, if the pictures are called to their attention, remember the character of the student in question (my son) and make sensible decisions about how to proceed. It’s my hope that the current trend, across our nation, to be unacceptably politically correct and force that level of silliness onto law-abiding citizens doesn’t rear its ugly head.
If it does… I’m sure I’ll end up typing A LOT more!
Stay safe.