This from the Advice section of The Washington Post:
Ask Amy: Dad is horrified to learn there’s a gun in the house
Dear Amy: This week I discovered that my intelligent, hard-working, responsible 24-year-old daughter (who lives with me) is a gun owner! And it’s not a normal gun either — it is a .40-caliber semiautomatic, and she has hollow point bullets to go with it.
Amy, this is the kind of weapon a criminal would possess! She says it is for emergencies. There have only been two home invasions in our neighborhood in the past 11 years.
I’ve given her three choices: She can either give her weapon to me, sell it or move out in three weeks.
I love my daughter and would be so sad for her to move into a place that she would hardly be able to afford, but now I have to lock my bedroom door at night because I don’t know what she’s going to do.
Now she says that I don’t trust her and is barely speaking to me. How can I convince her to stop endangering us?
Dumbfounded Father
I keep coming back to the thought “this has to be a troll, nobody can be this detached from reality.”
But having watched the absolute bat-shit insanity that is TDS wrack this country in the last three years, it’s not impossible that this dad is so full of gun hatred that he really believes all of this.
Everything about this question is just unhinged. The first paragraph made me laugh. A .40 cal semi-auto is not a normal gun? And hollowpoints. Only criminals use those?
He acknowledges that his daughter is “intelligent, hard-working, responsible” but he also fears that she is going to randomly shoot him. If he thinks his daughter is responsible then why is her legal gun possession endangering him?
The doublethink here is agonizing to read.
So because of his irrational fears, he had made it clear he doesn’t trust his daughter and is about to destroy his relationship with her.
I’m a father and frankly, this makes me sick to my stomach.
Still, the response is worse.
Dumbfounded Father: According to my research, possessing hollow point bullets is illegal in 11 states; is it legal in your state to own this sort of exploding ammunition?
What states is possessing hollowpoints illegal? The most restriction I can find is in New Jersey, which allows them to be possessed in the home or while hunting, or in transport from a gun store to a home or place for hunting. You can’t carry hollowpoints in public in New Jersey, which doesn’t really matter because their may issue is effectively no issue so it’s a moot point.
So nowhere that I have been able to find is her possession of hollowpoints in her residence a crime.
Also, hollowpoints don’t “explode.”
In a report published in 2015, researchers at the University of Chicago found that 31 percent of households reported having a firearm in 2014, down from about 48 percent in 1980.
I’m kind of doubt that. I want to know what the University of Chicago stats say about a rise in boating accidents.
According to this study, there are more guns, but concentrated in fewer households. Why must your household be one of them?
She has one gun, and she wants it for protection. A perfectly valid reason.
Where did your daughter get this weapon and ammunition? Has she received any safety training or certification? (Accidental gun death is a substantial risk of owning a gun.) Is she perhaps engaged in another activity outside of your household that exposes her to increased risks and makes her believe she needs to have a weapon?
Thanks for assuming that his “intelligent, hard-working, responsible 24-year-old daughter” is a criminal because she decided to buy a gun.
I have news for you: A locked bedroom door is no match for this weaponry; as I write this, just five days ago a father in South Carolina tragically shot and killed his own 23-year-old daughter through a closed door — when he mistook her for an intruder.
I agree with your ultimatum; I also weep that there is yet another (likely unsafe) gun owner in this country.
Again, Amy assumes that his “intelligent, hard-working, responsible 24-year-old daughter” is just another yahoo that is going to go blasting around the house. Also, fuck her for weeping at the idea of an “intelligent, hard-working, responsible 24-year-old” being a law-abiding gun owner, as though that automatically makes her a bad person and a threat to all that is good and decent.
The ultimatum is stupid and is going to ruin this young woman’s relationship with her father.
So here is my response:
Dumbfounded Father: In your own words your daughter is an “intelligent, hard-working, responsible 24-year-old.” I don’t understand how you can describe her that way and at the same time, not trust her in her purchase and ownership of a gun.
If you are unable to trust her with a gun in your home, then you failed as a father, because you are the one who raised her.
If you don’t believe that you failed as a father and that she really is an “intelligent, hard-working, responsible 24-year-old,” then the problem is with you and not her and you need to get over it.
Ask yourself why you hate guns so much that you are willing to ruin your relationship with your daughter over that.
Also, if you are so scared of guns, why do you want her to give it to you? Are you any more responsible than she is? From the tone of your letter, I doubt it.
So my advice to you is man the fuck up. Clearly, you need to do that first. Then go to the range with your daughter and have her show you that she can be trusted with her gun. Who knows, maybe you will actually learn something from outside your little bubble of ignorance. Lastly, you need to come to grips with the contradictory thought that your daughter is an “intelligent, hard-working, responsible 24-year-old” but her owning a gun makes her a bad and dangerous person. It’s not healthy for an adult to engage in such doublethink.
Apologize to your daughter, because it’s not her, it’s you.
I will say that if my daughter bought a .40 pistol, I’d be disappointed in her. Only because we’re a 1911 family, and I shoot CDP and single stack major so almost all the target ammo I have on hand is 45.
“Dear Dumb f#ck…er, I mean, ‘Dumbfounded Father’: I certainly can appreciate that you are horrified to learn that your darling daughter is seeing another man. It must make you particularly sad to learn that (a) she is the man of the house,and (b) she is seeing that man in her mirror each morning. If she is this self reliant, and responsible at age 24,imagine what sort of man she will eventually marry, and raise children with! Sadly, you jerkwad, you are on track to only learn of that man, and her children, if you stalk her on Facebook.
Nicely done. You have let the lunatic left destroy your reason, your love for your daughter, and your relationship with your daughter.
Democrat socialists: destroying minds, and families, for over a hundred years!
Signed, Ask Reltney.”
ps: what the blistering Foxtrot are you doing seeking advice from someone as dumb as a pile of bolts, who thinks that hollowpoint bullets “explode”? Ya know, that level of dead brain foolishness is contagious!
We need to send a letter to Dear Amy that we learned one of our 4 children does NOT own a gun, and how irresponsible that is and what have we done wrong as parents…
Firstly, I want the soy levels of this ‘man’s’ diet.
Second, notice how fast they appeal to the law to get their way? If he goes down that road, his daughter (Hi darlin, single?) may very well cut him outta her life for good.
Nothing kills trust faster than getting the law involved. Nothing.
Dead J: Totally! And, were TDW Mark II not a considerably better shot than I, I might also be tempted. “Hey, you busy Saturday? Wanna go to the range? I’ll bring the ammo…”
May I go my usual paranoid? This letter and the response seems too carefully and coincidentally crafted to give talking points to each other. Maybe a crafty and creative letter to one person to herself for clickbait?
Naaah! This letter is as authentic as any letter to Penthouse.
He locks his bedroom door at night to protect himself from the gun?!? Irrational Terror is the hallmark of a sane man.
—-
Only Two (2!) Home Invasions in their neighborhood??? I don’t think we have had two home invasions in our county in the last decade. I would move if that was my neighborhood.
Well at least with a simple barrel change she can switch to .357 Sig…
(We’re a .45 ACP family too, btw, but I’m enjoying one of those as a range toy.)
If she can’t afford her own place, as “dad” alleges, she probably picked up a cheap police trade-in.
Can’t think of any other good reason to pick up .40 in a non competition gun.
Likewise.
“Amy, this is the kind of weapon a criminal would possess!”
The thought of gang members’ caliber wars is making me giggle….
That’s what’s known as Saturday night in Chicago…
Also the kind of gun and ammo a cop would be issued and possess. And, given that many cops are not really “gun people,” and humans tend to speak from what they know, it’s the kind of gun a cop would recommend to a young woman who wanted to protect herself, possibly even a young woman who wants to protect herself from someone specific.
Which leads me to wonder: why doesn’t “daddy dearest” want his little girl to come home safely, or is he the one being protected -against-?
Sadly, some leftist would rather have a child who’s a victim of rape & murder- they get all that sympathy and the ability to politically browbeat people because of “moral authority”. He’d get to hobnob with the rich and famous, and have celebrities stand by misty eyed as he talks about his tragedy and gets all that weepy attention.
Now, if his daughter actually protected herself- with a gun!- all that goes away. He would join the deplorable ranks of Not Our Kind Of People, Dear.
I think .40 is the kind of gun a cop used to have based on how many .40 cal police trade-ins are on the market now.
The whole scenario feels fake, from the 24 year old living at home through the parental freak-out and the false claims about hollow points.
This leaves me wondering what “dad” and Amy’s reaction to me helping my 20 year old build a P80 “Glock” would be. Of course we are au courant with defensive trends and only have 9mm pistols.
would like this 24 year old woman to be my daughter-in-law! All 5 of my daughters shoot and also all 3 sons!
I’d only admonish her on the choice of caliber, .40 is more expensive then 9mm and has a sharper recoil impulse.
Any knives, rolling pins, chairs, brooms, hammers in your house??? As Bugs used to say “what a maroon!”
As the father of a daughter myself, my only worry would be that, if she chose .40, she might have also been influenced to pick a less-than-stellar handgun as well. Like a Hi Point, Taurus, or H&K.
I have enough; she can have one of mine until she saves up enough to buy a quality 9mm or .45.
“. . . She can give her weapon to me . . . ” But that would be a felony in several “universal background check” states.
And if she gives Pops the gun, what’s he going to do with it? Keep it? Sell it and keep the money?
I think it’s time for the 24-year-old daughter to fly the nest. Dad doesn’t have her best interest in mind.
[…] Our friend Miggy Gonzalez’s blog was the first response I saw, here: https://gunfreezone.net/when-hoplophobia-threatens-to-destroy-a-family/. […]
Both letter and response sound contrived – like Project Mockingbird propaganda. Of all major media organs, WaPo has the clearest & most undeniable CIA connections.