We’re a three-weapon household. As I write, my husband is cleaning one of his rifles on the kitchen table, preparing it for the coming hunting season. All of his weapons are high calibre hunting rifles – a .308 and two 30.06s, the weapons of choice for reindeer hunting. The latter is also the recommended weapon for polar bear protection. Guns like these will blast anything much smaller into about a thousand pieces. Whenever any gun-related activites are going on around our son – which is not often as we try to keep them out of his sight – he typically gets a long and boring lecture about safety. “This is not a toy – it’s a tool and a dangerous one, You must never pick up or even touch a gun, Never walk in front of the barrel” and so on.
But many Greenlandic families introduce their sons to hunting aged seven. Young boys are typically taken hunting with their fathers and other male relatives and their first kill is a seen as a right of passage. Our son is nine. And I can tell you now, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that he’ll even be handling a weapon anytime soon. Introducing guns to children is not on my list of priorities. Like all children his age, my son doesn’t have the mental maturity to understand the implications and consequences of being responsible for a gun. He’s a child.
Nonetheless, guns are endlessly fascinating to him. I recall that as a two year old, his kindergarten (like most) did not allow toy weapons. So the boys would find sticks to shoot each other with. But over the years, our desire to avoid him having toy weapons has gone considerably by the wayside. He has a veritable arsenal of foam swords, nerf guns, and even a plastic cross bow that shoots arrows with rubber ends that will stick fast to windows.
Recently, playing a shooting game with a visiting friend, he had a sudden inspiration. My husband, hearing that things had gone disconcertingly quiet, ventured out to see what mischief was underway. Our son, holding the above weapon, sported a wild grin.
“Look at this Daddy!”
He had fetched an empty 30.06 shell casing from his collection made on picnics near Nuuk (see ‘We bought our gun on facebook from a policeman‘) and loaded it into the plastic magazine of his nerf gun. It was exactly the right size. My husband looked on in horror, but also with a twinge of pride at the ingenuity, as our son successfully fired off the ‘real’ spent round from his toy.
