There aren't any guns in my house. That isn't necessarily from any particular ideological principle on my part. I mean, I grew up around guns, as my dad is an avid duck and dove hunter (read: he sits in the bushes a lot with a gun in his hand waiting for a bird to fly by). He has a few shot guns and a few rifles, all, I believe, are at the ranch.

Weirdly, as much as a feminist as he is, my dad never really encouraged his daughters to shoot. Jose was handed a gun of his own when he was ten. None of us girls really had that opportunity, though I'm not sure that we really wanted it. I think we all got turns at shooting skeet, but the talent or desire to shoot was never really developed. Claudia goes hunting with my dad and Holden, but she says it's like a mom going to her kid's soccer game. She's there to root on the kid, not to enjoy the game. Liv won't go anywhere near guns.

Me? I'm a terrible shot. I'm impatient and don't take the time to wait for the shot and end up pulling the trigger too soon and miss by a mile and I get nervous about the recoil before it happens so I flinch a lot. I don't think it's a really good idea for someone as bad as I am with firearms to own one. I realize, of course, that with practice and patience, I probably could improve. But I've never really had the desire.

My brother is an excellent shot. He's been hunting with my dad since he was a kid, and he's pretty damned good at it. One semester, he came back from Cornell bragging about how he took a PE skeet shooting class. There were a bunch of kids from New York City in the class, Jose, and a kid from Jordan. Jose and the kid from Jordan pretty much ignored the NYC kids, because they barely hit the pigeons at all. Jose and the Jordanian barely missed. But again, all his firearms are at the ranch. It'd be sort of silly to carry around a shotgun in downtown Houston.

My mother got her limit on the very first duck hunt she ever went on.

Graham and I talked about our various stances on firearms a few months ago. I pointed out the "terrible shot" arugment above. Graham's not having guns is different: He's most comfortable with guns he is really, really good at shooting. Yeah, he'd probably be pretty proficient with handguns or ordinary rifles or whatnot, but he got really good with an M16 in the Marine Corps. I don't really see us having an M16. The dogs serve pretty well as early warning systems, and I'm fairly certain that Graham has some tricks up his sleeve to impair anyone who would be stupid enough to break into an ex-Marine's house.

As for self-defense, the only time I've ever been in a life or death position involving fire arms, my having a fire arm to shoot back wasn't going to help matters. I was driving down the freeway, heard a pop, looked at my instruments, found nothing wrong, heard more pops, and realized that the car next to me was shooting at the car in front of me. I opted to stop the car and let those people settle their differences without using my vehicle as a shield.

I'm still slogging though Scalia's trip down memory lane (which is rather ridiculous legal analysis in my opinion, but I give a little slack as there hasn't been an actual decision on these matters in a while for him to rely on, not that Scalia likes to rely on decisions), so I haven't come to the conclusion of the opinion, but I gather that gun ownership is an individual right. Sounds more or less right to me. I have to get to the part about regulation to figure out whether or not it's reasonable or not, though I suspect it probably would be. I think an outright ban on all firearms probably is unconstitutional. Where the limits are, though, remain to be seen.

Tags: family, memories, supreme court