You’re missing the broader point.
There’s nothing wrong with guns as a hobby. The same premise the article is talking about would apply if the author had used martial arts or fencing in the dialogue.
The point is that there’s more to protecting one’s family than being a warrior. Most of the work of protection is mundane and day to day. The point is that as a society we’ve developed a warrior mentality meshed with masculine identity that is damaging and missuing something. We’re all suffering for it.
My dad had guns. He taught me to shoot, how to clean a weapon, how to store them safely. He also cooked when needed without complaint. He loved making taco salad with us in the kitchen. He taught me how to make taco salad and how to cut vegetables without hurting myself.
He and both my grandfathers kept gardens. They taught me how to grow food. My grandmothers taught me how to preserve food. And so forth and so on.
The point is that it doesn’t matter how badly you want to play action hero. It doesn’t matter if you fight with guns or your hands or even a shield like Captain America. That’s a fantasy that is unlikely to pass.
It doesn’t matter how much of a bad ass you are if your children starve because you can’t grow or buy food. It doesn’t matter how big your gun collection is if your children get lockjaw because you can’t be bothered to sit in a doctor’s office for them to get a tetanus shot, or any other vaccination. It doesn’t matter how many hours you spend learning mixed martial arts if your kids die of diarrhea induced dehydration or fever because you had to train instead of keeping them hydrated or keeping the fever down.
Most actual threats to the health, safety, and well being of your family are common, everyday, mundane kinds of things. Far too many men seem to have tricked this notion into their heads where they’re above or too good/special to deal with any of that in exchange for a fantasy that is unlikely to ever come to pass.
You’re making yourselves useless as husbands, partners, and fathers as a result. That’s just the cold hard truth of the fact. Yeah, I went there. And I meant it. Useless.
There’s an adage in medical training about not looking for zebras when examining symptoms, look for horses.
Following that analogy, riots and home invasions are zebras. Real life is not a safari full of exotics, it’s more like a farm full of the usual characters. When a man puts all his effort into preparing for a stampede of wildebeasts at the expense of the mundane, he ends up with his stock locked in a burning barn while he deafens his ears to their screams.
What a hero.
