Edward

While raising his children, Edward refrained from keeping firearms in his home but as soon as his son turned eighteen, “we’ve had guns around the house. I just use them for an investment.” Edward had limited exposure to firearms in the military, only carrying “an M16 when I was in boot camp, and I never put my hands on another rifle all the time I was in the service. I carried a 38 because I was a helicopter crew chief.” At home he bought his first gun for personal use. 

Target shooting with family on Christmas Day one year, “I thought I shot all the shells out of them when I didn’t and was going back to reload and it went off and went through my hand...I didn’t check to make sure all the rounds were out of it.” Edward went to the emergency room where “I think they put two stitches in it to stop the bleeding. No serious damage.”

The incident hasn’t changed how Edward feels about firearms, although he keeps his “hands off semiautomatics...Do not trust them.” Other than that, he attributes the events of that Christmas Day to “just carelessness on my part...You always handle a firearm like it’s loaded and I forgot about that. Most Veterans are pretty safe with firearms. We’ve been trained by the military to be safe with firearms from the M16s to your 38. You’re taught to be safe with them. I just got careless.”