i forgot. the draft dodger.
I dodged out from the military as well, but that was due to that: 1) I don't like taking orders. 2) Why would I give the Swedish military one year of my life, learning how to use guns to protect my country, when my country doesn't allow me to just buy a gun for my protection as a private citizen?
You can enlist for one year? Cool. If I was a young Swedish cock, just growing tail feathers, I would give them a year, just so I could learn to shoot, well.
We have draft, so when I was 18, I could have gone to prison if I had simply refused military duty. I asked for postponement of my military duty for my university studies, and one day a Captain so and so called me and asked if I was really interested in going to the military, and I answered him "Honestly, no." So he exempted me from military service. But you can enlist too, women too.
But I could also have applied to a shooting club. Like I said, guns aren't banned, they're only very restricted. But I was too shy in that age, and now it would feel weird to apply for one. People usually join shooting clubs when they're 18-20. And they're often unwillingly and suspicious to new members, due to the fact that a few people actually have committed crimes with legal gun. And I refuse the whole idea. Would you accept to keep your driver's license on the condition that you went back to driving school at least a couple of months for the rest of your life? Because that's how the shooting club system works. You have to stay a member to keep your license, and you have to go to the club on a somewhat regular basis. The cops can check you, and if you haven't been there for a couple of months, they can take your license. And if you get a license to keep the gun in your home (which needs a separate procedure), the cops have a right to come and search your house whenever they please to check out that you have your gun locked up properly...So you can have a gun legally, alright, if you accept this procedure and if you accept that the cops can come into your home like you were some criminal...
Technically they have a similar provision (must submit your guns and records, on demand, for inspection) in the gun laws of this country, but I believe it was only put there, after Kennedy's assassanation with a mail order gun, to allow some gray areas for the BATF to abuse. Fortunately the abuse of that power doesn't happen often, but the wording is challenged still. The wording of those laws makes a great argument between left and right, partly because legislators had left it to the criminals to honor the law (absurd!). In the sixties, the gun laws were changed drastically and created a middle-man (arrangement between BATF and Federally licensed dealerships was changed) to keep more complete records for them and made it illegal for individuals to purchase weapons from manufacturers or importers. We are not really all that free, in this country, either.
Before there were speedy, online, background checks performed on buyers, when purchasing certain weapons, the felons who were forbidden to purchase, still bought guns in legal stores. As a licensee, you would have been liable to lose your license if one of the guns you sold, went directly into the hands of a felon. The only legal defense for the dealer, would be whether the gun was purchased before a felony was committed or whether you sold a gun to a previously convicted felon. Either way, the only way to save your license, after selling to a felon, was to give them totally complete (yellow form, they call it) and current information to convict the criminal, again. Kind of gestapo-like if you ask me. The BATF is about as close to being "above the law" as you can get. Even old hillbillies knew this and they used to shoot "revenooers" on site - a short term solution, kind of like blowing up a road sign. (I never blew up any road signs, but I had an old pickup at one time and several other tough old cars. I just ran over them, for what ever offense I felt them responsible for. Usually it was for reflecting sunlight at me.)
As far as feeling weird, I would feel even weirder if I did not have my weapons, even though I am separated from most of them, right now. They had to be put into storage, when we moved, because (my priorities changed) I just don't have room for the safes, in my home, anymore, but, trust me, I do not "go around naked". The Browning safes were my idea, because at one time I had quite a few guns and lived in an area of Texas that was a little dangerous to have unused guns, just sitting around.
I turned eighteen in nineteen seventy three and they were already "ending" the Viet Nam conflict and very few people were being drafted, compared to a couple of years before. I was prepared to enlist, because there was "rumor" that if you enlist, instead of making the army "look for you in Canada" you would have a little say in what job you went for. It was not true, however. You were safe from the draft, if you were establishing a Canadian citizenship and they sent almost everyone newly enlisted to the front lines, as fodder, anyway.
I feel better knowing how to control a weapon, even though I don't really shoot much, anymore. I would work through the embarrassment and join the club, anyway. It is simply the way it is done in your country. You want to play, you gotta use their rules. Take it from an older guy: What are you waiting for? You are only getting older.
