{"id":3463,"date":"2015-10-05T12:21:52","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T19:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=3463"},"modified":"2015-10-05T12:21:52","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T19:21:52","slug":"mom-to-mom-is-there-a-gun-in-your-home-playdates2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/05\/mom-to-mom-is-there-a-gun-in-your-home-playdates2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Mom to Mom: “Is There a Gun in Your Home?” #playdates2015"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"shooting<\/a><\/p>\n

Guns in other people’s houses: here’s what one\u00a0mom wrote last spring in the Washington Post<\/a>, that emerged again on Facebook after the Oregon school shooting.<\/p>\n

The other mom might say, \u201cCan Chloe come over here tomorrow to play with Maddie?\u201d I would ask, \u201cDo you keep guns in your house?\u201d….I\u2019m not quite sure what compelled me to ask about guns when my children were small. I just added it to the litany of things I would tell parents \u2013 we have a dog, we have a pool that\u2019s fenced, we don\u2019t keep guns. It seemed that if a parent told me about their child\u2019s food allergy, I could and should ask if they kept guns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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When my older son was in kindergarten, he used to visit his friend Michael. \u00a0One day he came home\u00a0and announced that Michael’s father had a gun – he had seen it. \u00a0 Thirty-five years ago that was a shock, especially on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. \u00a0We decided all playdates with Michael would move to our house and explained to his parents, who weren’t particularly troubled by our decision. \u00a0But it’s not easy.<\/p>\n

It’s in our nature to be polite, civil to another parent, especially when their children like each other, but even I, the pathological people pleaser, couldn’t do otherwise.<\/p>\n

As I watch what is unfolding in our country now, recalling the frightening relief that we learned about The Gun before anything happened, and reading on Facebook how many of our younger friends’ kids have lockdown drills even in 1st and 2nd grade, it’s tough not to feel sad — and angry.<\/p>\n

There are more than enough words written about this already, but as we experience\u00a0the continuing epidemic of tragedy and our national\u00a0unwillingness to confront the issue, and I see my oldest grandson almost the age at which our son first faced\u00a0this, I just wonder if our country has any will left to improve anything – even the safety of our children.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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  Guns in other people’s houses: here’s what one\u00a0mom wrote last spring in the Washington Post, that emerged again on Facebook after the Oregon school shooting. The other mom might say, \u201cCan Chloe come over here tomorrow to play with Maddie?\u201d I would ask, \u201cDo you keep guns in your house?\u201d….I\u2019m not quite sure what … Continue reading Mom to Mom: “Is There a Gun in Your Home?” #playdates2015<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2877,27,42,9],"tags":[3458,3453,3454,3452,3456,2356,3455,3457],"class_list":["post-3463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microblogmonday-2","category-current-affairs","category-family","category-politics","tag-gun-accidents","tag-gun-control","tag-gun-safety","tag-guns","tag-guns-at-home","tag-play-dates","tag-playdates","tag-toddlers-and-guns"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-TR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3463"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3473,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3463\/revisions\/3473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}