Welp, colour me surprised – I had no idea Brad Pitt was gun happy, but apparently he is. In fact, he got his first gun while he was still in kindergarten and to this day, won’t be at home without a gun stashed somewhere. But wait, before you get all up in arms, Brad does understand the gravity of possessing weapons and would never go crazy with them.
From Radio Times (via The Telegraph):
“There’s a rite of passage where I grew up of inheriting your ancestors’ weapons,” said Pitt. “My brother got my dad’s. I got my grandfather’s shotgun when I was in kindergarten.”
The actor – who was born in Oklahoma and raised in Missouri – was first given an air gun, then received a shotgun when he was six. By the time he was eight, he had fired a handgun.
The Radio Times reports that Pitt doesn’t feel that he and his family are safe unless there is a gun in the house.
“The positive is that my father instilled in me a profound and deep respect for the weapon,” he said.
I guess fair enough. He seems relatively sane and especially as a celebrity and the amount of crazies there are in the world, I suppose he feels he needs to be hyper-vigilant to keep his family safe. It’s a shame we live in a world where we need guns to protect ourselves, but it’s tale as old as time and not likely to change anytime soon, unfortunately, as long as ACTUAL psychos are able to get a hold of guns and other weapons.
I personally would never be able to live in a house with a gun – it would give me all kinds of anxiety, especially if children are present (though again, I do understand there are ways to ensure children don’t get a hold of guns, etc – but nothing is fail-proof!), but to each his own.
How naive to think of the world as anything other than a dangerous place. Life is just what you have until you die. Trust EVERYONE because people are good deep down inside? Ha,ha,ha,ha. Sing Kumbaya and please stand by to die.
I’m just as uncomfortable around guns. A buddy of mine had a modified AR-15 and it was pretty dang cool. I wanted one just to have it but then I realized I’d be spending all sorts of crazy money just to look at the thing…I never actually wanted to shoot it because…what’s the point? The idea of shooting it makes me uncomfortable and I wouldn’t consider owning a gun AND ammo AND loading the ammo into the gun until I went through some serious training. I wasn’t raised around them but I’m aware enough of the danger of mishandling one. For someone like Brad Pitt, who grew up around them, he was taught from a young age to respect guns and how to handle them. It’s a world of difference.
If everyone put as much effort into their decisionmaking as you do about important issues, the world would be a better place.