It will take a lot of patience from you but I believe eventually she will be okay with it.
Agree with what @Jerzees comments
My wife doesn’t like being around firearms either. I am still trying to get her involved and going to the range. Nothing traumatic ever happened to her but she is not into firearms. I am being patient. I believe eventually she will come around. Every time we watch the news together and someone is a victim I just say that’s why people need firearms and she nods her head. But just continue to speak with your wife and be patient, watch the news with her and do like I do, She may just need a push in the right direction. Sometimes it helps for her to listen to it from someone else. I tell my female friends that are LEOs to speak with her. If you have any LEO friends have them speak with her because that may help. Keep us informed and so will I when I get a breakthrough with my wife.
Good call. Yes. She has been willing to watch me do it when I had to leave state for work. I showed her how to load and she watched but it was hard for her to touch it. I know when it comes down to it if she needed to use it to protect the kids she would. But you’re right the more training she has with something that won’t cause the trauma the more likely she’s going to be able to use it without hesitation, kind of like a muscle memory. Thank you very much.
After my wife read the thread she agreed a lot with you. She said by watching me with the gun knowing how to handle it, being safe with it, making sure everyone else is safe around it, has helped her with a little bit of the trust. And if she’s able to do that for herself by learning with the practice guns, I think that will help a lot too. Thanks again.
I’m Sorry my talk text has been kind of off, so a lot of General mistakes in my typing too. I just read what you had quoted of me and my gosh quite a few mistakes there LOL.
But thank you and I do appreciate everyone’s help.
I will keep everyone informed. She’s read the whole thread today and she’s very open to the advice here. I think it’s a very unique situation because she actually does want to get over the sphere and participate in the knowledge and safe using of a gun just so that she can protect the house when I’m out of state working. So that alone is driving her to want to learn. And all of your guys’s insights have been really helpful. We’re going to buy one of the orange or yellow practice pistols after the holidays are over and she’ll try to start there and when I told her that’s the same practice pistol they used in the classes for the lady who I got the CPL from, she was much more open to going. She thought that she would be shoved into a shooting range on her first meeting. And even though I told her that when I first told her about the class that was a couple months ago so she’s had much more exposure to the guns now and a little less scared. You’re still very anxious, but she’s really wanting to get over this fear. Thanks again for the suggestion and please let me know if your wife has that breakthrough too and I’ll do the same.
Fortunately the couple of grammar and spelling Nazi forum members that used to hang out here haven’t been around in awhile. Maybe they found an actual grammar forum to hang out in:)
Sometimes if one of our mistakes is exceptionally funny or strange someone will call us out on it but most of us are more concerned with what everyone is trying to say than how grammatically correct we are saying it. Unless you accidentally use the word “clip” instead of “magazine”. In that case you better duck and cover;)
Another how to get over the fear hang gliding related.
I once launched off an almost vertical cliff with trees below it. Unfortunately the strap for the harness wasn’t clipped onto the steal carabiner and I had to hold on to the control frame causing the glider to dive. I was never more than 2’ off the ground but I flew into a rotten tree stump. They had to cut me out of the stump and my right arm was snapped out of the shoulder socket severing a third of the ball of the humerus requiring surgery and screws to reattach and clean out the socket.
At a friend’s urging, a little over a year later I found myself strapped into a harness, glider on my shoulders getting ready to launch, run off, a steep slope 1500’ above the landing area. Needless to say I was shaking in my shoes but I ran down that slope as fast as I could and soon found myself safely in the air flying.
A fear not faced and over come is a controlling mechanism that can be used against you. Be proud of her moving forward to conquer that fear.
The “Clip” is a word I am working hard to remove from my vernacular. LoL.I grew up in the 90s listening to too much rap music. So it does still slip out on rare occasions.
Thanks so much. I do cherish her, and am so proud. I unloaded the PDP, removed the mag, and handed it to her yesterday at her request. She read the forum and was very moved by all of the kindnesses shown here to her. Especially in a group of “gun guys” (and gals) . She is working on it. I am really grateful for all of your collective advices.
I understand what you mean, but that is kind of semantics. I mean I suppose that the word “gun violence” is a word that triggers a lot of gun owners, because the person commits the violence, not the gun. That idea is not lost on me, nor do I disagree with the sentiment, but when violence is committed with a gun, rather than a knife, there would be a special trauma that happens with guns itself.
Guns are different, no matter how you cut it. They are loud, they wound the body in different way, a more severe way. Even my CPL instructor said that guns are not an intuitive weapon. Which makes them different than the rest.
So yes, the idea of therapy is still on the table, but she is already getting less fearful with exposure therapy. And it is a lot like a car crash for some folks. When they crash that car, they don’t want to drive or be in a car. But the more they see that 99.9% of the time, they are safe, as long as everyone follows the rules, the more likely they will be able to get into a car.
The “Clip” is a word I am working hard to remove from my vernacular. LoL.I grew up in the 90s listening to too much rap music. So it does still slip out on rare occasions.