I Love My Dad, But I Don't Love Guns

Back in the spring, we asked you to tell us about the hardest conversations you've ever had, and the ones you haven't had yet. A listener we're calling Jack wrote in about a conversation he wanted to have with his dad—about guns. 

Jack grew up in a family that loved to hunt and shoot. His dad has a large collection of firearms—and loves to talk about them with his son. But as Jack has gotten older—he's now 30—he and his dad have drifted apart in many ways. "The last bit of common language that we have left is we can talk about guns," he says. "We retreat to that a lot." But Jack's views on gun culture have shifted too, and he no longer wants to own guns or even really be around them. "What I want to say to him is, 'Dad, I love you and I respect you and this just isn't something that I want to be part of,'" Jack told me. "I know he'll hear that as rejection because that's what it is, it's a rejection."

I talk with Jack about why it's important to him to have this conversation with his dad, and about the ways it might impact their relationship—and other family members too.