The End of the Parenting Moral High Ground - At Least on This Subject

So I'm anti-gun.
Which is a little bit bullshit, because my dad always had a gun in the house and my grandpa had guns and I've known people who hunted and HELL Mrs Repressed and I had a .22 when we lived together.
What I am, is anti-gun near my children. Which again is a little bit bullshit, as far as the moral highground goes. It's sort of like being a smoker and saying my children can't smoke or joining the WTCU and swearing my children will never drink - while having a bloody mary at the country club (yeah Grandma Drake I mean you).
But I'm a product of Captain Kangaroo - and I heard "Remember boys and girls, only play with peace toys" way too often as a child to embrace weapons as toys or even as a presence in my home now that there are tiny humans living in it.
So as this NO-GUNS-AS-TOYS-MOM I've been resistant to the point of obstinacy when it comes to letting Lil Satchmo play any sort of shooter. Seems pretty reasonable of me, right? 4 1/2 year olds have no business PLAYING any sort of shooter in fact so I've felt pretty justified and self righteous denying him BIG BUCK HUNTER.
Or whatever the deer hunting game is called that he's begged me to play every time we entered an arcade for the past six months.

Which is ALSO fairly hypocritical of me, cuz people, I will shoot zombies or demons or whatever in your standard arcade shooter in a heartbeat (sans children of course). I LOVE to do it. But you know, Mom Hat comes on, rules change. And I become STAUNCHLY ANTISHOOTER.

Until tonight.

Tonight we're at a local pizza joint that has a fairly big arcade. So I take the biggest of the little boys to burn a couple of bucks in the name of time with mommy. And I'm thinking skeeball, Ms Pac-Man, Galaga....pinball maybe. Stuff of that nature is what was on my mind. What was not on my mind was big kids who were good at the games getting game after game extension because they are big kids and good at video games. Which leaves 4 year old boys to make the rounds with their mom ONCE "Mom can we play that shooting deer game?" "NO! We don't play with guns! Let's play this game." TWICE - circling, looking for something a 4 year old can play "Mom can we play that shooting deer game?" "NO! Now let's play this somewhat broken pinball machine." THRICE - circling and realizing that half the games are broken, half are taken up by the 10 year olds and what is left is BIG BUCK HUNTER.
"Please Mom?"

Sigh.

Big Buck Hunter.

Shooting.

With a gun.

I said fuck it, yes, let's blow this last token. And we fired it up for a hunting adventure in Montana. Of course, I didn't notice that the attached weapon was a pump action shotgun - which was too tight for a 4 1/2 year old to actually effectively pump for the reload - much less AIM.

So, let's just say that Mom bagged 4 bucks and about 10 turkeys.

Don't mess with me.

I'm anti-gun.

But I'm killer in a first person shooter.