Nuts and guns

I think it is interesting that many people think that pacifists would not own guns. In this letter Dad talks about someone killing a deer near the camp. I should say shooting a deer. I believe most people in rural areas farms or ranches in the US will own and use guns including Quakers. I do not recall stories of Dad and his brother's going deer hunting but I do believe they had rifles and may have killed some wild animals. There is a clear difference in the early to middle part of the 20th century between killing for food or to protect livestock and the killing of other human beings. I think as we became less connected with the food chain there has been more of an anti-gun movement and all guns are seen as potential weapons against other people. There is the story told in our family of the Osborne relative who had his gun confiscated during the revolutionary war, when it was returned to him after the war by the local militia, he destroyed the weapon and buried it, saying that he did not want to hunt with a weapon which had been used to kill men.
On the theme of nuts, there is mention of collecting fillburts in this letter. Here in southern New Mexico we are entering Pecan and Pistachio harvest time. Further north there will be pinons as well. We get a bit nutty here.