Todd M. Siebert: Great Christmas gifts can be remembered a lifetime

“A free people ought not only to be armed but disciplined…” — George Washington, First Annual Address, Jan. 8, 1790

If you are like me, you know all about racing around a day or two before the stores close for Christmas. I found to my dismay that there are no tricks to it anymore except to buy gifts in October.

It once was you could go shopping in empty malls on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. But I discovered those days are as extinct as the toy Teddy Ruxpin. The hours you have left to get Christmas gifts are counting down even as you read this. But don’t stop reading just yet to grab your car keys and credit card because I have important suggestions you might want to consider.

Christmas memories fade as we get old, particularly memories of the materialistic things we received. But there were three gifts I was given by my father that I remember receiving like it was yesterday. Not only did they teach me things about the world and responsibility, they were once cornerstones that were America and will hopefully again be America.

For Christmas 1969, my dad gave me and my older siblings a 1-ounce pure gold South African Krugerrand. I was very disappointed as a young kid who wanted things like a toboggan or a bicycle. I came to understand that what a wonderful gift it was.

President Nixon would not officially abandon the gold standard until August 1971, but each Krugerrand cost my dad $40. Forty dollars in 1969 is about $260 in today’s money.

There was something else that came quite unexpectedly. Once I found out that the Rand cost $40, I began to follow the price of gold. By 14, I had taken the few thousand dollars that my grandmother had left me in her will and, under my dad’s direction, began buying South African gold stocks. It is strange looking back; but when I was in high school, I was calling my dad’s (and my) stockbroker in New York at lunch hour to get quotes on my investments. I began to understand how the markets worked and that paper money was only as good as the confidence in it. Investing taught me that money could be made and lost very quickly and that world events would often dictate the price of assets. As a result, I began watching the nightly news, something I have not stopped doing in more than four decades.

Two years later, I received another important December gift. After owning a pellet gun for years, I received a Remington single-shot .22 rifle from my dad. He was a very good marksman and had taught me the most import thing of all: gun safety. As a young kid, I was trying to pick off a magpie that was tormenting the family dog by stealing his food. I made the mistake of putting a pellet into the gun. Even though the breach was still open, I was not quite outside the house. I received a spanking for that mistake. But it was a good lesson in the do’s and don’ts with any weapon inside a house, even a pellet gun.

I got to spend time with my dad shooting targets and tried to hone my skills — not that they would ever match his or those of my two older brothers. But it was a way for us so-called men in the family to become close. Becoming confident with a .22 rifle literally may have saved my life in a situation I described in “With gun control, Canadian criminals are making a killing.”

I cannot say for certain how much danger my then-fiancée was in back in 1979 when two bad characters followed her in a beat-up old car from the hospital where she worked and tried to get her to pull over. All I knew is that I was alone at my parent’s house cramming for a university final exam when she was banging and crying for help at the front door. The house was on a curved driveway; and the two intruders were intent on getting inside, even though I was a pretty big guy and had the family’s more than 100-pound Great Dane at my side. By then, my dad had given me a very important present: a 12-gauge pump action Remington shotgun.

I had only one skeet practice shell; but I knew that at their distance one shot to the chest would take out one intruder, thus evening the odds. Things never went that far. Sliding a shell and then pumping it into the chamber is an ominous sound. Once they heard it, they sped off.

The point to all of this is that a really great Christmas gift is a teaching tool. When I was a preteen, there were three brothers who tormented me daily on the hour-long school bus ride to and from school. As a fat kid, I was an easy target, who sometimes took more than just verbal abuse. But the thought of packing my .22 on the bus was beyond comprehension. That so many kids today can get a hold of a rifle or handgun and have had terrible parenting, often because their father is AWOL, is a recipe for America’s gun violence.

My family was lucky in that we lived on a small farm that gave us ample room to shoot firearms. But we were also lucky in the parents we had. They had scraped through the Great Depression, and both believed their children needed an understanding of money. My dad was born to a homestead where rifles and a steady eye could be used as a tool to pack home deer meat that might help them survive a long winter.

I know it is harder to be a parent today. But I also know that with a bit of money and substantial time invested, children can be taught to be responsible with firearms, which should be carefully chosen for their age and abilities.

You can get your child started in investing with a 1-ounce American Silver Eagle coin that can be bought for under $20. This could be the seed of a savings account that is more tangible than reading a bank statement off of a cellphone.

The Internet, its games and devices, and its openness to the seedy side of society have taken youths by storm. It may be that with firearms and the right instruction, the Founding Fathers may have been square on with the 2^nd Amendment: the right to keep and bear arms.

After having raised three responsible children and having had good parents myself, I can say this: Any forgettable present given to a child is no present at all.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

–John Myers

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