Remember when I went viral and Brandon spent his free time reading every single hateful comment? Yeah. Me too.
Apparently, he remembers it very well—because most women get flowers or jewelry for their anniversary.
Me? I got an anniversary pew pew.
I’m not complaining. I love firearms. To me, they’re woven straight into the fabric of North Carolina culture—right alongside collards, sweet tea, and Sunday drives down winding backroads.
I honestly can’t remember the first time I saw a gun. They’ve always just been there. The men in my life were hunters. They respected their weapons. They took gun safety dead serious. And from the jump, they taught me both the danger and the blessing of carrying a firearm.
Daddy used to shoot down mistletoe from the high branches around Dutch Cove every Christmas—pop a few .22 rounds, gather the fallen sprigs, and hand them out with a grin. During deer season, he never left the house without a rifle riding in the rack across the back window of his truck.
No one batted an eye. It wasn’t strange. It wasn’t political. It was just life.
When I was in high school in the 1990s, boys pulled into the parking lot after spending the morning deer hunting with firearms visible in their vehicles. Papaw kept a gun in the car on every road trip—and he wasn’t shy about using it if the moment called for it. I witnessed it more than once.
Mamaw? She could outshoot most men and never missed a chance to prove it.
And Mama? She took me shooting regularly before I was out of grade school, teaching me to respect the trigger the same way she taught me to respect my elders.
Every native-born North Carolinian I’ve ever known—left, right, or somewhere in the middle—has owned a gun. It’s not about fear. It’s about provision, protection, and a quiet self-reliance that runs deep from Manteo to Murphy.
This is our culture.
It always has been.
Long before the world decided to label it, politicize it, or fear it.
So when Brandon handed me that anniversary pew pew, it wasn’t just a gift. It was a promise—rooted in the same traditions that raised us both: to protect what matters, to stand ready, and to love fiercely in a world that doesn’t always make it easy.
Here’s to another year of us—guns and all.
Happy (very belated) anniversary, Brando! You knocked it out of the park. XO
