It’s time — time for me to admit the truth. I’ve avoided talking about this for years, but now it’s out in the open. My parents have come out of the closet. So I might as well accept it and get on with my life.

My parents have an open carry relationship.

They hid it from me at first. I suppose they were ashamed. Maybe they even denied it to themselves. To each other. But you can’t deny who you are forever. You can’t deny the things you love most. And my parents…well, they love the Second Amendment. And guns.

They used to hide their love. They hid their guns, denied their Constitutional rights, tried to be ‘normal.’ But it was just too hard. Too unfair. Too dishonest. So they decided to come out of the gun closet — just to family and friends, at first. They began to wear their guns around the house.

It was embarrassing at first. But it made them happy, so I smiled and tried to be understanding. I figured that so long as they didn’t touch their triggers in front of me, it would be okay. They’re my parents, after all. You have to love your parents, don’t you?

But it wasn’t enough for them to wear their guns in the privacy of our home. They decided to flaunt their gun-love openly. In public. On the streets and at the library and in stores and even — and it shames me to say this, but I have to because it’s true — they even wore their guns to church.

Everybody saw them. The neighbors. My friends. Children. My god, the children.

And still, that wasn’t enough. They made a video celebrating their firearm love.

They say there’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s natural, they say. They didn’t choose to love the Second Amendment. They didn’t choose to love guns. They were born that way.

They say they understand some people will be offended by their behavior. Some people will hate them. Some will even be afraid. But, they say, it’s just for self-defense. They’d never force anybody else to wear guns.

But then they wrote the book. A book for children. That’s when I realized the truth. They were recruiting children. They want children to grow up and be gun lovers too. They want their lifestyle to become mainstream.

My parents, I know now, are completely insane. Maybe they really were born that way. Or maybe when they were innocent children somebody exposed them to guns, and it warped their personalities. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. They are who they are. I’ve asked them to get help, to talk to a therapist — but they won’t listen.

These are my parents. They’re in an open carry relationship. I’m afraid their love for guns will continue to grow. I’m afraid of what might happen to them, afraid of what they might do to others. And there’s nothing I can do to stop them.