The hunting trip was supposed to be four days at an uncle’s cabin with a small group of friends. According to the man who posted about it, he and three friends were planning to head out the next weekend, and one of the people invited was a woman named Cass.
Cass was not just some random person in the group. The poster said he actually knew her through his girlfriend. He also said Cass liked hunting, had gone hunting with him before, and made sense as someone to invite along.
That was where the problem started. His girlfriend had never shown much interest in hunting, at least according to him. But once she found out Cass was going, she asked to come too.
The man said no.
The original Reddit post can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/xbx4gu/aita_for_refusing_to_take_my_girlfriend_hunting/
His reason was not just that she did not like hunting. He said he did not trust her around firearms, even if they were secured. He said some of his uncle’s rifles were displayed on an antique rack and were not properly locked up. He also said his girlfriend had a history of depression and anxiety and did not have firearm safety training, so he believed it was not safe to have her there.
His girlfriend did not take that well. From her side, she was an adult who was interested in learning to hunt. She felt like he was deciding for her what she could and could not do. He insisted he was not trying to control her. He said she could learn on her own if she wanted, but he did not want to be the person responsible for bringing her into that setting.
The conflict had two layers almost immediately. On the surface, it was about guns, training, and whether someone without firearm experience should be around a hunting cabin where some guns might not be properly secured. Underneath that, it was also about trust. He was taking another woman on a four-day trip, and that woman was connected to his girlfriend.
That made the girlfriend’s reaction easier to understand. Even if she had no deep love for hunting, the setup probably did not feel great from her side. Her boyfriend was leaving for several days with her friend, while telling her she could not come because he did not trust her near guns.
The man seemed to think his explanation was practical. He saw firearms, inexperience, mental health history, and unsecured rifles as a bad mix. But the way he presented it made a lot of people angry. Instead of saying the trip was only for experienced hunters, or that he did not want anyone new around unsecured firearms, he singled out his girlfriend as the safety problem.
He later clarified in the comments that his girlfriend was not suicidal, was not in crisis, and had her depression and anxiety treated with medication and therapy. That clarification only made some commenters more critical. If she was stable enough for him to leave alone for four days, they asked, why was she too unstable to be near guns in a supervised setting?
That question became the center of the disagreement. If his concern was real and serious, then leaving her behind did not fully make sense. If his concern was not that serious, then using it as the reason to exclude her from the trip looked unfair.
Most commenters came down hard on the poster. Many said the bigger issue was that he invited his girlfriend’s friend on a weekend trip but refused to let his girlfriend come. To them, that looked less like a clean safety decision and more like a relationship problem he was trying to explain away with firearm concerns.
Some commenters agreed that gun safety matters and that inexperienced people should be trained before being around firearms. But they also pointed out that the unsafe part sounded like the uncle’s cabin, not the girlfriend. If rifles were sitting unsecured on an antique rack, that was already a problem before she ever asked to come.
Others focused on how he talked about her mental health. Several said having depression or anxiety, especially when treated and stable, does not automatically make someone unsafe around firearms. They felt he was using her medical history against her instead of having a direct conversation about the trip.
A smaller number of commenters had some sympathy for the safety argument. They said if he did not feel comfortable supervising a new hunter, he was allowed to say no. But even those commenters tended to think he handled it badly by inviting Cass first and then framing his girlfriend as the danger.
The post ended without a clean resolution. The girlfriend was upset, the man still thought he was being cautious, and the comments were full of people telling him that the hunting trip was no longer just about hunting. It had turned into a fight about respect, trust, safety, and whether he was being honest about why he really did not want her there.
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