That chapter starts with Scout complaining about how their
father isn't as interesting as other kids' fathers. He doesn't play sports with them and
just seems too old to have fun with his kids. Being a widower, he devoted a lot of his
efforts into providing for his children and raising them to be good people. They had no
idea that their father was such a good shot, and were surprised by how accurate he
was. For Scout, clearly her father is a little "cooler" by the end of the chapter, but
it means so much more than that. It's a paradigm shift for the kids to see their father
performing such a task.
It's not that Atticus was anti-gun;
he does, after all, buy his children rifles, which is generally unheard of these days.
Hunting was a normal thing for any man to do, so men (and women) of all backgrounds were
likely to be able to shoot. It was simply that the deadly power of a gun was not the
kind of power that Atticus preferred to be known for; rather, he wished to be known for
his intellect and his kindness. Reading this incident from Scout's point of view allows
us to see Atticus as a larger-than-life figure, a hero wielding a weapon for the cause
of good. Then, when the reader sees Atticus in the trial and its aftermath, that heroic
persona is complemented.
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