Good Luck finding them!...I have heard they exist, but then again, supposedly so does Nessie!
Posted on 03/07/2013 1:33:53 PM PST by libstripper
The author of a new book tries to reconcile his personal politics with his fondness for firearms. (Italics in original.)
Dan Baum is not your typical gun guy. He has a lifelong love of firearms he can trace back to the age of five. But he's also a Jewish Democrat and a former staff writer for The New Yorker and feels like a misfit next to most gun owners, who identify overwhelmingly on the conservative side of the spectrum.
In order to bridge this gap, Baum set off on a cross-country journey, chatting with everyone from a gun store owner in Louisville to a wild boar hunter in Texas to a Hollywood armorer. The result is Gun Guys: A Road Trip. I spoke with Baum about his trek through gun country and why this issue is one of our nation's most complicated and politically divisive.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Not really:
http://junipersec.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/norway-projections-of-the-socialist-going-on-stalinist/
From “Dear Mr. Security Agent”
http://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/bracken-dear-mr-security-agent/
4. The gun nuts
To many liberals, the popular American hobby of collecting and shooting guns is a bizarre and shameful vice. Three or four pistols and long guns and a few hundred rounds of ammunition are routinely described in the popular media as an “arsenal.” Perhaps in a Manhattan walk-up studio apartment, where that handful of guns had to be smuggled in and hidden, it would be considered an “arsenal.” But out past the urban beltway, out in Red State America, that is what many folks I know keep in their car or truck for roadside emergencies, or impromptu plinking, or varmint-hunting opportunities. And hell, isn’t that why we have guns out in Red State America? Damn sure is. Among other reasons.
Millions of firearms aficionados in their later years have purchased a rifle, pistol or shotgun every year or two for decades. In millions of cases, these add up to dozens of firearms per household. A round dozen firearms of all types might be a good average. Some are hunting arms, some are military antiques, and increasingly, many are defensive pistols and modern sporting rifles, and yes, both are semi-automatic. For example, millions of AR-15 rifles have been purchased in just the last few years. Note that I did not say modern hunting rifles. That is a separate category, but the important thing to understand is that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting, and anybody who says it does is telling a lie.
Those of us who enjoy firearms feel it deeply when some lunatic misuses one to slaughter innocents. Shooting ranges are virtually churches of gun safety, with safety rules posted everywhere, taught to one and all, and enforced strictly. Passing down our tradition of safe and responsible gun ownership from generation to generation is considered a sacred trust. When a firearm is misused by a criminal, our greatest wish is always that we had been present with our legally concealed pistols to stop the slaughter of unarmed, defenseless innocents. And more frequently than you might imagine, this actually happens.
Consider this: the average number of victims per incident when the shooter is stopped by an armed civilian: three. The average number of victims when the shooter is stopped by a policeman: fourteen. Why? Because when every second is a matter of life and death, the police are still minutes away. Think about those numbers. Eleven people die needlessly if the shooting takes place in a “victim disarmament zone,” where legal firearms are prohibited. This is why deranged shooters head for schools, malls, and theaters, where signs forthrightly proclaim that guns are forbidden. A “no firearms” sign draws such a person the way that a starving wolf is attracted to a pen full of helpless lambs.
But when the killer is stopped by an armed civilian, the mainstream media rarely or never mention that fact, because it goes against their propaganda template: the inherent evil of guns in civilian hands. So those stories are spiked and the typical American never hears of them. Did you know that shortly before the tragedy in Connecticut, an armed civilian stopped a maniac in a packed shopping mall after he had killed only two victims, instead of twenty-seven?
http://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/bracken-dear-mr-security-agent/
You're right about changing people's minds. Give them a safety lesson, if you're qualified. Then, take them to the range. Display responsibility and patience. They look around them and don't see "gun nuts". Suddenly, they see people like themselves and frequently, their kids, having fun and exercising their rights. It's a powerful lesson.
As a leftist, her rationale was quite consistent. They think in terms of having control and power over people. We think in terms of, “Don’t tread on me”, let me live in peace.
I saw this interview on Fox yesterday. The man starts with a false premise—that we get our rights from the government. He actually said he was ‘grateful’ to live under a government that allows him to own firearms.
Recently heard Bob Costas interviewed on the radio about his infamous remarks about guns a few months back.
He said he was really trying to talk about what he called a “gun culture” where guns are fetishized and turned into fashion symbols and emblems of manliness.
And it suddenly struck me that a good part of the red/blue divide on this issue is because there isn’t “a gun culture,” there are multiple gun cultures.
What Costas was talking about isn’t really a gun culture, it’s a thug culture, glorification of violence and crime. If guns weren’t around the same guys would fetishize their swords. In fact, they used to.
While there is IMO a subset, sad to say, of right or at least rightish gun/thug culture, most of those on FR and elsewhere who cling to their guns aren’t members. This gun culture is responsible, patriotic and careful to use them wisely. They have nothing whatsoever in common with the gun/thug culture except the guns themselves.
The mashing together in the public perception of these (and probably other) gun subcultures creates a lot of the inability for one side to understand the other.
He gets it righter than hell, even.
Dan, I'd even let you shoot up some of my ammo.
The man starts with a false premise—that we get our rights from the government. He actually said he was ‘grateful’ to live under a government that allows him to own firearms.
Some people just plain believe in serfdom.
They should go to Cuba, North Korea, Communist China, Viet Nam, or some other workers' and peasants' paradise, and leave America the !@#$%^&*! alone!
Regarding concealed carry:
“It also made me really calm. When you’re wearing a gun, you do not get upset if someone takes your parking space, or if someone cuts you in line. You have this quite noble sense of being the sheepdog, being the protector. And I liked that.”
exactly!
I’m going to cut this guy some slack and read his book.
I suspect more than a few former hippies have “evolved” from spitting on Viet Nam veterans to trying to take their (and newer veterans) guns away using any excuse they can think of.
It is ironic that the Democrats, erstwhile champions of the common man, now hold whole swathes of them in contempt as uneducated rednecks too stupid to own the rifles they were enthusiastically supplied with by the Federal Government when they were 18 year old cannon fodder.
Might be refreshing to read the viewpoint of a lib who isn’t in lockstep with the hive.
... and there's certainly no 'Now that I'm packing heat, nobody can bully me!' mindset that I'm sure a lot of anti-gunners believe about concealed carriers. No twisted secret fantasies about sticking the gun in some gas station attendant's face or heroically taking down terrorists at the supermarket like Steven Seagal, either. That's their projectionism, if anything.
Mindset training comes into play here (e.g. Cooper's 'Condition 0', etc.), and I know I could voluntarily use lots more. With the heavy responsibility of concealed carrying, also comes along the increased alertness that non-carriers often find themselves in: Walking with their hands full, talking on the cell phone, not even bothering to look at who's within the vicinity and complete disregard for their own safety -- what the police call 'sleepwalking through life'.
The mindset is also not akin to always presuming you're going to be attacked at a moment's notice and need to be ready to cartwheel towards the assailant and perform an expertly-executed karate chop behind their ear, either. Instead, the alertness you feel when carrying concealed is more like the sense of alertness you need to have pedaling a bicycle down a designated bike lane that shares the road with vehicular traffic.
I am as aware of packing a gun as I am knowing that I've always got my wallet in my pocket and that I didn't walk away from my car without using the keyfob thingie to set the car alarm. I've been carrying for so long that its something that I just know and do and remember.
Now, *open* carry, I don't understand that a bit unless someone lives in a locale where concealed carry is prohibited but open carry isn't. Only time I open carry is out in the nearby desert going shooting.
Costas is a sackless wussbag. Let’s see him have the balls to decry the gangster/rap/thug culture that promotes cop killing, glorifies misogyny and celebrates random violence. Those of us that have a gun fetish despise these things. Our guns are bought with the intention of preventing violence, not perpetrating it.
Costas is a pathetic wimp. He attacks the peace loving and ignores the violent criminal elements in our country.
“even if he is a liberal. Boy, does he get it right about who I am and the way I feel about the Democratic party.”
He’s right about why people reject the Democratic party.
He’s delusional when he spouts the “Party of the working guy” fairytale.
We tolerate so much misbehavior from young people these days that we blame the gun owner when some idiot steals a gun from them. We treat having a gun which can be stolen as an unsafe act. It's nonsense.
I'm not sure how it is today, but several decades ago a friend told me that a person could set their wallet down on a Tokyo sidewalk and come back a week later to pick it up.
Well put! That’s exactly how I feel. It’s a mind shift. My friend who obtained his CCW before me told me this very fact. I didn’t believe him until I started carrying. It is true. There is a change in the way you behave. You are always (or should be) thinking ahead. How do I avoid this situation? How do I not draw attention to myself? How do I make myself safe without having to draw my weapon.
The refrain really does apply. With great power comes great responsibility!
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