The Social Side of the Gun Issue

So many of you are packing up and heading to Indianapolis for the NRA annual meeting. Part of me is sad I’ll be missing it, especially since there are a bunch of you who will be there who I haven’t seen since last year, Jay will be there, who I haven’t seen since before my daughter was born, and there are a bunch of you who I’ve been wanting to meet face-to-face for years who will be there.

The other part of me is completely exhausted, and will be attempting to sleep in and get chores done this weekend, rather than putting them off for yet another week.

Still we’ll get back to the pro-gun side and what we do when we get together.

Let’s look at the antis. Two recent protests here. the Brady Campaign:

Not sure which group these guys belong to, if any:

First up, almost no people under the age of 50, and 60+ appears to be the average age for both, possibly skewed by low turn-out. Numbers are also small. Still also look at their faces. They’re sour, angry people.

Now back to pro-gun. We’d probably look the same way if our movement was truly similar. If we were the “Defensive Gun Use Lobby”, and all we focused on was shooting and/or killing criminals we’d be a pretty dour bunch as well. You see, all the anti-gun side really talks about is “Gun Death” and “Gun Violence”. Sure they also talk about background checks, and banning certain guns or accessories, but its all framed as “Gun Death” and “Gun Violence”. That’s all they really boil down to.

Meanwhile at the NRA show its a party atmosphere. People are handling cool guns! I get excited about guns I have no interest in ever owning just because they’re COOL! I own guns that I have just because they’re cool and/or fun to shoot. We have hunting, we have target shooting, we have action shooting.

Now the other side may have all the social sides we do. I mean we don’t spend the whole time of the conventions talking about guns and 2nd Amendment rights. There’s generally a lot of talk about food, our families, our other hobbies ect. In the evenings we’ll put up the guns and have some adult beverages. Still I even have my doubts about this, as you never hear about a bunch of anti-gun people gathering in a restaurant just for a meet-and-greet. You don’t have web forums like The High Road, Northeast Shooters, or AR-15.com for social interaction.

Hell Mas Ayoob makes his bread-and-butter from training and teaching people how to deal with using lethal force against other people, and being an expert witness in court for homicide cases, yet he’s also well known as an avid action pistol shooter and hunter. He’s a funny and nice guy, but I doubt he would be quite as funny and nice if ALL he ever did was look at autopsy photos and recount stories of when some guy had to shoot some other guy.

We joke that there is no such thing as an anti-gun show, but really the truth is there is no such thing as having FUN while being an anti-gun activist. There just isn’t room for it. Hell we joke about their “Blood Dancing” and idea that some anti-gun activists get excited and happy when they hear about a shooting like Sandy Hook, and how it was young children killed, and an AR-15 was used. I don’t know if that happens, but even if it does they can’t admit to it because it’s simply ghoulish.

Yet when Remington released the R-51 people got REALLY excited because it was new and neat, and many of us are disappointed that at the time of me typing this, it isn’t really a great gun.

I self-describe myself as a Kahr Fanboy, because I think their guns are REALLY cool. I like looking at and handling their guns, even tho I really don’t see myself buying another gun from them since my PM45 is really all that I need. I get joy from guns because they are FUN! Of course I CARRY guns because they might save my life, or the lives of my family one day. That part isn’t fun, but gun rights are saved by the fact that hitting the range, and taking new shooters for their first shots is FUN!!!

There is no fun in being anti-gun. Further there are LOTS of places that have all the gun control laws in the world, and yet they are still dangerous places, and innocent adults and children are murdered there. In the UK they went from banning guns, to banning knives. So even the idea that they can deal with this ugly topic until its solved is unrealistic. The people in these pictures have devoted themselves to being miserable until the day they die.

Isn’t that horrible?