Why the sentiment over firearms

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jeepmor

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I've read a few threads recently about people regretting selling their first gun and I can lucidly recall my step brother's disappoinment when the Ruger 22 pistol he was going to inherit was stolen from our house growing up.

My question is why?

I suppose I know the answer. It has to do with the bonding that comes with learning how to safely and responsibly use firearms. It represents the bond between a parent and his child in some cases, and the memories that came with it. Or the freedom of attaining your first firearm and crossing over some invisible line that is representative of a growth stage in your life and the exercise of a freedom so few in the world actually have.

However, it's just a hunk of metal, just a tool. I suppose I think of the tools I got from Grandpa when he moved out of the house with the same fondness. Knowing these tools provided my Grandpa with a usefulness that made life just a little easier while working on a dairy farm.

Anyone else care to elaborate on the psychological attachment to inanimate objects?
 
Anyone else care to elaborate on the psychological attachment to inanimate objects?
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I have a pet rock I picked up off the ground in Laurel,MD in June 1955 as a teenager.I still have it with the place and date inscribed.
Why?I don't know.Must be some primeval clinging instinct we have towards these lifeless objects.
 
It's the memories of where we were in our life, not the object itself. Much like smell of grandma's yam recipe brings back memories of happy holidays. Was her recipe anything special, not really, but she was, the holidays were. And when I see them, taste them and smell them, all those warm fuzzies come rushing back and remind me of those fond memories.
I suppose it's just the same, something about holding your first gun makes all those old tired synapses fire again and take you back to the good times they represent.

This very reason is why I've never sold my first gun, a 22 Remington rifle. Is it anything special, not really, but it represents something quite special. Particularly a firearm, for me, it represents the crossing over into the land of responsibilty and trust of my elders.

Please share your fond memories that these inanimate tools cause to come rushing back each time you enjoy shooting it at the range, the ground squirrels, or whatever else is associated with it.

For me, this gun brings back memories of my high school buddy and I going out to the dunes and shooting at whatever we could hit. It makes me recall putting a 22 case dead center through that 30 carbine shell we found and propped up and bet each other that I couldn't hit it.
 
It's the same reason everyone's parents keep scrapbooks of them when they were kids. It's not the paper pictures themselves, but the memories they conjure upon looking at them.
 
I think it depends more on the individual.

While I cannot bear to sell any of my guns (and have regret for every gun I have sold in the past), guns may mean nothing more than a profit/loss to someone else.

I think most gunshop owners like firearms, but it wouldn't stop them from selling you any.
 
My question is why?

I suppose I know the answer. It has to do with the bonding that comes with learning how to safely and responsibly use firearms. It represents the bond between a parent and his child in some cases, and the memories that came with it. Or the freedom of attaining your first firearm and crossing over some invisible line that is representative of a growth stage in your life and the exercise of a freedom so few in the world actually have
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+1 to all of those reasons. For me they are a symbol of responsibility and trust.
 
My late father's old Remington Model 33 bolt action .22 is the least valuable gun in my safe, but the only one that's irreplacable. He hunted with it on his way home from school when he was a boy, gave it to me when I was maybe 8, and it was the first gun I ever shot. As has been said, it's not the hunk of metal and wood itself, but the people that held it, the memories, and the connection with times past.
I also still have the Christmas stocking that I got at the hospital when I was born in 1950, and I've hung it up every year since. To anyone else, it would be a worthless, slightly motheaten, scrap of felt. To me, it's a connection with all those Christmasses past...
Marty
 
Its seems to me that there is an intense materialism in gun culture. An obsession even. If we all could understand the true power comes from the need for nothing in the material realm peace could reign. You will never find a man of great spritual power wielding a weopon of any kind.
 
I think it is a primitive attachment to tools, and the power the give their owner. When i bought a nice soldering kit yesterday, I played with it like a kid with a new toy. It had everything I needed in a nice little carrying case, and I felt secure that i could handle any soldering emergency that came my way without depending upon anyone else.

With a gun, it is so much more... with a gun, you can depend upon yourself for life's most basic needs, sustinence and defense. Plus... they look cool.
 
My first pistol was a Jennings J-22 and it was a huge POS, and I remember thinking "sucker" when I sold it to a pawn shop, but for some reason I bought something that I instictively thought looked like it... so:rolleyes:
I don't have any emotional attachment to any other pistol I bought. I think it was more in that it symbolized the first gun I was able to buy for myself, because I lived by myself.
 
Its seems to me that there is an intense materialism in gun culture. An obsession even. If we all could understand the true power comes from the need for nothing in the material realm peace could reign. You will never find a man of great spritual power wielding a weopon of any kind.
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This man is on a real Marx-Engels-Lenin roll tonight!
I have to give him credit though ,spouting his inane Socialist rhetoric, deep in the enemy camp.
 
"You will never find a man of great spritual power wielding a weopon of any kind."

Does a whip count as a weapon? Was Jesus a man of great spiritual power? Is your statement based on any facts or simply your opinion?

"(John 2 : 12-22) This gospel account suggests that Jesus' driving out of the money lenders was a pre-meditated action. He went up to the Temple and was appalled at what he found. He then made a whip from cords and drove the merchants and their cattle from the Temple area, and overturned the tables of the money changers."
 
If we all could understand the true power comes from the need for nothing in the material realm peace could reign
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Well, I too am a fan of Eastern Philosophy, and don't disregard your beliefs. But if you consider no "need" for anything "in the material realm" as being true power... your idea of true power is death.

All living things need to eat and defend themselves... and guns are tools that do both fairly well. I like having the abbility to depend upon myself to get what I "need" from the "material realm".
 
Jeep wrote...
Anyone else care to elaborate on the psychological attachment to inanimate objects?
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A house, an engagement ring, a championship basketball jersey, a favorite sweater and a trophy are all inanimate objects too. Figure it out.
 
Hey Jeep. How old are you?:)

I have several things that came from my child hood and my past families child hood. Age makes you need things to help you remember another time.
 
i think if you have to ask that question then nobody will be able to explain it to you. a gun is no different from anything else of value. but due to the use, the maintenace, and every other little aspect of owning and using guns you truly develop an intimate knowledge of them. in my experience this turns into a kind of love, and yes even a friendship of sorts. your guns become your best friends, and parting with them is no easier.
and the memories that you have of the past hunts, past shooting matches etc come flooding back ever time you hold the gun.
 
Whenever I wonder around my gun room and pick up different pieces I think of

Art -- beauty in wood and steel
Mechanics -- the wonder of a highly-evolved machine
History -- amazing amount of history oozes out when lifting a Garand or Trapdoor or a Brown Bess musket or...
Challenge -- hitting what I'm aiming at
Competition -- putting your skills up against yourself and others
Fun and Social -- objects that evoke good memories of a memorable hunt, great time spent with old pal, casual plinking with friends
Hunting -- tapping into one of man's most basic needs and being part of your place in the natural world
Self defense -- exerting my God-given right to defend my family, country and self
Collecting -- learning and gathering variations

How many "things" can do all that?
 
"There are many like it, but this one is mine."
I bought my first rifle because I liked the design, researched it, then waited more than a year before I was eligible to buy it. I made some good friends and had some good times while shooting it. My second gun is the one I trust to be there if something goes bump in the night and to work when I need it to. Gun number three was given to me by my Grandpa. What more needs to be said about that?
 
It isn't just the gun, it's the life I enjoyed useing it. A mans life with the freedom to enjoy it.

jj
 
"You will never find a man of great spritual power wielding a weopon of any kind."
Click to expand...
Verifiably untrue
Ever heard of the crusades?
How about Achiles or Hector, what about the Shaolin priests
here's one for ya
Sgt Alvin York

----------------------------------------------------------------------
I have an old magnet on a chord that my grandfather used to pick up nails and screws off the floor of his workshop
It's a heavy chunk of steel came off of some piece of machinery on a tugboat
As long as I can remember it has been broken in half and taped together
I never met him until I was about four when we came home from Japan
The earliest memory I have of him is when he threw a container of screws on his floor and let me use that magnet to pick them up, I was doing man's work
I was 20 when he died and away in the army so I never got to lay my claim on his artifacts and just assumed that the old broken magnet had been thrown away as junk

After my stepfather died a year and a half ago I helped my mother go through his tools and found the magnet
My mother and stepfather had gone to visit fifteen years after my grandfather died
and he found it in the same place in the old tool shed that it had always been

It is now one of my prized possessions
Just looking at it takes me back to my fondest memories of my grandfather, I'm getting a little choked up just thinking about that piece of junk
If that memory could be brought back by a gun or old pickle it would mean the same to me

You only here so much about the guns here because this is a gun forum, not a pickle or magnet forum
 
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