Why does half of the gun community want to be "tactical"?

Looks like a stealth fighter mixed with a woody station wagon. Cool.

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I had a friend say he thought it was an over-under shotgun when he first saw it from a distance. I took the tacticool out of it with the addition of wood furniture!

You know, I see a lot of guys around here who take the fam into Cabelas or Bass Pro on a saturday and dad's sporting his mossy oak shirt and a pair of hunting boots. What's he planning to do, jump shoot mallards in the parking lot? Not likely. I can think of at least a couple of times when I have personally walked into Dick's or Cabelas in head-to-toe cammo and gotten some funny looks from teenaged girls, but every time I did it I was on my way to or back from the field and had to pick up something I needed on the way.

In making judgements about these kind of things (re: mall ninjas) I think there are a couple of questions that in most cases you're never going to get answered before you can really know what's going on. I'm thinking things like motive, occasion, and connection with reality. Does the 5'8" 270lb. mall ninja in question really think that he's a tacticool operator on a mission to keep the mall safe from terrorists, or is it possible that he's just a member of the gun community who (like me) drools over his AR-15 and just got through taking a tactical pistol course and had to stop in and get a valentines present at Penny's for the little lady on the way home? Or maybe he's just a guy who's going camping and gets most of his gear on the cheap at the army-navy surplus store. You'll likely never know the answer to those kinds of questions, so I say don't hate and thank your lucky stars that there is at least one more guy walking around who probably isn't going to be in favor of another assault weapons ban or some other infringement on our rights as gun-owning law-abiding American citizens.

mini14gb said:

They put out a bad image to the public and in my opinion they are attempting to steal valor from the legitimate warriors among us.

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No one can take valor, or honor, or courage, from someone else. They can be ispired to it, perhaps, but what's yours is yours and no one can take it from you.

Real warriors know this.

mini14gb said:

Maybe that is part of my dislike is that often when I do have a trespasser its some idiot in camouflage acting tacti-cool who choose to ignore my signs.

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That’ll definitely get under most people’s skin, and if you consistently see it from a “certain type,” it’s easy to see where you’re coming from. “Walk a mile in another man’s shoes,” and all that.

Magno said:

So I'll just come out and say that I think that civilian-equipped tactical guns are about the most useless things since rubber bands. Sorry if I've offended anyone by saying that, because I know that I have.

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Useless? Well…do the bullets come out the right end, and go pretty much where they’re aimed, accounting for ballistics?

If so, I don’t see a useless gun there.

My 87 y/o father likes to plink with .22 shorts out of a dinky little cheap revolver. He has arthritis, and is somewhat near-sighted.

He can’t use it for hunting, and not very well (if at all) for self or home defense. But he can sit out on his back porch and pot tin cans, and shoot at birds getting at his raspberry and blackberry bushes (I’m not going to say he actually shoots these birds; he's arthritic, and near-sighted, after all…).

But he likes to plink, and being a retired machinist, caring for it gives him some small pleasure. And I think the "TactiCool" crowd might just understand that. As might the Cowboy Action crowd. And the precision bench shooters. And the tactical pistol shooters. And the skeet and trap folks.

Would you call that a useless gun?

To my way of thinking, there's only two kinds of useless guns:

1) The one that's unloaded and locked away out-of-reach when you really, really need it;

2) The one sitting in the back of a closet or gun safe somewhere gathering dust, that's never been fired, or even taken out of its box, for someone to shoot and enjoy.

Magno said:

I recently bought a 590A1 and was showing it to a friend of mine who knows next to nothing about guns. When I told him my plans for putting wooden furniture and a Garand sling on it, he all but shouted to me "You can't do that! It's a tactical shotgun! You'll ruin it!"

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Gun owner or not, no one who hasn’t ponied up the cash to put a gun in my gun safe has the right to tell me what to do with the guns I have paid for.

It’s just none of their gosh darned business.

You know, I see a lot of guys around here who take the fam into Cabelas or Bass Pro on a saturday and dad's sporting his mossy oak shirt and a pair of hunting boots. What's he planning to do, jump shoot mallards in the parking lot?

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I lol'ed.

Justin,

Your (sic) a moderator so please read the whole thread before saying I'm against black rifles. I'm talking about the camo wearing YouTube tactical crowd who are putting themselves out there for public consumption as the "normal" gun owner practicing mag changes and waving around their guns in an unsafe manner with attitude.

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Sorry, but the bulk of your posts really come across that way, and your attempts to tie it altogether with rants about YouTube, property trespassers, military impostors, and people who dress differently than you like really don't form a coherent thesis.

I sure am tired of all the folks who wear pants, anyone who goes into the woods with more than a loin cloth is just too tacticool for me.

The same thing with bolt action hunting guns, anything more than a Kentucky rifle stikes fear in my heart from all the tacticoolness.

The same thing with bolt action hunting guns, anything more than a Kentucky rifle stikes fear in my heart from all the tacticoolness.

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lol, no honest man needs a super high capacity baby killing 5 round mag

What does the term actually mean?

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It's black. OK, or desert tan.

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Black in the 90's, coyote tan in the 00's, with a transition to flat dark earth a few years ago. Digicam also.

None of my AR rifles have bayonet lugs, but my Mossberg 590 shotgun does and I went a little wild and bought a bayonet for it. I cannot imagine shooting with it attached, but it LOOKS cool.

When my wife looks at my 3gun stuff, she calls me Rambo, but my stuff is tame compared to others. Sometimes the tacti-cool at matches know what they are doing, sometimes they just got the tacti-cool stuff to look, well, cool.

Takes all kinds.

Lee

This is new tacticool:

I've been trying to avoid that label on what I would own. I just put some ghost ring sights on my CZ 452 and I wonder if people would think i was trying to turn it into a sniper rifle.

My next rifle is a has been narrowed down to .223 bolt action and AR type rifle. I would love the versatility of an AR with the ability to switch from iron sights to a scope and the bolt action is easy to maintain. Both are pretty accurate for target shooting but rarerly do you see them sold that way. You see them as tactical, sniper and varmit.

What ever happened to a good, reliable and accurate rifle with a wooden stock?

Heck maybe I should go for it. There's people going to label you as a gun owner anyway.

Some Mall Ninja narrating my purhase of a CZ 452 22lr:

MN: Yeah some military snipers get those and they put a 6X scope on them.

Salesman: You learn that in the military?

MN: No the History Channel.

Didn't read all the comments, they got boring. My opinion is that some have a REMF attitude and that's too bad.

If folks want to get all dressed up and pay tons of money for the latest tactikewl equipment then so be it. They have a right to do so. Some of us here have put our lives on the line to ensure that they do have that right.

Unless they're trying to pass themselves off as something they're not, and you can prove it, then just get over it.

Or maybe you're just jealous that they can afford all that stuff and you can't.

Some of the tacticool stuff is there for entirely practical reasons. I have a flashlight on the home defense shotgun. Why? Cause I just might need it in the dark. I have a flip-down bipod on my bolt-action. Why? Cause it helps steady my aim. I wear combat boots often. Why? Cause they're water-resistant, good ankle support, and very comfortable.

I love that 5.11 magazine. Wife buys her combat boots from them, and who knows what else. I always thought the military just issued that stuff before I met her. My brother never mentioned buying his own... but I digress.

I have 2 5.11 shirts. Bought them before I knew what 5.11 was, and other than the fact that they looked my style, I like heavy canvas on a long sleeve shirt. It's usually warmer, and I don't carry a purse, so it's nice to see someone still making clothes that have apropriate pocket space for my cigarettes and other crap.
Maybe if I got some cargo pants instead of normal jeans it would help with the pocket space issue though, eh?

I watched the U-tube video. Yea, that guy's kind of lame. You know why? It isn't that he's got every gadget that he will ever need, feels the need to wear sunglasses inside, or that he has to carry 3 knives, a pistol, and a rifle everywhere he goes, nor the fact that he maintains "lots" of backup ammo in his car. What's really lame is that he thinks it's cool to be a model. That's all he's doing, modeling the stuff... "This is my belt, it's pretty cool, holds my pants up pretty good." hahahaha. Who knows, maybee he just makes those videos so that people can laugh at him and he can laugh back at the people that take him seriously.

I especially enjoyed the little "loop" made of 550 chord, hahahahaha. I mean if you have it availible and you can fix something with it great, but the fact that they design pants with zipper loops and keychain loops made out of it and people think that it's a feature is hilarious!

Long story short, the guy is a you-tube monkey, who cares what he's prancing around in front of the camera acting like. The you-tube trolls will be along to scold him and bash him shortly after every post, along with the few lone defenders that feel the need to stand up for him. And life goes on. If this really bothers you so much, maybe stay away from these type of you-tube videos?? I thought it was funny, just not funny enough to forward to anyone.

By design, firearms are martial weapons. Maybe they did not originate for that purpose, but they have evolved into the most effective way to defend one's self, or for one man to wage war against another. Like it or not, that is what they are designed to do, and it is not abnormal to take up these arms, and want to learn how to use them properly. It is that simple. Do some people not know what they are doing, and look ridiculous? Sure. We can't all be cool right at the beginning. Hell, some will never know what they are doing or look cool. That's just life. No need to knock those less cool than ourselves.

medalguy said:

I think "wannabe" pretty well covers the subject.

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post #2 nailed it

I'm pretty sure that when repeating firearms became more popular there were people complaining about them saying stuff like "You only need one round" and much more.

Having tactical style firearms, while ridculous with some guns like single shot .22s, has become the norm because of how the military and law enforcement uses them. Looking back on history shows this trend. Bolt guns became more popular after WWI, semi autos became more popular after WWII, etc etc.

This is just the era of tactical style firearms, we just have to accept it.

Seriously though, what are we, 14yr old girls?

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Please refrain from insulting 14yr old girls.

Joe in fla said:

I think you answered your own question. It's finally become cool to be a soldier again instead of them being spit at as so many of my generation were. I've noticed that the Tacti-Cool movement seems to largely be people that were never in the service AND never got to play "war" as children. Don't get me wrong, I love my ARs and other black guns but as a vet I've had enough of war and the military lifestyle including wearing uniforms and wearing heavy boots and carrying tons of equipment and all the rest and I have no desire to repeat it unnecessarily in civilian life!

Re-enactors are something else all together. They are people that enjoy history and want to share it with others and are willing to spend their time and money buying vintage military uniforms, equipment, vehicles, etc and to use their time in putting on shows that the public enjoys. I know a number of re-enactors and none of them are into the Tacti-Cool scene and none would even think about wearing a quasi-military uniform out in public except at their events. Most of them aren't even particularly interested in black guns, only the older, vintage military ones.

X-GI Joe but current M-37 owner.

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The best answer to the question. The '60s hardly tolerated short haircuts, never uniforms of any branch and those "people" are now running the country.

I am a person of strong opinion, and various posts in this thread infuriate me!

That's why I read the whole thing!

I personally find the EDC and WROL vids on Utube quite humorous.

However, I really could care less what other people are shooting or wearing as long as in a safety conscious manner.

I read through the whole thread, do I get a tactical t-shirt?

wouldn't owning a tommy gun, 30'06 or 1911 be the "tactical" of the last generation? Maybe its more about shooting and owning whats current. Hasn't most generations wanted whats new and cool in some way? And haven't there always been useless gadgets?

Out there somewhere is a group of people (and they're able to vote) who look at gun owners of ALL sorts and say "they're dangerous, they dress funny, and they make all Americans look bad." I'm sure they sit around and debate and have come to the conclusion that we do not need any rifles because they have found no use for them.

Thank God for the Bill of Rights! Thanks for the "stop" button on Youtube also!

If you do not use tact or tactics when shooting perhaps you should discontinue the practice of shooting. Or is that to tactical? Now if your mad at re-enactors or mall ninjas you need to change the title. Because they have nothing to do with "Tactical lifesyle" or "tactics". Do you carry a pocket knife or gerber multi tool? If so those are tactical tools and go against your Tactical query. Would you carry a backpack full of survival gear if going on a long hike?.....Thats thinking "tactically". To me living a "tactical life" is more about survival, insuring you have the proper gear for the job, and proper planning. Not misguided mall ninjas.......In summation...I guess you could say I'm a "tactical" shooter .