camslam
Member
I try to keep up on what the anti's are saying and Robyn Ringler is someone I'm sure some of you are familiar with. This was a email to her from one of us that actually made it to her website. Congrats to the writer for his success and his well written letter.
Good info in it and I thought some of you might enjoy it.
http://blogs.timesunion.com/underfire/
Good info in it and I thought some of you might enjoy it.
http://blogs.timesunion.com/underfire/
A comment came in this week that is so reasoned, so thoughtful, so respectful, that I’d like to share it with all of you:
Robyn,
I’ve been lurking for some time, but since you are about to close your comments, I’d like to chime in at least once.
I’m 36, a physics and literature geek, dad to a special-needs kid (8 y.o. son, DiGeorge syndrome, Tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia) and a healthy 6 y.o. daughter, runner, professional technical writer with a B.A. and some master’s coursework in English, registered Independent, and a regular on Democratic Underground. My wife is also 36, also has a B.A. in English, and is a literature and history enthusiast who enjoys kayaking. We are both gun owners, and like most gunnies, my wife and I are nonhunters.
We also happen to be those eeee-villll “assault weapon” owners that the Violence Policy Center is always warning you about. My wife’s rifle is a historically significant (1952 Tula) SKS, which she likes because it is historically interesting, looks good, and doesn’t kick much. My primary all-around rifle is a civilian, non-automatic AK-47 lookalike (SAR-1); it is my primary target rifle, I shoot competitively with it, it is legal for deer hunting here in North Carolina with a 5-round magazine, and it also makes a fine defensive carbine. We also own 9mm pistols (Glock for her, S&W Ladysmith for me), and I shoot competitively with my pistol as well.
Thoughts I’d like to share:
It has been my observation that a lot of prominent gun-control activists are people who have both been impacted by criminal violence, and have not been particularly exposed to the positive side of gun ownership, even though the latter is overwhelmingly more common. I think to some degree, they have come to see “guns” as the entity who victimized them, and see gun control as a way to lash out at that enemy. That victimization by people misusing guns also taints their view of gun owners, I think, that we must somehow be either ignorant, or evil, or some selfish mixture of the two, possibly with some sort of sexual deviancy thrown in (because some of those victimized see guns as sexualized power objects). As a for-instance, Sarah Brady’s husband was shot by a nut with a .22 revolver; while I don’t think that justifies her attempts to ban my rifles, it at least helps me understand it.
I’m on the other side of the coin. My great-grandparents were married in 1900, and one of the wedding presents was a nice his-and-hers set of defensive revolvers intended for lawful concealed carry. My grandparents grew up owning handguns, rifles, and shotguns; so did my parents. My dad had a “save” with a semiautomatic pistol in the early 1970’s, when I was around 5 years old (he didn’t even have to draw it; the guys who approached him late one night in rural NC saw his holstered gun, looked at each other, and left).
Like most semi-rural thirtysomething people I know, I grew up with guns, learned the rules of gun safety and marksmanship while still in elementary school, wandered the woods with a BB gun by age 10 (not hunting, just plinking), was shooting .22’s regularly at 16, owned a semiautomatic .223 carbine and 30-round magazine at age 18 and a handgun at age 21, and obtained a carry license at 26 or 27. I shoot recreationally and competitively (IPSC pistol and carbine) with my civilian “AK”. My wife, from Maine, is a shooter who owns a Glock and an SKS. My sister (who graduated with degrees in mathematics and engineering from N.C. State) is an avid shooter. Most of my coworkers and friends are shooters. Pretty much everyone I know owns guns, and no one I know personally has ever been murdered, or participated in one. I’m 36 years old, I’ve never participated in so much as a fistfight outside of martial arts classes, and I would never even think about hurting an innocent person.
Like most of the population at large, most gun owners haven’t experienced guns as a tool of oppression, but as a tool of liberation and a symbol of freedom and camaraderie; some (like my dad) have actually had “saves” with guns, but for most of us, guns and skill with them are a well-practiced martial art, a tool of personal security, a symbol and tangible reminder of political and personal freedom, a Zen-like discipline, a fun hobby, and a locus of camaraderie that crosses political, social, and ethnic lines.
It’s not “any and all guns” that are involved in criminal mayhem; it’s actually a tiny subset of guns, mostly illegally possessed handguns, in the hands of a violent few. And in fairness, it’s not all gun-control activists that dream up creative deceptions to try to outlaw our most valued possessions, either. I think most of us on our respective sides are not as far apart as our legislative positions on the issue would appear to make us; I think we just have a huge knowledge and communication gap (on both sides).
There IS common ground to be found on the issue. The bedrock of that common ground is, NOBODY wants to see criminals misusing any guns. People who hurt other people piss me off just as much as they piss you off. We all agree that bad guys shouldn’t have them. The disagreement comes in when people on your side of the issue decide to slap sweeping restrictions (the “assault weapon” bait-and-switch, handgun bans, pre-1861 capacity limits) on the law-abiding in order to affect the bad guys (so they hope), and we respond by opposing all new restrictions to avoid having wrongheaded restrictions slapped on the good guys. Hence the impasse.
One thing I absolutely do NOT understand is the gun-control lobby’s absolute obsession with banning small-caliber civilian rifles with modern styling.
Consider the FBI breakdown by type of weapon:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_20.html
Total murders……………………….14,860…..100.00%
Handguns…………………………….7,543……50.76%
Other weapons (non firearm, non edged)….1,954……13.15%
Edged weapons………………………..1,914……12.88%
Firearms (type unknown)……………….1,598……10.75%
Hands, fists, feet, etc…………………892…….6.00%
Shotguns………………………………517…….3.48%
Rifles………………………………..442…….2.97%
That 2.97% figure is for ALL RIFLES COMBINED. So why, then, is it considered SO important to outlaw the most popular civilian target and defensive rifles in America, when they are so rarely misused? It seems to me that banning protruding rifle handgrips, rifle stocks that adjust for length of pull, etc. is so absolutely irrelevant to the crime picture, that to have ever made such legislation a priority is absolutely inconceivable to me.
I’ll close with an essay I wrote in 2004, after the Kerry/Edwards loss, that IMHO was largely vindicated when pro-gun-ownership Dems helped win the Senate in ‘06:
Dems and the Gun Issue - Now What?
http://www.democraticunderground.co...z=show_topic&forum=118&topic_id=97165
For those who don’t understand the dynamics of the debate from the pro-civilian-ownership side, it may help explain where we’re coming from, even if you may not agree with us.
Thanks for the opportunity to share.
Peace,
benEzra
