Frankly, it is sad that we feel the need to be condescending or patronizing to ANYONE who has done nothing personally to deserve it. Come on... there are more important things one can do in their live to make themselves feel better.
Even picking out firearms for others is a patronizing act. Seriously. We place ourselves as the expert on what another person SHOULD want or need?
I recently went through something similar to this with my wife but without the dose of sexism. She needs a handgun for protection. Now, she knows I am the firearms guy in our family. When we are talking about it, I say "come on, lets go shoot my Glock 19 and get an idea of what you may like." Well we did. I asked her about how much ease or difficulty she had using the slide. She didn't have any trouble-- but I HAVE seen women that COULD NOT chamber a round easily. My wife just happens not to be one.
She shot it for a while and did pretty good (Read: she shoots a handgun better than I do-- but I am not a great shot IMO with my Glock.) So, we get to the discussion of what type of handgun she may want to get and I offer that we can shoot some revolvers next. Her answer? "Screw that. I'll take this one and you get yourself another gun."
And that is the story of how I lost my Glock.
Frankly, I think she made a decent choice, and I get to get a 1911A1.
On a devil's advocate stance, I wanted to make one point about this quote:
But what REALLY turns me off of this great site are the periodic “advice to the lovelorn” threads that inevitable begin with, “I’ve been dating my gf for months and months and even though I knew she really didn’t like guns when we started dating, gee she still doesn’t like my guns what should I do.” Then we have multiple pages of very low-road, “you better dump the stupid b*tch” comments.
I dont' like the language, but the sentiment COULD go both ways. I could easily see me telling a girl whose boyfriend hates guns that she'd be better off just dumping the guy and finding someone more compatible. I'd leave the name calling out, of course. Telling someone to dump an anti with no hope of recovery could easily be a gender-neutral event. I KNOW that the advice I would give is the same regardless of the genitalia involved.
An anti is an anti is an anti. I don't know many people who want to beat their head against that wall for the next 50 years. And divorces aren't cheap.
If we are going to be intellectually honest, we need to level the field. If we'd allow something to be said to or about an anti, we should say it irrespective of gender. I have a few choice words that I'd use for both Rosie O'Donnel AND Michael Bloomberg that would sound strikingly similar. I'd hope we wouldn't see sexism when they were applied to Rosie but "Business-as-Usual" when applied to Bloomberg.
Dunno.... just something to think about.
-- John