Austin Gunloving Hippies

[MatthewVanitas]

For those of you who enjoy meeting non-stereotypical gunowners.

I met a pleasant young guy at the Austin gunshow who said that he had a friend interested in buying my Yugo SKS for $99. So I drove down to South Austin for an FTF.

The part of South Austin I went to was the hardcore bohemian area: lots of political bookstores, vintage clothes-shops, kitsch-art galleries, etc. Not upscale wine-and-cheese counterculture, but full-on trippy.

I went to the house of the gunshow guy, came into a room full of oriental art, incense, Buddhist statuary, musical instruments, etc. The prospective buyer was a young guy sitting on a rug on the floor, dreadlocks, "Anti-Racist Action" T-shirt, multiple piercings, etc. A couple women were lounging on couches chatting.

I offered the boxed SKS to the buyer, and told him to feel free to check it out. He gave a sidelong look to the others in the room, said he'd have to ask the owner of the house if it was okay. One of the girls perked up "what is it? A gun? Heck, take it out man, we all like shooting around here!"

So he pulls out the SKS and the others crowd around to check it out. The original guy I met comes out of his home-office in the next room, and brings out his SU-16 and couple small pistols. This very mild-mannered hippyish young man then shows the buyer how to break down the SKS, explains the free-floating firing pin, etc. It was a very non-stereotypical crowd of gunnies. As one girl put it: "this is Austin; even hippies own guns."

It's always fun to meet non-sterotypical gunowners, and definitely a good sign for the future of shooting. The more that shooting is seen as a healthy and practical skill, and less of a "white right-wing male hobby", the better off all shooters will be. So these were great folks to meet. We're already planning to have a few folks along for the next 3-gun match down at Texas Tactical, so it should be a good contrast to the Oakleys-tacticool crowd.

Just thought I'd share. I'm liking Austin hippies way more than Mainstream Californians. Moving from Twentynine Palms to Austin has definitely been a lifestyle improvement. If anyone else has any good stories of responsible hippie/punk/goth gun ownership, or any other "surprising" gun buff stories, I'd be glad to hear them. -MV

 

[slopemeno]

I fly R/C sailplanes alot, and I fly from time to time with a guy who we'll call Mr X. Mr X is a deadhead, with all the baggage that entails, but one day the conversation at the hill turned to guns and shooting...Stocked Luger? He's got one of those...and he has one of those...and one of those too...just goes to show you never can tell.

 

[dracphelan]

What you just decribed is the majority of my friends in the Dallas area. Texas liberals and hippies tend to be very different from many other parts of the country. As a couple of my friends put it:
"Here in Texas we are considered far left hippy tree huggers. When we lived in San Francisco, we had people calling us right wing fanatics."

TimC
Founder of the Guntotin' Hippies club.

 

[mbs357]

Hey...I'm a deadhead...
Well, I like Grateful Dead.
I even have a Jerry Garcia tie...

I'm pretty stereotypical I guess.
Redneck gun lover. =/

 

[bogie]

Well, I've got short hair now, but I still try to keep the attitude...

 

[Texfire]

South Austin has it's own vibe. No place quite like it.

Tex

 

[Keith Wheeler]

I've got a friend who is a total hippie. Well, not total, he's also a Methodist. But we're talking out there hippie, hey I'm all for not polluting but this guy once said that fusion reactors would be bad because of the heat pollution. He's almost Bhuddist in his "small footprint" views. He's just shy of being a vegatarian. But he's also realistic. Some "wild" dogs got on to his property and killed one of his goats (yeah, I told you hippie out). He called me and wanted to know what kind of gun he should get. I mentioned I had a couple of AKs for sale and he said "would that be good for killing dogs?"

While in graduate school I had a friend who is gay. He served in the military and didn't tell, and is very proud of serving his country. He qualified expert on every firearm he could get his hands on.

Even though I grew up in Arkansas and have been shooting all my life I don't "fit the mold". I am far more liberal/liberatarian than I've every been conservative, I've got friends of all flavors. I like art (even modern abstract!), music (of a wide variety), I listen to NPR. I appreciate the "self-sufficient, low impact" lifestyle of serious hippies. I've got earrings. I plant flower gardens. I've never owned an American car. I drink hot tea. I like beer from micro-breweries. I've studied French. I don't see anything particularly patriotic about knowing only one language. I like sushi, and appreciate Japanses culture. I believe in "live and let live" (as long as the other guy does too!). I also strongly believe in ownership of Title II weapons. Subguns rock.

Thinking that everyone with a gun is right-wing and white is a stupid assumption for both folks for and against gun ownership.

 

[dracphelan]

I've studied French. I don't see anything particularly patriotic about knowing only one language.

Neither do I. It helps get the point across when you are yelling at someone in their language. At one time, I worked for a small computer parts resaler (not manufacturer). We had someone call, from France, saying that we were the maker of a defective auto part that he had. I repeatedly explained that we were a computer parts reseller, but he would not accept that. So, while he was venting at me on the phone, I looked up what I was trying to say in French on Babelfish. He then started complaining about how bad my French was. So, Ilooked up something rather insulting on Babelfish. I then told him what to do with his auto part (in French) and then switched to yelling at him in German. He hung up.

 

[wingnutx]

If anyone else has any good stories of responsible punk ownership

Me. I know a lot of people in the AZ punk scene who are big RKBA supporters.

I see fellow THR member "Lawson" at punk shows and on azpunk.com a lot.

 

[Number 6]

Groovy

 

[Griff]

I need a miracle...saw The Dead 3x, baby. 2nd time was my teenage daughter's first concert. It was either gonna be Captain Trips or Danzig: Hippies or Head bangers. You choose.

And we accuse the Libs of being small-minded?

 

[Wiley]

I think an "Anti-Racist Action" T-shirt, an SKS and, a black guy would make a good subject for Oleg.

 

[mbs357]

Well, I've got short hair now, but I still try to keep the attitude...

Heh, my mom commented on my hair once.
Something of hte lines of a 'hippie boy'
I was all 'pfft woman, I'm a rocker.'

Oh, btw. Gun stuff.
As far as most people around here go, I have a fairly different taste in firearms.
Most everyone around here that has guns is into hunting, so that means Winchesters and Browning rifles.
Uncle hunts with an AR-10 though, and I'm more into the military style weapons too, especially pistols.

 

[Steamship Trooper]

The Bullet Hole, San Antonio TX.

Over the course of three months, had "gangbangers", hippies, Chinese immigrants, Indians, women, men, a six year old kid (loved his new Red Ryder), two lawyers, one a defense attorney, and a temporary transplant from Nuevo Rico.

The rangemaster there looked like the biker that he was.

I recall only one patron saying anything remotely close to personal defamation. He was invited to leave. With a quickness.

Armed societies ARE polite societies

 

[VTKFJoe]

I've been to 30+ Dead shows , hundreds of punk shows etc. I shoot with Hippies, Punks, Bikers, Accountants, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Catholics, Jews, and Atheists. It's not Austin but here in Richmond I can still find all kinds of intersting folks to shoot with.

Joe

 

[horge]

If anyone else has any good stories of responsible hippie/punk/goth gun ownership, or any other "surprising" gun buff stories, I'd be glad to hear them.

Would a 42-year old Catholic nun count?
She helps farmers maintain/repair/replace their aging long guns and pistols.
(Too many Communist insurgents/brigands entering their area)
The vow of poverty keeps her from owning, though... and besides:

It's one thing for laymen to fulfill their duty to KBA.
Priests and nuns generally entrust their lives totally to God's care,
and packing doesn't quite square up with that.

 

[lawson]

i'm young, i play in a loud and obnoxious band, i go to punk rock shows, and i'm a gun owner. not much of a hippie though, my hair couldn't be any shorter if i tried, and i served in the US Navy. i guess i would be considered an atypical gun owner in some places, but Arizona is another state of mind, so to speak. the other weekend i was quail hunting with a buddy, and we were both a little beat up from the mosh pit the night before.

 

[Tomcat1066]

Just goes to show that stereotypes are not always right

Tom
who would love to hang with some shooting hippies

 

[Gunstore Commando]

I'm at the gunstore over my lunch hour, and there's a twenty something wearing baggy pants, 'hoody' sweatshirt, the whole bit. Asks the guy behind the counter to look at some offbrand semi-auto he's got.

The counter guy manages to muzzle both himself and me taking the gun out of the display case, then "clears" it by racking the slide (leaving the mag in the gun ), then muzzles the kid handing him the piece.

Kid doesn't blink an eye, but he clears the piece correctly -- drops the mag, racks the slide, then *looks* to see if it's *really* clear. Keeps good muzzle discipline the whole time he's examining it.

Maybe there's hope for the younger generation after all.

Of course, once the kid gave the gun back to the counter guy, counter guy muzzled everyone in the store who hadn't already found hard cover.

 

[AStone]

Matthew, great thread. Should be required reading for every THR member.

I get so sick of reading posts that stereotype hippies, treehuggers, & liberals that I could . This is doubly true on a forum called 'the High Road'.

Don't stereotypers realize that people don't fit into little discrete boxes? (Rhetorical question.) People are complex. They can't be categorized as simply as some would have us believe. Stereotyping is an attempt to scapegoat some people with different beliefs and life styles for the evils of the world. :banghead:

This thread could go a long way towards quashing those misinformed opinions.

Praise Buddha & please pass the organic apple juice.

Nem

 

[RomanKnight]

All fine and dandy, but why does Austin vote for every Democrat/communist candidate in every election, and for stuff like a smoking ban? They don't look freedom-loving to me! Glad I got out of that @#$pool!

 

[AStone]

All fine and dandy, but why does Austin vote for every Democrat/communist candidate in every election, and for stuff like a smoking ban?

Cities don't vote. People vote.

Just because people living in Austin tend to vote one way or another is no reason to condemn the city, and by implication, everyone who lives there.

N~

 

[MatthewVanitas]

All fine and dandy, but why does Austin vote for every Democrat/communist candidate in every election, and for stuff like a smoking ban? They don't look freedom-loving to me! Glad I got out of that @#$pool!

If you're not part of the solution...

It kind of ties into the overall point of the thread: if folks didn't feel like they're being branded with a category, then they wouldn't feel so forced to side with one monolithic political party or the other.

There are Democrats who don't mind guns and voucher school, and Republicans who don't mind homosexuals and weed, but each side wants to see the other as

a) foaming Marxist radical vegan New Age cultist or
b) mouth-breathing psychopathic Evangelical redneck,

so they square off into two extreme camps.


Man, I live in California (stationed at 29 Palms), I get dissed on THR. I move to freaking Texas, I get dissed on THR... So far as Austin being a "cesspool", I don't have kids to send to their public schools, I disagree with the smoking ban but do enjoy the clean air, I don't agree with their tying cops hands but I have my own pistol anyway, and I do happen to enjoy the fact that I can go grab dinner at an Indonesian restaurant, see an experimental theater piece, and then hang out in a coffeeshop 'til the wee hours chatting about travelling in Armenia. And I can still go to a gunshow, buy an AR face-to-face, and take it shooting at an outdoor range a short drive from my house.

If I weren't paying 2.8% property tax I'd be blissful. So I'll stay here for a bit, and continue to vote for the least government intrusion possible, and take hippies and freaks out to the range to play with my AR-15.

-MV

 

[Thefabulousfink]

My First Post!

Hi, I found this forum a few weeks ago and have been reading some of the threads while at work, (instead of working). After a while I realized that I should get off my lazy rear and join up.

With regards to myself and this thread, I have allways been very independent, individuialist, and felt that the Gov should have as little to do with how I live my life as possible. In highschool these traits lead to my love of punk rock. Coupled with my love of guns made me a strong 2A supporter.

Punk rock, at least the the stuff from the mid '90s and earlier, was all about independence; we're our own people, no one has the right to tell us what to do, we'll live our own lives, make our own mistakes, and learn from them.

In my mind that is the complete opposite of the over-regulation (2A and otherwise) that most liberals (and a few less conservatives) are pushing for. Most of the punks that I grew up with feel the same way, but what astounded me when I reached college was how many of the new generation of punks had jumped right on the liberal/Democratic bandwagon because it was anti-Bush. The phenomenal propaganda put out by the Left in the last +4 years has turned a once rebelious and proud movement into a bunch of sheeple (to steal a phrase).

But I digress, most of my friends believe (to varying degrees)that people should be able to own guns. I have manged to get even the most timid of them to come shooting with me, and even convinced a few to puy plinkers for themselves.

So, to sum up a rather long and winding first post, there is still a flickering light of hope among the punks.

 

[wheelgunslinger]

Im pretty sure that most folks here would classify me as a hippie.
I eat organic food. I work out a lot. I drive classic cars so that it cuts back on new production (and keep them tuned up well so they don't pollute.). I recycle. I read a lot. I write. I art. I had really long hair til february (I donated it to the locks of love foundation locksoflove.org), and I'm growing it long again. I have lots of "liberal" leanings. But, I'm a staunch supporter of 2A rights.
I prefer to not be pigeonholed by either party's official stamp. I take things issue by issue. I elect man by man.

And, I like guns of all types. Though, obviously wheelguns are the best.

we need a hippie emoticon on here...

It's fun to go to shoots wearing my "support the ACLU" t-shirt and have my hair blowing around.