Hoplophile
Member
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2007
- Messages
- 238
Allow me to introduce myself. I'm 18 years old and have never fired a gun in my life. I was raised by an ultra-liberal parent in an ultra-liberal, low crime area. Violence was not permitted on television (Even "Power Rangers" was too violent for 5-year olds!). Everything was perfectly safe and sanitary. I remember at one point when I was 14, my sister and mother almost breaking down in tears (out of fear) when we were alone in a bus station with an elderly black man.
So, welcome to my town.
I remember when I was very little, I was told almost daily to, if I saw a gun, to go tell an adult, no questions asked. I remember once at eight, I saw a BB gun and mistook it for a real gun. Laying on a dryer, actually. I ran away, scared out of my mind that this infernal machine, so famous for killing kids, was going to kill me. That's what they told us that guns did, they killed kids. And Bambi's mom.
As I got older, I began to realize that the world was not so white-washed and clean. I was exposed to the internet and received my REAL education. I became interested in survival. I realized that gun control was about control. Nobody but me would protect me. Worse, I saw my fellow students go on knowing absolutely nothing about the weapons they sought so intently to ban. It's as if they really thought that one could stop criminals from getting guns. As if they could just disarm everyone, and suddenly crime would drop. Citing "facts" about how guns are most often used to hurt family members.
So nobody ever really taught me about guns, except that they would certainly kill you. I read, and read, and read some more, about every firearm and cartridge I could find on Wikipedia. I got heavily involved in martial arts, almost obsessively. This was a particularly modern system and involved discussion of firearms as well as practice with blue guns. Having never had a father, the presence of intelligent male figures in my life, people who I could really respect, helped solidify my belief that firearms were a good thing.
So now I'm kind of a black sheep in my community, because where one believes in one "conservative" value, he's automatically assumed to believe in the rest. We're very "one or the other". So I automatically support Rudy Guliani, the Federal Defense Of Marriage Act, and the war in Iraq. Nobody even asks, they just assume.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that I'm coming into the "gun culture" and kind of bewildered about all the lies I'd been told (not that I didn't know they were lies at the time, I was just content to believe what I knew were lies). That everyone here was a gross hick or a crazy Vietnam veteran. Veterans, they were so often the victims of my liberal friend's jokes. I actually happened to meet a few veterans and discovered they weren't all crazy gun nuts. Some of them were a little weird, but so am I. And they're easy to be friends with. I didn't have to humor their beliefs or be excruciatingly polite to them. I just had to be kind to them. So much easier to be friends with!
So I extend my apologies. I understand "the other side", and I can't agree with the way I was raised or the lack of education I received about firearms. I'm sorry my community still does this. I'm sorry that I missed out. I'm sorry that everything here is so liberal that it's very hard to own a weapon, even now. Colleges don't take kindly to even the legal possession of a weapon in one's home! I guess we sit here, floating in some purposeless void, accepting purposeless and poorly thought out "missions", perhaps out of guilt: Out of guilt for living good lives over those we never see and secretly loathe, those in the inner cities and Third World nations. We seek to perform these "missions" because of that guilt. Oftentimes, we simply pick these missions at random. We create a facade of turmoil where there is none.
Maybe because life would be unbearably boring without something to be paranoid about.
I don't know.
But that's where I was and here's where I am now.
Thanks for reading.
So, welcome to my town.
I remember when I was very little, I was told almost daily to, if I saw a gun, to go tell an adult, no questions asked. I remember once at eight, I saw a BB gun and mistook it for a real gun. Laying on a dryer, actually. I ran away, scared out of my mind that this infernal machine, so famous for killing kids, was going to kill me. That's what they told us that guns did, they killed kids. And Bambi's mom.
As I got older, I began to realize that the world was not so white-washed and clean. I was exposed to the internet and received my REAL education. I became interested in survival. I realized that gun control was about control. Nobody but me would protect me. Worse, I saw my fellow students go on knowing absolutely nothing about the weapons they sought so intently to ban. It's as if they really thought that one could stop criminals from getting guns. As if they could just disarm everyone, and suddenly crime would drop. Citing "facts" about how guns are most often used to hurt family members.
So nobody ever really taught me about guns, except that they would certainly kill you. I read, and read, and read some more, about every firearm and cartridge I could find on Wikipedia. I got heavily involved in martial arts, almost obsessively. This was a particularly modern system and involved discussion of firearms as well as practice with blue guns. Having never had a father, the presence of intelligent male figures in my life, people who I could really respect, helped solidify my belief that firearms were a good thing.
So now I'm kind of a black sheep in my community, because where one believes in one "conservative" value, he's automatically assumed to believe in the rest. We're very "one or the other". So I automatically support Rudy Guliani, the Federal Defense Of Marriage Act, and the war in Iraq. Nobody even asks, they just assume.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that I'm coming into the "gun culture" and kind of bewildered about all the lies I'd been told (not that I didn't know they were lies at the time, I was just content to believe what I knew were lies). That everyone here was a gross hick or a crazy Vietnam veteran. Veterans, they were so often the victims of my liberal friend's jokes. I actually happened to meet a few veterans and discovered they weren't all crazy gun nuts. Some of them were a little weird, but so am I. And they're easy to be friends with. I didn't have to humor their beliefs or be excruciatingly polite to them. I just had to be kind to them. So much easier to be friends with!
So I extend my apologies. I understand "the other side", and I can't agree with the way I was raised or the lack of education I received about firearms. I'm sorry my community still does this. I'm sorry that I missed out. I'm sorry that everything here is so liberal that it's very hard to own a weapon, even now. Colleges don't take kindly to even the legal possession of a weapon in one's home! I guess we sit here, floating in some purposeless void, accepting purposeless and poorly thought out "missions", perhaps out of guilt: Out of guilt for living good lives over those we never see and secretly loathe, those in the inner cities and Third World nations. We seek to perform these "missions" because of that guilt. Oftentimes, we simply pick these missions at random. We create a facade of turmoil where there is none.
Maybe because life would be unbearably boring without something to be paranoid about.
I don't know.
But that's where I was and here's where I am now.
Thanks for reading.
