GQ Gun Article - Thoughts

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http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201209/gun-shopping-gq-september-2012?printable=true

This article seems to be in the upcoming issue of GQ magazine. Long story short a big-city liberal wants to understand gun culture, immerses herself in it, and comes out better for the experience.

I'm not posting the article simply because it's about firearms, but because it raises a lot of interesting issues. How to initiate the uninitiated into gun culture. How anti's think, or at least how people unfamiliar with guns and gun owners think. How others may see the reactions of RKBA activitists in the wake of tragic events. What changes if any need to be made in the NICS system, and what the role of gun dealers is. Gun violence in Mexico. Gun violence in America. What arguments are successful in winning over anti's. What arguments aren't.

The article really is a good piece of Gonzo journalism imho. Author comes with a point of view, but raises issues without being demanding or presupposing and manages to bring you into the authors psyche. Author tells her story and allows the reader to draw their conclusions about it all.

I kept thinking about neighbors. You have this crazy family living next door. One day you go over with a pie, figuring if you just confronted the crazy, you'd understand it and find acceptance. Then you discover that all this time they think you're the crazy family. The more you try to explain yourself, the crazier you sound, and if you stay long enough, you probably will be.

These were burdensome thoughts, and I wanted to get rid of them. I rented an Uzi, fully automatic. I chose the male zombie. I think he was supposed to be a lawyer. He had a briefcase. I aimed for his left eyeball and pulled the trigger. The patter of thirty-two bullets lasted maybe three seconds, and then the eyeball was gone. The release felt like one gorgeous, fantastic sneeze, and the satisfaction reminded me of cold beer.
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I mostly liked the article. It was very well written. I feel like it was more pro than anti and it's nice to see a potential anti buying a rifle and trying to see the other side of the debate. I hope to see more of this.

The only things really bugging me were the repeated uses of "assault rifle" and "bullets", plus the fear of the "armed 6-year-old" thing.
 
This is a really good article in terms of fairness. Nice piece of journalism and the best part was that it was not written looking down on the gun buyers, it was a genuine effort to spend some time in a gun store and see what it was like.

And now I want to know about the Walmart clerk that turned Loughner down on buying ammo as well.
 
Thanks for a good read.

I would rather read articles like this than an obviously pro gun "rant" that belittles antis, rightly or wrongly. I see those doing more harm than good. Bias doesn't bother me as long as it is presented honestly and I really like to watch people come around, as it were.
 
Very good read, but I wish someone would explain to her in greater detail than the shopkeeper the difference between the technical term "assault rifle" and the legal term "assault weapon."
 
Good read. I had a little chuckle on reading the last paragraph. An open minded person who thought they were "anti" converting to what she had once perseived as the dark side. :eek:

"These were burdensome thoughts, and I wanted to get rid of them. I rented an Uzi, fully automatic. I chose the male zombie. I think he was supposed to be a lawyer. He had a briefcase. I aimed for his left eyeball and pulled the trigger. The patter of thirty-two bullets lasted maybe three seconds, and then the eyeball was gone. The release felt like one gorgeous, fantastic sneeze, and the satisfaction reminded me of cold beer."
 
I kept thinking about neighbors. You have this crazy family living next door. One day you go over with a pie, figuring if you just confronted the crazy, you'd understand it and find acceptance. Then you discover that all this time they think you're the crazy family. The more you try to explain yourself, the crazier you sound, and if you stay long enough, you probably will be.
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Yeah labhound, I really liked this analogy. It partially helps to explain why it's so hard for pros and antis to talk about gun topics, they both think the other is crazy. Of course, I'm inclined to believe that they are the crazy ones, but they have plenty of anecdotes about our group.
 
Not a bad article. You even see similar ones like this slip under the radar at places like the NY Times. Someone goes out the the gun world - doesn't find everyone is nuts and has a good time.
 
I haven't finished it yet, but I like the article. I like Richard and Ron too, they've really done a fine job educating the author and showing her that we're not a crazy lot like the media portrays us.

That's where Jeanne Marie Laskas ventured recently, spending a few shifts behind the counter and seeing for herself how we shop, sell, justify, and even come to love the deadliest things among us
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So far this sentence is the only problem I have with the article. Guns are hardly as dangerous as cars and cancer/and the things that cause cancer.
 
There has never been a better way to turn an anti than to take him or her shooting with some reactive targets.

Ok, there is one. But we all hope it never happens.
 
I like the article too.

In terms of "liberals" being emotional rather than logical, which isn't the author's words but the word of the employees in the store, that's not always true. I know some liberal people who are very rational and logical.

And I can say truthfully that the thought of someone harming a loved one of mine or threatening my liberty scares the hell out of me. It's not just a rational, calculated choice that leads me to gun ownership. It's a combination of my rural PA culture, military experience, fascination with the mechanics and craftsmanship of guns and how they have shaped history, the deep satisfaction I feel when I master myself and place a small projectile on a distant target, and the understanding that situations can and do arise when I will have to take care of myself - that's why I own guns. Some of that is emotional.
 
A story about guns by GQ's Jeanne Marie Laskas who admits: "Nobody in my circle back east had guns, nobody wanted them, and if anybody talked about them, it was in cartoon terms: Guns are bad things owned by bad people who want to do bad things."

So she hangs out with a gun dealer in Yuma Arizona. Actually covers gun buying with boring details of the 4473 and NICS process (which apparently most big city liberals have never heard of). And buying a handgun out-of-state (which requires the gun be shipped and transferred by a licensed dealer in your home state -- a little detail the anti-gun ranters always leave out, especial in discussing internet sales).

And the gun dealer lead her to this:
All of it was so easy, and that really was the only confusing part about buying guns. So easy. And yet why should it be difficult? I wasn't a criminal. I wasn't going to commit a heinous act -- not unless I had to defend myself or my family. Defending yourself and your family is what good people do.
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This reminded me of the title of Fredrick Wertham's 1954 screed against comic books: Seduction of the Innocent.

Laskas even sat in with the dealer and clerks and reported them turning down suspicious sales as per ATF training and federal gun laws. Commenters at HuffPost and CNN/Fortune always maintain that gun dealers gleefully sell to criminals and drug cartels without conscience. After all, Katherine Eban of CNN/Fortune (and The Nation) claims there are no Arizona laws to stop a dealer from selling 20 ARs or AKs to someone who hands them off to another party in the parking lot, it's their 2nd Amendment right and that's all the fault of NRA and ATF can't do anything to stop it because of weak state gun laws. CNN's Eban is propaganda. GQ's Jeanne Marie Laskas is actually doing her own foot-in-the-gun-shop research and reporting, as in (gasp!) journalism.
 
She does seem to be a good example of a free and indepent press. Unfortunate that not all journalists can even approach that bar.

I hope she gets a freaking promotion.
 
Take a noob shooting.
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As a gamer, I'm going to have to correct you on "newb" vs. "noob". The author in this article is a "newb", that is someone who is new and willing to learn. The "noob" is someone who isn't good, and is unwilling to learn.
 
GQ

I thought it was a very good article and I agree with the clerk their is no such thing as an assault rifle.
 
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Those who say "there is no such thing as an assault rifle" clearly are glossing over a huge section of the firearms industry. Assault Rifle is a term incorrectly used by the media to denote many semi-automatic weapons (especially if they look military-ish), but any select-fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge is technically an "assault rifle".

Semi-auto AKs and ARs are not assault rifles. But to say "there's no such thing as an assault rifle" ignores the M4, M16, AK-47 (the actual one being used by militaries worldwide), and that entire class of weapons.
 
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