Why is the gun culture still stuck in the 1960s?

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bogie

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We're still using pre-Kennedy political tactics. Collectively, we're still in the "paper notebook and shoebox" school of database management. A _small_ percentage of gun owners are on the internet. I'm guessing that the percentage of hunters is actually smaller. And I'm guessing the percentage of vendors is smaller still...

I mean, Shotgun News is still having people hand-enter information for their classifieds!!!! As in, you fill out their slip, and some guy types it in. You can't do it online, unless you scan the slip, and e-mail the scan.

Well, I have really bad handwriting. I thought I'd give 'em something they couldn't screw up. So I did it in Photoshop, and sent them something that looked PRINTED.

Well, they screwed up my phone number on my ad - I wonder how many it's gonna take before they can fix it...
 
There are a lot of gun owners on line, as witnessed by our ability to skew internet polls and drive Zumbo types out of business. The print journals and mags have been very slow to adapt, however.
 
Very interesting observations

Someone should do a study. Of course every time someone buys a gun, they have a card to fill out and mai....ahhh, see your point. LOL

So what does this say about the gun owning populace? Are they older? Poor? uneducated? Rural? Conservative? I can remember the days of paper and pencil. I was forced by my desire for higher education to take computer science classes in college, and I hated it at first. I never would have invested in a PC if it had not been mandatory. Then I got into it. Now, I cannot imagine my world without IT. :)

Anybody have any empirically based answers?
 
I actually sort of agree with the basic idea behind this thread. I really think that gunowners are pretty resistant to change, and only accept it when they run out of options. Now, whether this is bad or good is up for debate, but I personally think that a little more open-mindedness in the gun world would be a good thing.
 
I used to work at a sporting good store that sold a lot of guns. One day I got to talking with the owner and mentioned to him that if he tried posting some of his military surplus stuff on ebay he could potentially make a lot of money on some of it. There is often some collectible stuff mixed in and sometimes people just are willing to pay more because they can't find what they want locally.
There really was no downside other than the fee that ebay charged, which would have probably been covered by profits anyhow.
His response : "I don't know. We'd have to take a lot of pictures. It sounds awful complicated."

Basically, I think that many in this industry are a little on the conservative side and just afraid to step out and try it.
 
bogie, the "gun culture" is losing the younger generations, having been through layers of restrictions and legalese that some of us didn't go through as children. Fewer and fewer people hunt nowadays, yet another reason to have little familiarity with firearms. All the "good guys" in the movies today seem to use uber-Judo or some such.

Basically what I'm getting at is, gun-owners are by and large an older generation. Others might disagree, but that's what I see.

jm
 
Well, as a younger guy who's just recently gotten into guns, I'd say that the younger generation isn't so hot on guns now because it's so difficult to legally own one these days(I can't even own one because I'm not yet a U.S citizen), plus many parents are very anti-gun nowadays and would never approve of it. Society in general just has a very negative view on guns these days.

Also, I should mention...*cough*airsoft*cough*. I know how real gun owners hate it so much, but it is pretty popular among younger kids, as it's a much safer and somewhat cheaper alternative.
 
bogie, the "gun culture" is losing the younger generations, having been through layers of restrictions and legalese that some of us didn't go through as children. Fewer and fewer people hunt nowadays, yet another reason to have little familiarity with firearms. All the "good guys" in the movies today seem to use uber-Judo or some such.
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Oh yeah I definately disagree, I think the internet is bringing new people into gun ownership that never would have been here otherwise. People that have no interest in hunting can see there are other shooting sports to participate in. The claims of the antigun groups are easily fact checked and researched independently. I think without the internet we wouldn't have nearly as people who aren't hunters but are pro-ccw, or love their ar15, or are milsurp collectors.

Anyway as to the original question of "Why is the gun culture still stuck in the 1960s?" I think part of it is just economics. The firearms industry for the most part isn't the evil super rich business the brady group would have you believe. Many businesses involved in it seem to do alright but aren't rolling in cash. Changing their business, integrating IT solutions, and training people to use them can be costly. Is the ROI there for them? I doubt it always is. Do most vendors need to be on the internet? Does the gun shop in town do enough sales volume to come close to being able to offer pricing thats competitive with existing vendors?

A _small_ percentage of gun owners are on the internet.
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I think thats unlikely. As we seem fond of illustrating on THR, gun owners are a diverse bunch and aren't the stereotypical ignorant luddites people usually imagine. I believe the most recent figures I've seen say that over 75% of US homes now have some form of internet access. I've seen household gun ownership in the US estimated somewhere between 40-50%. I don't believe that everyone without internet access is a gun owner ;)

Now realistically if you want to talk about gun ownership on the internet, I think you need to consider if it matters or not to the person with the gun on the internet. While most of the US is on the internet and 45% of homes have guns, how many people actually care about them? I imagine many people just have an old inherited gun or are hunters or skeet shooters etc and just aren't concerned about firearms past that to use the internet for anything with regards to them.
 
tamaneko....regarding airsoft......the Founding Fathers didn't have games of ANY sort in mind when they penned the 2nd Ammendment!
 
Gee, if only there was some sort of internet site where members of the gun culture could "gather" in some sort of way to talk about guns, gun rights, and shooting. Like some kind of "forum" of old, only online... :lol:

Besides, we all know gun culture is stuck in the year 1911!
 
We've lost the younger generations

Others have said it well; we've lost the younger generations. They are growing up in a completely different culture, one which fears guns, idolizes guns, and teaches nothing real about them.

Look at ham radio. Legal hurdles killed it, when it could have boomed right along with the Internet.

If you outlaw something otherwise moral, everybody does it. If you put enough restrictions on it, people stop doing. Our children are not getting into gun culture.

Thankfully, many are getting into airsoft and paintball. While not firearms, it does keep enough interest in the art so some might learn about the importance of real firearms.
 
Look at ham radio. Legal hurdles killed it, when it could have boomed right along with the Internet.
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Aside: It's actually easier now to get into Ham Radio than ever. What killed Ham Radio (which I'm sure is an exageration) is the unwillingness, inability of the current generation to do the work necessary to pass the tests required to get the better licenses.

Regarding guns. Though it is a bit harder to get them today than in 1968 or even 1986 that's not the reason the gun culture is shrinking. It's shrinking because guns have been demonized by the left, the left owns the schools and the current members of the gun culture aren't using ALL the tools available to them to overcome the propaganda of the left.

I'm sure we all teach our kids and grandkids about guns, how to shoot them and maybe even buy them one but all that'll do is replace us. To grow the gun culture we've got to take the battle to the enemy and use every tool available to us and today the most effective tool available is the internet. If we could get on Facebook or MySpace with out having the owners kick us off I bet that would be a heck of a good place to engender interest in firearms among the younger folk.
 
most "adults" today or atleast very many of them arent "on" with the new internet.

i know, im 16 and i see it all the time :p while for most kids and young adults today the internet is as natural as walking

now if only a large ammount of those kids and young adults were into firearms and weapons :)...
 
We've lost the younger generations
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Disagree. Most of the folks I work with are pro-gun types and if under 40 can be considered "young" they are. Unlike the earlier decades of my youth, many young people today are growing up in an atmosphere in which the military is actually respected and weapons of all kinds are regarded as pretty cool anti-terrorist homeland security tools. If not for the internet, the monopoly of typically stupid news outlets and violence-crazed popular entertainment culture would be detrimental to gun advocacy. Fortunately, getting to the truth is easier these days, and the truth is that the shrill anti-gun advocacy is a shrinking one.

Agreed the nanny state has removed a lot of outlets for recreation starting with making playgrounds safe for children (seen a tall slide, high diving board, or merry-go-round lately?) leaving few alternatives for healthy outdoor recreation, giving rise to the popularity of sedentary computer games and the unprecedented rise of childhood obesity. Playground equipment may cause injuries but obesity, particularly in children, tends to be permanent and deadly.

As for ham radio, well, the appeal of instantaneous wireless worldwide communication has diminished with the advent of cell phones and the internet. Ironic, since it was packet radio that pretty much started it all, but that's progress for you.
 
To tell you the truth I think the big cleft in the gun culture are those in the Printed Media vs. The Internet.

To me the Printed Media is full of archiac thought, marketing and compromiser's; Fud's and Zumboites as I call them.

On the Interenet you get more free excahnge of ideas in quick 2-way form. And I think most of the true 2nd Amend activists have gravitiated towards it. Although I will admit it has it's fair share of Fuds, Zumboites, Compromiser's and Misinformation.

I used to buy the Shotgun News for the surplus adds but now I can go to these places direct online.
 
Most of the folks I work with are pro-gun types and if under 40 can be considered "young" they are.

I say that they are probably in the minority for their age group, although I have no empirical evidence to back that up. Look at how easily demonized you are nowadays if you bring firearms into a conversation.

"Columbine!"
"Virginia Tech!"

You're instantly lumped in with mass murderers and criminals.

jm
 
???

The gun culture is dying, then?

Don't think so. Time was when no one but a cop could carry in Texas and almost all other states; CCW barely existed, and "shall issue" laws were s shooter's pipe dream. Now CCW is sweeping the country, and more and more people are choosing to carry every day.

When I was a kid, "shooting sports" meant hunting, trap and skeet, and punching paper targets. That was about it. No Second Chance shoot, no Steel Challenge, no practical combat shoots, no Cowboy Action, no steel silhouette, no blackpowder competitions, no anything but bullseye, clay pigeons and tin cans. Look at us now.

"Assault weapons"? In trouble? Please. I remember when NO ONE had an AK. They were just unheard of. Now you can buy them, er, on the Internet as well as at your local gun shop... And by the way, if so few shooters are using the Internet, how are Gunbroker.com, Bud's, Classic Firearms, Atlantic, and all the dozens of other online retailers managing to stay in business?

Yes, hunting is less popular; big surprise. We have 300 million people in the country now, and there are a LOT fewer places to hunt, and less game when you get there. The creek where I used to hunt doves with my dad has a mall on it now (really). We used to drive for 20 minutes to get to a deer lease that was virtually free; now it's hours, and instead of just sharing your kill with a friendly rancher, you pay big bucks--per gun--for a few days of pretty poor hunting compared to what it once was. Being a hunter takes a lot more effort and money than it once did, and it's no longer a cheap way to put food on the table.

But other than hunting, IMO, the shooting sports are more popular, more diverse, and bigger business than they've ever been. This is a Golden Age for shooters in the US, and better than it's ever been in a LOT of ways.

If you haven't noticed that, you must be under 40. If you GO to any of these events, you'll notice that it's not all old geezers there, either.

It's been said that "if you never had it, you don't know what you're missing," and that's true; but if you've ALWAYS had it, you don't know what you've gained, either.

I don't get the poor-us pessimism and misery that I see here so often. If you live in California or (shudder) New Jersey, etc., I can understand where you're coming from; on the other hand, as Bob Dylan once said in a completely different context, "Baby, why don't you MOVE?"

(I'll be posting a longer version of this response as a separate thread.)
 
I didn't mean to imply the culture is dying or not evolving, but I think as a percentage of the population, it *might* have shrunk.

jm
 
grimjaw said:
Look at how easily demonized you are nowadays if you bring firearms into a conversation.
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Not in my experience. Of course I live in a fairly self-reliant area of the US (where just this weekend I was heartened to hear short bursts of an automatic weapon from a distant range). Wander onto a college campus or the more liberal parts of Boston or NY and opinions change quickly.

cnorman18 said:
This is a Golden Age for shooters in the US, and better than it's ever been in a LOT of ways.
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Agreed! Perhaps Texas and Pennsylvania have something in common :rolleyes:
 
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