Gun Guys: A road trip
The caricature is familiar—loopy red-state troglodytes obsessed with guns, so careless or crazed that they put innocent lives in danger and all but require the government to intervene with draconian laws. But is caricature the best way to conduct a debate over guns and gun rights? A few years ago, Dan Baum, a gun owner and self-described liberal Democrat, set out to see for himself what America’s gun culture really looked like. In “Gun Guys: A Road Trip,” he offers an account of his travels through gun-owning America.
Mr. Baum concedes that most of the gun owners he encountered on his cross-country journey “had taken up the responsibility to handle incredibly dangerous weapons with great care.” They were “careful, sober, self-reliant individuals.” He doesn’t see much point in “insulting, belittling, and maligning those people—the 40 percent of Americans who owned guns.” After all, most gun owners “hurt nobody” and, as he notes, most gun-control measures don’t save lives anyway.
And yet Mr. Baum can’t help serving up predictable anti-gun stereotypes: the 24-year-old who lives with his parents and spends every spare cent he has on an assault rifle; the drug-rattled couple that buys a gun on a lark and ends up using it to settle an argument; the Internet wingnut who, responding to a question about the United Nations possibly infringing on Second Amendment rights, spews obscenity and vows to fight the U.N.’s men in blue helmets. And then there is the yokel at the gun show facetiously selling pellets that will give their owner the powers of Barack Obama: “They’ll raise your taxes, take your guns, leave your border unprotected, and surrender two wars.”
Blowback
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Bishop?
Looks around nervously…
soundingboard on March 5, 2013 at 11:11 PM
Yeah, but nothing lets you feel like you have telekinesis like reaching out with a firearm and putting a hole in something a long ways away just by using your own skill.
Baum seems to understand the appeal of guns as entertainment, but he misses their utility, and their indispensability when the forces of civilization are off busy somewhere else. Bottom line is that liberals like Baum don’t trust individual solutions to society’s problems, while conservatives don’t trust collective ones. There are exceptions on both sides, but those are the types of solutions they default to.
Socratease on March 5, 2013 at 11:25 PM
Why not all three? Went to a friend’s birthday celebration this past Saturday. He earns his living by hand-crafting about 40 acoustic guitars a year (to order only), and they go for a pretty penny. He also has quite a collection of guns. We went to the shooting range in nearby Logan, Montana and shot for over 3 hours. Best birthday party ever!
jix on March 6, 2013 at 12:01 AM
What does any part of this article have to do with the Second Amendment?
OldEnglish on March 6, 2013 at 1:56 AM
My kinda guy. Sounds like me, actually, but I’m not currently building musical instruments, though I did for 25+ years.
Harbingeing on March 6, 2013 at 2:04 AM
Of course you had the good sense to buy him ammo for his birthday, right?
kit dinker on March 6, 2013 at 9:01 AM
This really sums up the difference quite nicely between today’s current liberals & conservatives.
This is why compromise has not worked & never will btwn these 2 mind sets.
Liberals do not value the original founding principles which focus on the individual. They are Marxists, Communists at heart, even if they do not really understand that.
Liberals who use their efforts to turn America in their vision are nothing more than usurpers of Liberty & the Constitution. The Founding documents are based upon the individual.
So quite simply, if one does not believe in the power & rights of the individual, then they by default do not respect the Constitution & associated documents.
These people should leave for a country that enshrines their values.
Venezuela, Cuba, the former Soviet Union evidently, England.
I wish them well, but they should leave.
Bcs the current law of the land (even though it has been mostly torn to shreds) values the individual.
Liberals are therefore the enemy of Liberty & the law of the land here.
They are our enemy. They do not wish to compromise. How could they when their outlook is so vastly different than our own?
You may think I’m harsh, but really, Democrats in this country presently have a real choice to make if presented with the facts.
Liberty or Collectivism.
It really is that simple of a choice.
The compromising of founding principles is why America is in the mess she is in.
And I also realize there are those who are on the right that are for usurping liberty as well. Religious zealots who are no different than modern day liberals.
Badger40 on March 6, 2013 at 9:20 AM
*Ahem*
Need I repeat the first quote to make the second quote make sense?
44Magnum on March 6, 2013 at 9:33 AM
This is why I get upset when people start talking about compromise. Do a Venn diagram of true conservative principles and of the principles of the statists. They do not overlap. There is no intersection. The only way to meet them partway is to abandon your principles and establish a point well outside your acceptable realm.
Unfortunately, many factors have contributed to the country moving away from the allowable sphere around those conservative principles. I’m not sure we will ever move it back.
GWB on March 6, 2013 at 9:37 AM