the typical shotgun owner I've known is just a man or woman who wants it for hunting. I'd say that half the small town I lived in actually lived off the venison they brought home, and about 1/6 of those people lived off other wild game. When I was a kid, I lived with a German family who'd moved here after WW II. I was fine with gun control then, I was probably 17 or 16? When Reagan was shot, I mouthed off about gun control, only to face a very livid man, who lived in Germany when they took their guns away. When he moved to the US -- as I recall, they'd lost their homeland when borders were redrawn -- he was a fierce supporter of the 2a because he remembered what it was like to be without weapons for both self defense and for hunting -- which the people in their small town did in those day: lived off the land.
Consequently, a carpenter, he worked hard, found himself an affordable hundred acres and a shack. He gradually turned the shack into a log cabin he built himself and the whole family hunted, living off the land eating goose, duck, rabbit, turkey, pheasant, venison. The son (and I) trapped beaver, muskrat, rabbits, etc. skinning them for the money. Once a month, mutti would buy chicken and cook up a chicken dish, sometimes they had hamburgers. Otherwise, they bought no meat from the store.
People like that are probably rare these days, but he was more representative of the kinds of people who frequented the gun shop I owned with the wasband -- and the kinds of people who frequent the gun club, skeet and trap shooting ranges. They don't go on and on about using a weapon to protect themselves but, rather, talk about hunting and about accuracy when it comes to trap and skeet. (I agree that the mythos around country folk is overdone, but it does us no good to go in opp. direction.)
It was the very wealthy people who lived in Ithaca where we made any money btw. We made money from gunsmithing and from the sale of unusual weapons. We couldn't compete with kmart and walmart on your typical rifle or shotgun. Hence, where we made money was on the sale of weapons that cost thousands, as well as on collector's item handguns. It was a side business, too difficult to compete, but a dream the wasband had since his father'd always had that dream but ended up dying from black lung after spending a life time in the mines.
As for the high priced weapons, these were mostly things coveted by people into guns. The big 'scary' guns -- the 'assault weapons' -- were the ones purchased by millionaires who lived among the swankiest of swank in Ithaca, right alongside millionaire outdoor ad honcho, Robert Park. Yer avg Jimbo couldn't afford them. [1]
I know few people who own handguns who live in the city, myself. The only one who's ever talked about it lives in Queens, my friend BlackAmazon who has a concealed carry permit that's only good in PA. I think men have a much greater fear of getting assaulted because, from what I observed, becoming a man involves a lot of learning how to present yourself in public -- to avoid fights and to show that you're ready to take on a fight. It's fascinating to me to watch men engage in this behavior -- everything some sort of challenge from "the other guy." Anyway...
Personally, I tend to think people who think they can protect themselves with guns are kind of goofy. E.g., one night, I was reading in bed. Heard a noise. By the time the wasband threw on his pj bottoms, got the gun from the dresser, loaded it, we would have been dead. It didn't happen too long after the family in Ithaca was murdered by intruders who'd apparently entered their upper middle class home in a swank housing dev. on the outskirts of Ithaca in order to rob them. That freaked people out for a week, then it was forgotten as there was no big media hysteria. But it stuck with me how ineffective a weapon would be in the face of a night time intruder like that. Similarly, I've thought the only way I could feel personally protected was concealed carry. Getting it out of a pocketbook would be pointless were I grabbed all of a suddent while walking down a street.
Ever since the night intruder incident with the wasband, I usually shake my head when anyone goes on about self defense. You're better off studying up and implementing ways to secure your home and deter thieves if theft is a problem. But then, I like statistics to go by, not rumors about crime (or, in other cases, perceived threats to police officers lives. snark.)
My own reasons for supporting the 2a or, rather, not much getting riled about it are that it's a stupid issue for the left. Is this going to build solidarity? Is this going to get janitors raises? Going to get nursing home workers better union contracts? Going to put a dent in rape and abuse stats? Going to get women out of the segregated job market? Going to end the sexism that pervades the IT industry? Going to put a dent in racism? Going to address global warming? What?
It's a distraction.
Finally, I tend to agree with Charles who once pointed out that, in the event that we end up with some kind of violent transition from capitalism to socialism, his guess was that it would not take place on the level of citizens fighting the government with it's monopoly on the means of massive violence, but would take place on a divided terrain -- civil war -- where it may just be likely that it's armed urban combat among, to paraphrase charles, the Michigan Militia v The Detroit Militia. There will be no government, but at least two, if not more, depending on the way the civil war breaks up a region. And yeah, I can see that happening. In which case, if I'm alive, I'd pick up a gun and do my duty. But again, I happen to feel that way due to realizing when facing down the guns of the Pork Power at a protest that I had it in my to fight those fuckers, and any fuckers who threatened people I loved. I was ready to fight them and die that day, but I was going to grab a gun and go out shooting if I were. If I'd to go to the mat like that to protect my kid and I had it in me then. Blame it on being a mom and my fierce mama bear protectiveness. I dunno.
Oh yeah: you can also blame it on the fact that I'm a victim of my own commie symp version of Red Dawn. :)
[1] Who knows why these guys were into them. For some, it was a childhood memory of being on a farm and hunting with gramps. For others, it was a collector thing -- like the guy with an arsenal displayed in his "game" room. For others, it was their way of being macho after spending most of the week in the boardroom. Who knows? Still others were just women, like me, who enjoyed mastering a skill, the same way I enjoy mastering anything. For other women, it was about doing something the boys had traditionally done, who continuing a tradition in their own family where everyone hunted.
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