I couldn't agree more!
Over forty years in the gun games and in the top five things I have learned is that shooters are the most stingy/selfish yet circumstantially generous group of people I know. As a social scientist it has always puzzled me. I benefited from probably one of the widest ranging upbringings and exposures one could have aside from military experience. I shot .22's in my junior high school basement as part of the school rifle team. I won science fairs comparing 1800's sniper rifle designs, then went on to explore what I, and others believed to be the intentional under-stabilization of the .556 leading to the SS109. I shoot/own everything from black powder to the most tricky of race guns. Trap to silhouette shooting. The only thing I don't do is hunt. That is what Safeway is for. Used to, no moral or ethical objections, just not for me. I will covertly cap magpies who beat up on the other birds though. The "well we be ok because we are competitors, hunters, black powder shooters, trap shooters" is something I hear all, ALL, ALL the time. When I worked at a gun counter, I would often get maligned because I wasn't an active hunter "how can you speak to me about hunting if you don't hunt?". Well before PRS was a thing, I was shooting eggs at 400m with a 22ppc and had built my own hydrostatic shock testing device. And right there, is part of the problem. There is A LOT of ego in the shooting world. Part of it we come by honestly, though as all masters will attest, ego has not place in mastery. “My gun is bigger, better more accurate than yours” or “what I do, is harder, more intense, technically challenging, physically demanding” than what you do. This falsely translates into superiority and dismissal of others. Worse, if you happen to be of an ilk that hasn’t come under much scrutiny, lets use trap for example, it sort of becomes a “well its your problem if the government bans handguns, I will still have my 20k Pirazzi”.
Aside from ego, there is the independence. By nature, end of the day no matter what you are doing unless you are a sniper, it is just you and the trigger and no one else. Even on a team, it is still a very much an individual sport. I think this has an isolating effect, “its me and my guns” vs. its all of us and our guns. Just a theory, but what other explanations do we have for why 26% of Canadian households cant unite and become the most influential force in Canada.
And finally, we are just too polite, scared and ashamed. I will address the ashamed part first. There is a highway sign just outside the city limits, big fancy houses in the background, the sign has shotgun pellets and .22 divots in it. The game of shooting signs from your car when on the highway is evidenced all around where I live. These people are idiots of the most profound kind and should be mercilessly hunted down and ruthlessly prosecuted. I have zero good response to someone that points this out to me as a reason for banning guns. Yea, there are idiots out there and I apologize for that. Very likely these are legal guns, legally owned by idiots. Unlike the handgun violence, which is committed by 100% illegal means, I can’t offer up any good retort to the person who is indeed in very real danger from an idiot shooting signs on the highway other than “there are idiots in every population”. People do stupid things that jeopardize others all the time. Street racers, drunk drivers, reckless campers that start forest fires, the a-hole that throws a cigarette but out the window. Other that shrugging and saying “well yea there are some bad apples” I back down and indeed agree “you know what, you have a valid argument, someone shooting in the direction of your house is a very bad thing” and then I go on quietly about my business. So yea, I am ashamed and embarrassed. Not unlike hearing that a green belt has gotten into a bar fight, it brings shame and dishonor to my dojo, my sport, my passion.
As I have gotten older, I just don’t give a F anymore. I openly say “yes I am a competitive shooter and collector” at dinner parties. But some just can’t handle that. And there are very real social risks. Maintaining a certain degree of social hygiene is a survival tactic. But social change doesn’t come about by not talking about things. Look at how far the LGBTQ community has come, look at what Canada has done with cannabis. Some I am sure, will recoil at the above. The same who probably think that abortion should be abolished, women shouldn’t vote, and white folks should be born entitled. You can’t have it both ways. Either you are evidence based and data driven vs. emotionally and ideologically driven or your not.
The wonderful thing about the shooting sports is that the bullet doesn’t care about your politics, race, religion or gender. Bullets care about physics and design and you either hit your target or you don’t. There are no alternative facts.
The facts are that there is no data to support the trajectory our current government is following. The facts are that politicians use these types of issues to divide and manufacture consent. The facts are that it forces ordinary people into corners where they have to make political choices that are not based on evidence and data.
This is wrong. Just as those that support anti-vaxing is wrong, or that deny global warming is happening is wrong.
So what is your suggestion smart ass?
Well, I don’t think getting all the “good ‘ol boys” all signing from the same song sheet is going to happen. We need to treat this like a war, and the best way to win a war is to win allies and in order to do that “understand yourself and the enemy” and “follow the money”. We need to better understand the psychographic of the gun hater, and we need to show how this is not a worthy expenditure of public money, and we need to find allies. MADD comes to mind, drunk driving is a huge cause of preventable death, far greater that firearms, so what common ground could we share with them?
And what can you do? Teach. Project Maple Seed, Guns ‘n Girls, even saying “hey you know I would be happy to take you to the range”. I stopped teaching because I was busy, selfish, didn’t have the resources, tired…. Now I take every opportunity I can. So what can the CCFR and NRA do? Teach the teachers. Probably one of the most successful groups I have seen in my neck of the woods has been a group dedicated to teaching youth in a competitive environment. I have watched them grow over the last five years or so and I am now seeing “kids”, going off to med-school, business school, and generally becoming good, responsible contributing citizens, who also own and use firearms for other than the cliché “hunting” purpose.
So yea, we are divided and I am very happy that people are honestly talking about that, next step is once we have defined the problems, the solutions will present themselves.
