3 REASONS I WENT FROM BEING A GUN NUT TO SUPPORTING GUN CONTROL (not me

[flamin lib]

personally, but close)
http://www.houstonpress.com/news/3-reasons-i-went-from-being-a-gun-nut-to-supporting-gun-control-7709731

3 REASONS I WENT FROM BEING A GUN NUT TO SUPPORTING GUN CONTROL

Before anyone assumes that I magically turned into some anti-gun hippie crusader, that didn't happen either. I still own a few. But I began to look at attitudes towards firearms in a different way, and a lot of what I saw began to bother me. I began to look at gun culture in America, and my opinions on topics like gun control began to slowly change. These are complex issues, but here are a few reasons that I changed my attitude about firearms.

Americans Have Weird Attitudes About Freedom When It Comes To Guns
snip
People willingly submit to rules and limits on their personal freedom in countless ways; it's the price of living in a civilized society without being a huge nuisance to other people. One day I realized that nudity is controlled more tightly than ownership of deadly weapons, and that seemed absurd to me. The right to own guns is a freedom, but it's not the freedom. Not to everyone anyway. That leads me to conclude...
Many Gun Owners Believe That They're Powerless Without Their Guns
Thinking the government is out to get them is a very simple and fairly stupid way of looking at things, and not something the majority of responsible gun owners buy into, but once I found myself encountering a bunch of those characters, I decided I didn't want to be part of that culture anymore.
Guns Are Deeply Entrenched Symbols, And It's Unhealthy
Too often guns are shown to be totems of power, the only way to deal with a conflict, and as a symbol of masculinity. It's stupid. I personally began to feel less powerful whenever I carried a gun. Living in fear while going about my business just made me feel weak and paranoid.

I'm sorry this is such a poorly presented cut-n-paste, the article is much better than presented here.

This story kinda parallels my own. I grew up around guns, enjoy shooting them and have collected a few curios and relics. Never gave a second thought and didn't have a clue about the amount of violence and damage guns were doing to my country.

Then December 14, 2012 happened.

It made me assess my outlook on guns, what they are for and why I had them. Don't get me wrong, I still have a number of WWI and one WWII infantry rifles and a single pre-WWI pistol.

I had a couple of semi automatic pistols, each unique in feature and hence reason for their purchase. I had to ask myself why anyone would want or need a piece of equipment that was of modern design, lethal in the extreme and limited in leathality only by the number of magazines owned and the physical strength to carry ammunition. I decided that there was no justification for such "tools" in civilian hands, certainly not mine. If I didn't want them I certainly didn't want anyone I didn't know to have them. So I had them fixed:


Everything I own is locked in a gun safe bolted to the wall and most of them haven't been fired since I acquired them. Once a year I take one of them out, join my brother on the hunting property and studiously avoid shooting anything except playing cards at 100 meters.

Having learned that guns kill and injure more than 130,000 people a year, people ranging from babies in cradle to elderly preachers, and extract a cost of $650 billion a year I decided that we as a nation need to assess how we own, use and transfer ownership of guns. There are hundreds of thousands of gun owners who are safe and responsible (as trite as that sounds) but what of the rest? What of the self defense gun left available to the toddler? What of the gun owner who carelessly shoots in wilderness areas not knowing where the errant bullet ends up? What of the New Year's reveler that fires aimlessly into the air not concerned with where the bullet falls?

What of the rest?

What do we do about the rest?

[bvar22]

1. Thanks.

We live very Rural, and own several guns....the kind you would find on your grandfather's farm.
Like you, I shoot and clean them once a year. My wife also stays competent at using these.
It rarely happens, but occasionally, we have to use them to protect our pets, stock, and ourselves.

We don't "display" them, keep them hidden but readily accessible (no kids), and never "show" them to visitors.
We DO want our neighbors in this valley to know we are armed, and the yearly practice in our back yard range does this nicely.
We don't hunt because we aren't hungry, but will do so if we have to,
and will have the tools and the skill to use them.

We own NO assault rifles, no extended magazines, or other penis extenders.

We will keep: one 12 ga pump Shotgun with a 2 shot tube magazine
one old 30-30 lever action with a 5 shot tube magazine
one .22 semi rifle tube magazine (I wish it was bolt action)

one revolver, .357, carried in our vehicle at the request of the local constable.
As a rural Firefighter and a member of Search & Rescue, we are called when there is injured wildlife or domestic cattle on the roads, and often have to end their misery.
Not something either of us enjoy.

I also own a table saw, a band saw, a sander, a drill, a miter saw, a router, and a bunch of hand tools.
We have pressure cookers for canning in the Fall too, and mowers to keep the weeds at bay.
We have shovels, rakes, picks, axes, hatchets, mauls, splitting wedges, sledge hammers, post drivers, and chain saws too.

All of the above are dangerous, can easily kill a person,
and they are all tools.
I can't imagine living out here without any of the above.

[Paladin]

2. The article and your comments mirror my own experiences and beliefs.

At some point, I finally woke up to just how bad the gun situation is in this country, and I knew I no longer wanted to make common cause with pro-gun militants in any way. I know that my life has improved as a result.

This is the best thread in this group in a long time. Thanks, flaming lib.