Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Taking a break.
No, not from blogging. Rather, from visiting some of my usual gun forums - the upcoming inauguration has caused a resurgence of hatin' on "LIEBRALS and DEMONCRATS", and I just don't have the stomach for it right now. As I said in a diary I posted on dKos a month ago:
I have given up participation in some gun forums for being told that I cannot be a gun owner and still be a liberal. Seriously, sometimes it is impossible to get other gun owners to understand that this issue does not need to be one which breaks down according to party alignment (and isn't good for gun rights if it does). Even my family and some of my gun-owning friends have a hard time wrapping their head around it. The most common refrain is that no "true" gun owner can possibly be a liberal, or vote for a Democrat.
It happened again to me last night in one forum I particularly like. But I've seen much too much such sentiment the last week or so, on a variety of such discussion forums.
It's maddening. Maddening because it is so damned short-sighted. A lot of people would rather be "pure" than win - they don't care if they lose an argument, or their rights, so long as they get to trumpet their moral superiority. And a whole lot of "gun-rights activists", who have tied their activism to the tail of an elephant, and now are so aligned with that party that they can't see that there is a better path to preserving their Second Amendment rights. A path where the RKBA, and all the rest of the Bill of Rights, is respected and preserved by *both* major political parties. No, they would much rather pay homage to the GOP, and so alienate most moderate gun owners that they seem to be extremists - and therein delegitimize their cause, perhaps even hastening new pointless gun control legislation.
Gah. Makes me crazy.
So, I'm going to take a break. Being off to the wilds of northern California next week will help. Maybe the worst of this outbreak will pass by the time I get back.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to Communion of Dreams and Ballistics by the inch Blog)
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A liberal who learned to like guns
I think I mentioned this in a comment I made on another of Jim's posts, but I used to hate guns. I always realized it was a personal thing, and never thought that my personal feelings about guns should affect the legality of gun ownership.
Then my husband talked me into taking a two-day gun and hunting safety course. (Here in California, this is now required to get a hunting license, and Husband has decided he wants to learn how to hunt.) What I learned was that my hatred of guns was prompted by fear of what I didn't know, and I learned a lot in this very intensive course. I learned enough to be a careful, newbie rifle owner, gun courtesy of my father-in-law who doesn't use it any more.
So, I'm not just a gun-owning liberal, I'm a NEW gun-owning liberal. Take THAT, o people who've tied yourselves to the elephant's tail. There's one more of us!
Ultra liberal AND a gun owner -
That is what I am! I also support fishing, hunting and wildlife conservation and actually give money to aid in wildlife and ecosystem conservation efforts.
The ultra conservative NRA idiots are simply that, idiots unable to ever think rationally. Luckily there are some NRA members that can and do think rationally. But they are not in control. Perhaps one day soon (please) the logic of their thinking will prevail.
Yeah, I was shocked too....
Me and my wife got into shooting 22s and decided to get a membership with the NRA. We were rather shocked at how stupid they were.
Instead of trying to reach out to "liberals" and "democrats" and educate them in why owning or using a gun isn't a bad thing they were putting out all kinds of stupidity demonizing them.
It was just stupid. That combined with the fact that the only good magazine (the women's magazine) was canceled was enough reason to not renew.
Of course, the ACLU isn't exactly pro-gun either. But at least they aren't anti-republican nor anti-conservative.
Ciao!
You're not alone
Jim,
For what it's worth, you're not alone. I'm not a "passionate" gun owner but I do have a few [Beretta F-92, Remington 870 pump] and I'm about as liberal as they come.
Be of good cheer.
Scott
Yeah, thanks.
I do appreciate it. And I know I'm not alone - there's actually a fairly sizeable and vocal minority of gun owners and pro-RKBA types over on the Great Orange Satan.
But man, it really gets old sometimes when people are so bloody blind to how they are harming their own interests, just to prove how "right" they are. And yeah, I see it at dKos all the time, as well as elsewhere. But after a while you get sick of fighting that stupidity and just have to take a break.
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Breaking
I've often noticed that some folks have a very, very difficult time separating guns, gun ownership, the entire hunting and shooting cultures themselves, from conservatism and the Republican party. And it floors me because I don't know *why* this is. It just doesn't make any sense.
Being a conservative, a Republican, a liberal, a Democrat, a libertarian, a moderate, whatever - has nothing, NOTHING to do with guns and gun ownership, or with hunting or shooting.
My liberal friends don't get it when I tell them that I consider the second amendment every bit as important as the first. My conservative friends don't understand why an atheist like me owns guns and hunts. I honestly don't see the problem. It's a civil rights issue for me. I support the bill of rights. All of the civil rights that we guaranteed ourselves in the Constitution - not just some of them. (And I like hunting. :))
Like being an atheist.
It's a lot like being without God-belief, in my opinion: isn't tied to politics, or profession, or sexual preference.
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.