Gun culture in the United States
Courtesy nature.com from What is gun culture? Cultural variations and trends across the United States
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Gun culture in the United States
Courtesy Nature.com from What is gun culture? Cultural variations and trends across the United States

As the abstract for this bit of sociological analysis puts it, “This paper advances the literature on gun culture by demonstrating that: (1) gun culture is not monolithic; (2) there are multiple elements of gun culture that vary substantially between states; (3) over time, the recreational gun subculture has been falling in prominence whereas the self-defense subculture has been rising; and (4) there is another subculture, distinct from the self-defense one, which consists in mobilization around the Second Amendment and was strongest in places where state firearm laws are most extensive.”

The three components that we identified can be considered to be “cultural” according to the definition used in our analysis. For example, Kohn found that recreational or sporting subcultures, such as hunting, target shooting, or competition shooting “signify certain kinds of values, traditions, and/or ways of life that those gun owners see as part of their cultural heritage” (Kohn, 2006, p. 15). Both Stroud (2016) and Carlson (2015a) showed that ownership of guns for self-defense is not merely pragmatic, but is associated with an entire set of symbolic meanings that encompass personal identity, masculinity, power, freedom, racial attitudes, responsibility, morality, and views of governmental threat.

The right to bear arms has been portrayed, largely by the NRA, not merely as a Constitutional right, but as the right from which all other rights and freedoms flow (Keene and Mason, 2016). As expressed by Keene and Mason (2016), “the real fight [about the Second Amendment] is not about this restriction or that law, but about the nature of American culture”.

The presence of a distinct cultural element centered around Second Amendment activism is consistent with previous literature which showed that there exists a movement that does not view the defense of the Second Amendment as a means to an end, but that believes in the importance of gun ownership per se. As 12-year-old Texan boy Ashton puts it: “I like guns because they don’t just represent hunting, target practice or competition. They represent freedom in the form of self-defense or in the case of the Second Amendment it means protection from the government” (Badessi, 2019).

This theory that the Second Amendment is necessary to all other freedoms was explored by Anderson and Horwitz who showed that the NRA has embraced insurrectionist ideology (2009). Our finding that Massachusetts and Connecticut are low in the recreational element and high in the Second Amendment one seems to substantiate their claim.

About New England, they write: “the link between these original citizen-soldiers and their guns has been carefully preserved at a host of Revolutionary War battlefields, monuments, and museum exhibits” (Anderson and Horwitz et al., 2009, p. 83). There, patriotism and the possibility of taking arms against an oppressive government are closely intertwined. As a result, it is not surprising that the NRA’s insurrectionist argument and Second Amendment advocacy can be so popular in these states, in spite of their sparse recreational use of firearms.

Scholars have hypothesized about why Second Amendment advocates seem emotionally involved in the protection of gun ownership. Mencken and Froese established that American gun owners vary widely in the symbolic meaning they find in firearms; some associate gun ownership with moral and emotional empowerment and others do not (Mencken and Froese, 2019).

Lacombe demonstrated that gun owners are very politically active because there is a collective social identity tied to gun ownership and therefore they feel personally invested (2019). Dawson determined that, as the NRA has been increasingly using religious language to refer to gun ownership, to some gun owners, the Second Amendment became a right bestowed on them by God himself (Dawson, 2019).

The presence of this distinct cultural element is also consistent with a shift in firearm marketing and sales. Firearm advertising “moved from narrative—a description of how guns worked—to lyric—a description of how they made you feel” (Haag, 2016, p. 332). Melzer has described how former NRA president Charlton Heston strongly emphasized the idea of the gun as a symbol in the organization’s discourse: “Heston emphasized that a gun is more than a physical object, it is a symbol; that is, its importance lies in its representation of a particular American ideology” (Melzer, 2009, p. 121).

As Metzl puts it, “addressing guns symbolically means recognizing ways that firearms emerge as powerful symbols shaped by history, politics, geography, economy, media, and culture, as well as by actors such as gun manufacturers or lobbying groups” (Metzl, 2019, p. 2).

– Claire Boine, Michael Siegel, Craig Ross, Eric W. Fleegler and Ted Alcorn in What is gun culture? Cultural variations and trends across the United States

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64 COMMENTS

  1. “The right to bear arms has been portrayed, largely by the NRA, not merely as a Constitutional right, but as the right from which all other rights and freedoms flow.”

    And that’s part of the reason I’m no longer a member of the NRA. That, and the divine right stuff, just makes me cringe. Very true 240 years ago when your average citizen had the same firearms technology as the military, but to pretend as much today is simply delusional. Now if I could buy what the military can, then I’d agree with the statement.

    • ” Very true 240 years ago when your average citizen had the same firearms technology as the military, but to pretend as much today is simply delusional. Now if I could buy what the military can, then I’d agree with the statement.”

      For an effective insurgency, you can have what the military has.

      If all we had were single-shot bolt-action rifles we could take this country back. “Grandpa’s deer rifle” is known in the military as a sniper rifle. And snipers have changed the course of history…

      • I sincerely doubt that. There is no viable defense to aerial attack at this point. Getting lit up by a Vulcan from 30k feet or getting droned is a major game changer. So long as the military is willing to pull out the stops, we are just as viably defenseless as afghanis.

        • I think this issue is a lot more complex then you make it out to be. One is gun owners are of and in the larger community we are not a guerrilla force living in the mountains.
          What good is an A10 when resistance is in suburban Phoenix.
          Further it could be very problematic to find soldiers willing to use mortars artillery etc.. in America and on Americans

        • John, if that’s true why are we still in Afghanistan? You need to understand a drone can’t occupy territory. Neither can a 30mm cannon. Only ground troops can do that. And snipers can have a profound influence on history. I think was Saratoga, but I could be mistaken, where an an American sniper shot the commanding British general. It turned the tide of the battle. Also, look at what snipers did in Stalingrad.

        • The point I’m getting at, and I apologize if I wasn’t being as clear as I should is that so long as the military is willing to use whatever means it has to overwhelm a population, the presence of civilian arms as they exist in the US, currently, isn’t viable as a means to stop it. It is only if the military or government choose to limit their use of force that it becomes viable. Afghanistan, again, is a great example. You have a population that is incredibly well-armed compared to the US population. Fully automatic personal weapons are the norm, grenades and man portable anti-tank are ubiquitous. What have I got? A few ARs and one or two precision bolt guns that can reach out to around 800-1000m effectively on personnel. The slaughter, even assuming ROE similar to Afghanistan would be tremendous. We had something like 1800 US troops killed in Afghanistan compared to over 100,000 Afghanis. And that was WITH what I consider to be pretty restrained use of force. Imagine what would happen if a US city threw up a fight and, just like with Hiroshima/Nagasaki, the government decided the downside of killing a couple hundred civilians was outweighed by the lives saved by not doing it.

          Again, the limiting factor is the willingness of the government to use force, the fact that half the country owns a rifle. Sure, the government probably wouldn’t flatten a city, because it would lose legitimacy and be overthrown, but it certainly could…and the existence of civilian rifles really only has meaning to the extent it could force the government to have to make the decision to use enough force to defeat that resistance that it would cause itself to become unviable in the face of the rest of the population. But, regardless, the government could slaughter millions on millions of Americans if it so chose, and it acted quickly before public and political resistance could be mustered.

        • John A. Smith,

          Sure, the government probably wouldn’t flatten a city, because it would lose legitimacy and be overthrown …

          Wait a minute, if the United States government turned evil, just flattened a city, and established that the good people of the United States are impotent, how could the impotent good people of the United States overthrow the government?

          You contradict yourself.

        • “… as the military is willing to use whatever means it has to overwhelm a population,…”

          The *moment* they do that, their families and loved ones become valid targets.

          While you might get a unit or two to open fire on the American people, the vast majority will not.

          Oh, and about those bullet-proof tanks they have? They can’t live in them for extended periods, and when they open the hatch to dismount, they become targets…

        • John A. Smith,

          Whether or not the good people of the United States could successfully repel an evil government intent on murdering millions of good people of the United States depends on two factors:
          1) Good people need arms.
          2) Good people must use good tactics.

          Let’s simply call the good people of the United States who would repel an evil government “defenders”. If the defenders amass in large groups of thousands of people to mount direct frontal assaults on a military base or government building, of course the U.S. military could mow them down with long range cannon fire or guided ordnance.

          The effective tactic for righteous defenders is working in very small groups in coordinated, precision actions as well as using longer term siege methods. Example:
          a small group of perhaps six people suddenly appear, execute a surgical strike on a critical target, and immediately vanish. Long range cannon fire and guided ordnance are meaningless in that scenario. Another example: the populace isolates a military base that has been dispatching drones and gunships to level cities and large groups of righteous defenders. That military base will not last forever without municipal electricity, water, and food resupplies — all of which are exceedingly easy for defenders and their sympathizers to cut off and keep cut off.

          Those surgical strikes and siege methods both require commonly available small arms. As long as righteous defenders have those, they can eliminate an evil government that has turned against its own good people.

        • Geoff “Ammo. LOTS of ammo…”:

          “While you might get a unit or two to open fire on the American people, the vast majority will not.”

          Exactly my point. It isn’t the presence or absence of civilian small arms that is the determining factor. It’s the willingness of the military to act.

        • The insurgency in Afghanistan has gone on since it was occupied by Alexander The Great, with brief pauses for periods when there was no large power trying to invade, during which the Afghans fought among themselves.

          They fought the British with weapons captured from the Indian maharajahs, they fought the soviets with rifles captured form the British, and they fought the US with rifles captured form the soviets.

          And that was in a place where the conquerors had much more freedom to bomb and drone than the American military would have in American cities and suburbs. It was also in a place where the soldiers of any of these empires had no connection with or great love for the people they were fighting and the people who supported them. Again, not the case in American cities and suburbs.

          Do you really believe that the American military would be willing to carpet bomb an American city or town? To go door to door seizing arms and looking for insurgents? Dragging soccer moms off to prison camps because they found their husband’s shotgun hidden under the mattress?

          Hell, in Iraq and Afghanistan the ownership of AKs was so ingrained the occupying US forces had to allow one automatic rifle per household to have any hope of managing the insurgencies.

          We have a much more general belief in our right to arms and it is encoded and enshrined in both the federal and many state constitutions. How do you think a real military counter insurgency operation would fare here? Not well. As has been observed by potential outside invaders there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass, and I would add a handgun in every waistband, pocket, or purse just waiting for back to be turned………..

          There is plenty of weapons and gear just waiting in police vehicles to be seized by someone who sees, or makes an opportunity.

        • Here is your blueprint and instruction manual for resistance and insurgency

          “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat.”

          ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

        • I would argue that, if the US government were to go all evil empire, who’s to say that not only would the pilot of the A10 be against a tyrannical regime, but the base that it was stationed on be against it as well?

        • If drones could win conflicts we’d have done it already.

          That high tech military stuff needs a lot of rear support. They would need dedicated supporters willing to fight fellow Americans. It’s another thing to hit a foreign country from here.
          Dont think for a minute the military is going to be on board with decimating the US.

        • And so are the politicians who support gun control. And their campaign contributors, their families, their employees, the academics who peddle this stuff in their classrooms.

          Quit thinking as if any revolution is going to be a toe-to-toe match with a military force. That’s the mental masturbation of the gun control forces. Why would I want to take on the military or police? Someone might get hurt, and it very well could be me.

          Screw that.

          Take a page from the Antifa clowns. That useless female who runs Seattle was content to allow Antifa to have a “summer of love” in Seattle – right up until the day they showed up to her house. Then she got scared.

          Study on that and learn.

        • John Smith said: “so long as the military is willing to use whatever means it has to overwhelm a population, the presence of civilian as they exist in the US, currently, isn’t viable as a means to stop it. It is only if the military or government choose to limit their use of force that it becomes viable.”

          The government may well turn against “the people” of America but I doubt your assumption the US Military will be willing to use weapons of any kind against US citizens. There may be some who would but the majority would not.

          I am around active duty and reserve Marines a lot, I don’t worry about them at all. They would take up arms to help and defend citizens, not kill them.

      • Gadsden Flag:

        A couple of reasons, at least in my opinion. First, winning and governing are two different things. Second, we aren’t there merely to pacify the Afghanis, we’re there to prevent an on the ground connection between Syria and Russia (as well as to maintain a proximate presence from which we can move into northern Pakistan to counter the Chinese). And, third, we’re there because we don’t want to slaughter every man, woman, and child in the country. If we did, we have the ability to do so, we just don’t because we’re not animals.

        • So you believe that the members of the U.S. military would prosecute a war against the citizens of the U.S. with all their might? And then go home to their families like nothing happened? That’s nuts! What did you do today honey? I killed our neighbor next door. I hope his family doesn’t hold it against me. Many would defy these illegal orders and/or desert. Those that were dumb enough to continue might have a victory or two until the citizens got organized. Then all bets are off. Guerilla warfare wouldn’t be pretty for the traitors who prosecute a war against their own citizens.

    • News for you cringing paleface john smith…If that’s your pathetic, wimpy reason for no longer being a member of the NRA then you never were a member in the first place. Can you let this forum know how to protect and defend their rights with no means of defense should they ever be cornered by a criminal, etc? You cannot. Therefore Constitutional Rights are only as good as your means to defend your rights. Where the citizenry falls short The United States Military is Sworn to Protect and Defend The Constitution of The United States.
      BTW…Your pathetic, childish reasoning for ending your NRA membership says you don’t have the necessary mental facilities to own a nuke, etc.

    • Asymmetric warfare is is a very real thing, though I actually think your point about relying on the government’s unwillingness to truly use its full might is a fair one. That being said, more so that anything else, the US military relies on an unthinkably large and complex domestic logistical and manufacturing machine. Our troops have never had to fight a war during which that machine was damaged or even under threat in any real way. THAT is the difference. There’s also the very real question of how many combat troops would be willing to fire on American citizens, as well as the absolutely brutal but entirely relevant question of their families being targeted in retaliation for their actions. Bottom line, it’s FAR more messy than just “the government has nukes and A-10s, but we don’t!”

  2. “As Metzl puts it, “addressing guns symbolically means recognizing ways that firearms emerge as powerful symbols shaped by history, politics, geography, economy, media, and culture, as well as by actors such as gun manufacturers or lobbying groups” (Metzl, 2019, p. 2).”

    What is “No shit, Sherlock” for $700, Alex…

  3. gosh, recreational use continues to slide while all manner of range toys get snapped up, new competitions are created and concerned individuals hone their skills. did we mean hunting? balderdash.
    legislative activism peaked around the awb, settled into complacency and then went head on with the current batch of weenies? hmmm…
    self defense will climb to the wall. my furtive imagination envisions that chapter as ~dynamic~.
    if you search “recreational gun use in connecticut” the first hits are about pot legislation.

  4. Idiots: “…the Second Amendment became a right bestowed on them by God himself.”

    The right itself flows from God, not the 2nd Amendment. This right predates the 2nd Amendment and even firearms, swords and spears are the arms our distant ancestors defended themselves with.

  5. Imperative note:

    Progressives and Leftists keep telling us that “diversity” and “tolerance” are the pinnacle of a great and wonderful vibrant society and business landscape. And yet Progressives and Leftists desperately want and are going to great extremes to achieve uniformity and eliminate diversity and tolerance.

    Make no mistake: Progressives and Leftists do NOT actually want diversity and tolerance. They want a monolithic society where everyone is the same. They betray themselves with their demands for equality and equity, with their demands that everyone embrace and celebrate every aspect of their platform, and with their demands that everyone condemn anything that is not part of their platform.

    So, what is all this push for “diversity” and “tolerance” really about? It is about shaming and bullying people into accepting destructive Progressive goals. The next time a Progressive or Leftist tries to shame and bully you into accepting their goals with talk of “diversity” and “tolerance”, make sure you tell them how their actions are driving for a society with no diversity and no tolerance.

    • That’s exactly what it’s about which is why they’re especially cruel to any person in their pet groups that dares to think for himself. Joe Biden saying you ain’t black if you don’t vote for me isn’t an isolated incident. I saw a story about a gay man that came out of the closet as a conservative. They told him he wasn’t gay if he was a conservative. This was a year or two ago.

      Now people live in fear of the social “justice” (revenge) twitter mob coming for them. AOC, one of the most influential members of congress, tried her best to cancel minority owned Goya foods because he dared to say he supports Trump. How is that not cruel and completely at odds from what they say they are? They despise diversity of thought, as well as any minority that doesn’t toe the preferred political line.

    • Their idea of “diversity” is superficial. In their perfect world, you could have a black tranny, an Arab Muslim, a white lesbian otherkin, a gay Asian man, and an old heterosexual Indian woman who all believe the exact same things about absolutely every topic. Diversity of thought is the one thing they simply can’t allow. Ideas are dangerous, dontcha know

  6. I wonder how much they got paid for this drivel? “Gun Culture”? As if that has any meaning whatsoever. Might as well do a study on Donut Culture, or Table Saw Culture,

    • Yep. Sounds like a set up to float Bellesiles’ boat again. Apparently he feels it’s time to come out of hiding and pitch for some funding again. For those who weren’t around during the ‘gun culture’ controversy in 2000, here’s some context; some real world social ‘science’ and history.

      https://theweek.com/articles/865208/historical-professions-greatest-modern-scandal-two-decades-later

      The most missed point in the review of Bellesiles’ book that I read, was his claim the commonest means of people killing each other in early America was with knives. The contested context of ‘gun culture’ by Bellesiles in 2000 was that Americans’ never had a firm originating history of reliance on or wide use of firearms (contrary to what the NRA and other’s I believe were positing around 2000 as a ‘gun culture’ tradition ).

      I personally don’t think the Revolutionary War was won using knives and blunt objects. Prior to that the Puritans eventually figured out it would be easier to pay back their investors if they gave Native Americans firearms to hunt pelts for them with.

      But ironically, in saying the high murder rate in those times was accomplished using means other than firearms, Bellesiles was corroborating exactly what is at the heart of the NRA’s argument: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” And criminals capable of inflicting bodily harm will always do so by whatever means necessary.

    • Read Unintended Consequences by J. Ross. He writes about gun culture in that book. Also about government over reach and where it leads.

  7. What’s this “gun culture crap?”. Since a few dope smoking smelly dorm room guys didn’t get the results they wanted why not concoct a sneaky demeaning label? It is what’s expected coming from disgruntled azzhats whose anti-gun agenda is rooted in racism and genocide. That’s right Gun Control is a racist and nazi based agenda and if anyone can concoct names and labels its racists and nazis. What filth.

  8. I’m really worried about the diversity of gun culture. When every rifle is an AR and every pistol is polymer where’s the diversity?

  9. uncommon_sense:

    “Wait a minute, if the United States government turned evil, just flattened a city, and established that the good people of the United States are impotent, how could the impotent good people of the United States overthrow the government?”

    That’s not my point. My point is that if the government did that, it would ultimately lose because the individuals comprising the military would refuse to cooperate, not because civilians have small arms. And THAT would result in a non-functional government — it’s constituents would simply refuse to continue with the actions it demanded and government would cease to exist. The presence of civilian small arms has nothing to do with it.

    • The small arms enable people to employ guerilla force in near endless small doses. The military loyal to the tyrannical government wouldn’t have the problem of their own use of force, trying to play whack a mole, causing blow back and loss of morale it they didn’t have any force from guerrillas to contend with. Of course the guerilla force would not all be generated with small arms but critical portions of it would be. The two factors, guerrilla tactics employed in part by small arms and the government military use of force blow back conundrum work together. Take away the small arms and you reduce the effectiveness of guerrilla action.

    • John A. Smith,

      I think you are overlooking a critical detail: the primary goal of evil government is forcing the populace to comply with evil government’s demands.

      If the populace is unarmed, evil government can compel compliance via “storm troopers” with small arms and would not need to level a city in the first place.

      If the populace also has small arms, then evil government cannot compel compliance via armed storm troopers because the armed populace would easily repel/neutralize the armed storm troopers. It is only in this scenario that an evil government would consider leveling a city with long-range cannon fire and/or guided ordnance to compel compliance. And my point was that action would constitute a pyrrhic victory for evil government since an armed populace would be able to institute guerrilla and seige strategies and ultimately overcome an evil government.

      Don’t get me wrong — I am not suggesting that an armed populace would achieve quick victory with almost no losses. Quite the contrary actually. In some respects that is good: it means an armed populace will not run out willy-nilly and start an armed conflict with its own government over trivial matters. Instead, it is more inline with the “mutually assured destruction” doctrine which tends to keep both sides on the straight-and-narrow.

  10. Self Defense and Community Defense are natural rights all living creatures are born with, human or animal. In our case, we enjoy the sophistication and technological advances that wild critters do not.

    The Second Amendment recognizes the fact that governments may become tyrannical and have often done so in the course of history. Or, that threat may come from another people, another country. As such the Second Amendment recognizes the necessity of a free people to be well trained in the use of arms, and to have and to carry arms to maintain that level of training.

    What arms is quite simple. The arms in common use in any military in the world. Were armies today armed only with blackpowder flintlocks, cannon, sabers and pikes then that would be what the Second Amendment means by arms. Obviously, science, engineering and technology have moved well beyond those technologies.

    Today a free people have the natural right to own and carry automatic firearms, semi-automatic, revolvers, bolt actions, lever actions, pumps, or any other device that sends a bullet or shot zipping along. Further, a free people have the right to own artillery of the latest design, tanks, other armored vehicles, warplanes, the works.

    All non-war related ownership and carrying of firearms by a free people are protected by the Second Amendment simply because if you cannot have arms for that, you cannot be of use in the extreme case. The Second Amendment is not specifically about those non-war uses, but they do all flow logically from the necessary needs of maintaining the security of a free State.

    • enuf…You already surrendered your gun rights to democRats like beto o’rouke when you put a sht grin on beto’s face every time you called the POTUS “excrement.” Then you tried to cover your slanderous, libelous lowlife behind by saying you’ll find a Republican to vote for.
      Almost as bad is your boasting about buying hundreds of rounds of ammo off the backs of those who campaigned for and got President Donald John Trump elected. If left up to a pos like you hilliary clintoon would be POTUS and the democRat Party would have gotten away with a diabolical scheme to overthrow a duly elected POTUS and you would not be buying squat for ammo.
      Botton line…You are a two bit Gun Talker and a Gun Rights Back Stabbing A-hole.

      • No, people like you risked our rights when you chose a horribly flawed and extremely narcissistic reality TV star with no discipline as the conservative side’s champion in the primary. Enuf is changing no ones opinion of excrement when he calls it excrement. You are acting like the progs when you assault people for speaking the truth because the truth doesn’t fit your narrative. Trump’s first victory was a pyrrhic one if we now loose the senate and the SCOTUS because Trump cares more about himself than the constitution and conservative ideology and is unwilling to stop alienating people who could have been allies in the election because of his grotesque ego. Thankfully the far left is doing everything in it’s power to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory but unfortunately Trump is competing with them for that accomplishment also.

  11. All other rights do flow from the second. If you can’t defend your rights, you lose them. As for the U.S. military, they’ve been in Afghanistan for twenty years, with all the latest gadgets honed to a precision for killing, and they’re still losing. George Washington won the revolution against the most powerful military in the world with a bunch of farmers. The real reason the feds pulled out of Ruby Ridge is because hundreds of armed citizens were gathering in numbers and becoming a threat.

    Plus, I’m sure pilots would love to strafe and bomb communities where their relatives might live. /sarc

    • George Washington lost every battle he fought but one, and spent most of his time retreating. The one battle he won was an attack on a bunch of drunken Hessian’s at midnight on Christmas/Christmas Eve.

      All of the battles in the American revolution that were won by us were won by militia with their personal hunting rifles. The British threw in the towel when the French decided to get involved on our side. That fiasco cost King Louis his crown and his head.

      • True. Washington lost nearly every battle. But his true win was that after every loss he managed to keep his army together. He never surrendered and his army was never crushed.

        There is no way that the American revolution could have succeeded had he surrendered his army after any of those losses. And without the French help we would have been SOL.

  12. As a primarily recreational shooter, I’m apparently a dying breed. While I participate regularly in the other two categories my primary interest is still recreational. No matter how useful it is and how much a of a right, it will still always be “fun”.

    • Same here. While the other stuff is also important, I got into shooting because it’s FUN. And that’s why I keep going out to the range and buying new things.

  13. Let’s face it, once bullets start flying the government will ‘own’ any ammo facility and simply let us run out of ammo. Done.

    • GDH,

      … once bullets start flying the government will ‘own’ any ammo facility and simply let us run out of ammo.”

      And there are two simple solutions to that strategy:
      1) Our populace can keep plenty of ammunition on hand to last through such a disruption in ammunition supply.
      2) Our armed populace can apply a carefully planned and coordinated counterattack on any assembly of government storm troopers holding ammunition manufacturing facilities.

      • I would estimate that my little neighborhood gun club, if it had to, could easily come up with about, oh…..say at least 3,500,000 rounds of ammunition. It’s not large and the membership is not particularly militant. How many thousand’s of gun cubs are there in the United States.

    • Since millions of folks own AR platform arms in 5.56 and 7.62, and millions more sidearms in 9mm and .45ACP there will never BE a shortage of ammo. TAKE THEIRS. From small patrols to full scale ammo dumps, if it’s out there it CAN be seized. Won’t work nearly as well for “them”. What smaller city doesn’t have a Guard Armory?

  14. After reading many comments have to laugh.
    We are dealing with Marxism Socialist criminals
    Who protest, burn kill knowing there will be no
    Recourse. The police are restricted by politicians
    From doing there job.
    Federal officers can stop this carnage.
    We need law and order.
    There is one way to stop the rioters.
    China and Russia do not have this problem.
    These animals are the enemy and must be
    Terminated.

  15. Regarding the headline, the conclusion is really amazing, though perhaps it should not be, due to the following. Regarding gun ownership being “diverse”, people, who are intimately involved in this gun ownership business are kind of “diverse” too. They, people that is, come in a number of colors, they differ in size, shape, political orientation if any, educational, economic, occupational and cultural backgrounds.There are likely some other considerations that escape my notice too. Enough said? By the way, the above considerations are NOT limited to American Gun Owners.

  16. All this debate about the viability of insurrection against a government with massive military capabilities. I stopped reading comments about halfway through, but was having this thought while I read. Before ever committing themselves to such a course the government, and especially the military would be counting the cost. The second amendment and the proliferation of viable firearms in the hands of the populace ensures that the cost would be unendurably high. Sure, the people could revolt with single shot bolt action rifles or squads of club wielding fathers and sons waiting behind the door, but the civilian owned firearms make the military cost ever so much higher. The founding fathers knew this. So has every oppressive regime in history.

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