TTAG reader CiCT writes:
The climate is changing! The climate is changing! No, I don’t mean the actual climate of earth, but rather the political climate, and yes, this change IS because of humans. Unless you fit the stereotype by the media about gun owners, where you live in the sticks and the only screen you watch streams a live feed of your compound, you’ve seen the news coverage of the recent events in Paris and San Bernardino. But what you don’t see on the news, or read in the paper (after you finished reading the latest issue of “Soldier Of Fortune” of course) is the change in the way people are thinking about how to protect themselves . . .
Sure, many of you have probably reconsidered your CCW, or maybe even the way you carry, but there’s a whole bunch of people who were on the RKBA fence that fell in to our yard, and there’s also quite a few more who flat out jumped over the fence to our side. Despite the media’s day to day hoplophobic harangue of gun owners and the Second Amendment, people are making the conscious decision to protect themselves, or at the very least thinking about it.
No I don’t have access to some fancy poll by The Pew Research Center, but I do have my own personal experiences. I work at a University where social indoctrination comes with your meal plan and students have unfettered access to left wing echo chambers. To get to my office I wade through a sea of Priuses and Subarus complete with stickers reading “Feel The Bern” or “Ready For Hillary 2016”.
Just days after the attack in California I received a call in my office. Upon picking up the phone I readied my pen upon a notepad, a woman was on the other end with a question. She asked if it was legal to carry a gun for protection on campus. My hand, paralyzed with surprise, dropped the pen, I heard it hit the notepad and the sound echoed in my ears.
Although my silence was no more than a second, I thought of a million things I wanted to say; “Thank you!” “You’re awesome!”, “Glock or 1911?”, “9 or .40?”, “Hickock45 or NutnFancy?”. Instead I gave her the phone number for the campus police, whom I have no doubt responded with an unfortunately honest answer. But for that brief moment the clouds broke and a ray of gunshine showered me with hope.
Over the next few days I received more calls with the same question, perhaps people are realizing that the “safe Spaces” with balloons and cute puppies created by the University aren’t so safe…
The fact that every gun shop I have been to in December has been packed, and supply around here is very sparadic for any handgun or black rifle, tells me that something is happening. The fact that in those gun shops I have heard many people asking very basic questions tells me that it isn’t just previous gun owners that are drying up the supply. The fact that I have told several people where to find information on how to get their carry permit tells me that people are finally starting to take their own personal protection and the protection of their loved ones into their own hands.
My 71 year old retired schoolteacher, and Sunday school teaching father recently told me that he now understands and supports CCW. He had always been against it. For him, it was the Charleston church shooting that changed his mind. He has also started doing a little food storage and emergency preparation work. We even talked about him getting a gun (he’s not quite there yet). He sees dark days on the horizon.
All the gun stores here have been packed since before Oregon. Lots of new shooters.
Saw a guy the other day, older guy, but was wanting to get a lever-action rifle for “coyotes.. and maybe home safety.” Said he had an old shotgun but hadn’t shot it in a decade. Didn’t want one of the “new military rifles”, just a lever-action. After some convincing salesmanship from other customers, he left with a brand new Bushmaster.
Seeing lots of minority and female customers in the store, too. Always a good sign.
Frankly, both the lever gun and the Bushmaster should work just fine for both coyotes and feral home invaders. A .44 mag out of a carbine barrel would be absolutely devastating at short range. Nothing wrong with 5.56 and 29 followup rounds either.
I do like pistol rounds out of a carbine. They gain extra muzzle energy, of course, while still utilizing a compact platform. They’re also much more controllable for followup shots than out of a handgun, especially the magnum rounds. Seems more cost effective, too, for sharing ammunition, and in some cases magazines, with your handguns.
I am getting flooded with calls for firearms training from northern Illinois. Unfortunately, I am in my my Fortress of Insolvency in SW Missouri so I am having to refer them to other instructors. These are total strangers who are getting my number from former students.
Here in SW Missouri/NW Arkansas, Cabelas and Bass Pro, local gun shops and all the pawn shops are doing a land office business.
Most often heard question? “you mean I can pay for it and leave with it today?” which of course means another American has discovered “shall not be infringed” and the guaranteed right of the 2nd Amendment.
Unfortunately that’s not something you hear in Illinois gun shops.
I meant the part about “you mean I can pay for it and leave with it today?”
yes that’s true. I can’t change the Illinois law so I am moving to a more freedom loving State, Missouri.
People are being frightenend by the “Sky Is Falling” reporting style of the msm. And they have the innerwebs to bring them honest( well, honester) info.
If the msm had half a brain they’d try to calm and reassure, not panic. Thankfully the msm is full on short bus retarded.
I’ll share.
I grew up in one of the meanest, nastiest areas of New Jersey.
I ended up escaping down South.
Recently, I saw on my Facebook page, a girl I grew up with (still in Jersey) questioning why she shouldn’t have a gun to protect herself and her family.
I was floored.
People are waking up.
Let this continue.
If what I hear about Jersey is true, she’s going to become real angry real fast when she tries to get the authorities there to let her have a gun.
“I grew up in one of the meanest, nastiest areas of New Jersey.”
Camden, eh? 🙂
There’s so many to choose from. Camden, Newark, the Oranges…
I took my wife to the range for the first time 2 weeks ago. She was impressed with the diversity. We met 3 other groups that one of the folks in the group was there for the first time. This is a small 6 bay indoor range.
I’m one of the fence jumpers. Like many I was overwhelmed when I walked into a gun store for the first time. I was a clueless newbie. I ended up going to about 6 different gun shops, some several times, before I finally made my decision on a .357 revolver. After I filled out my 4473 for the first time in my life and waited and received back my good news, the clerk hands me the pistol, here you go, it’s all yours. My hands were literally shaking. I literally asked him “what do I do now?”. He says, it’s your now, put it in your pocket, you have a concealed carry license. I had never owned a handgun in my life. My first trip to the range and I had overcome my own fear of guns. I was fed the same hoplophobic baloney as the next person and believed it, well sort of, not really. But reality was nothing like that. If anyone could see how much I have changed in just the last year, it would be quite amazing. I’ve gone from owning a handgun, bringing them to gunsmiths, becoming an AR owner, showing friends how to shoot, making my own targets (I like to build my own robots out of cardboard for the range). I have poppers, clangers, targets. It was a little pricey to get myself off the ground, but after that it only gets easier.
Now just don’t forget that with the power of a firearm comes the responsibility. Don’t be one of those guys who end up in TTAG’s “Irresponsible Gun Owner of the Day” section. 4 rules, training, and stay calm no matter what.
Congrats on taking your life into your own hands! I, for one, am personally elated to hear about anyone taking the plunge and finding out that everything they’ve been fed from the majority of the crap factories (msm) is just that. As init said, learn the golden rules, practice practice practice, have a good time with it, and try to convert any of your friends on the fence about it. Safe shooting, and welcome to the most expensive hobby this side of recreational flying!!
It is sad that it has taken things getting this bad for people to finally wake up. I welcome them to the POTG though and I hope this trend continues.
I teach CCP classes and had two friends who wanted to take the class, so I figured I’d toss up an add and see if I can draw in a few paying customers. The class is tomorrow at 4 PM, and I threw the add up a few hours ago and I have a full class, and have had to take the ad down, and reschedule 10 people for the Weekend after Christmas.
Well the real climate is changing. At some point soon it will be colder then it has all year long. It is winter time. We have change every year. At some point next year it will be warmer then it has been all year, then colder.
“Driver, it’s getting dark out here.”
“Yep, happens everyday about this same time. Damndest thing I ever did see.”
Here I will google the difference between weather and climate for you
Weather: is the day-to-day state of the atmosphere, and its short-term variation in minutes to weeks. People generally think of weather as the combination of temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloudiness, visibility, and wind. We talk about changes in weather in terms of the near future: “How hot is it right now?” “What will it be like today?” and “Will we get a snowstorm this week?”
Climate: is the weather of a place averaged over a period of time, often 30 years. Climate information includes the statistical weather information that tells us about the normal weather, as well as the range of weather extremes for a location.
I tried to get a little pistol time in at the indoor range.. it was packed with so damn many people I thought they were having some sort of black friday/ raffle/ used gun sell off, sort of thing… It was just your average folks wanting some practice time.. We need more gun ranges.
“…but after that it only gets easier.”
How quaint that you still believe this! Welcome, rook, to a lifelong expense.
On the Saturday after San Bernardino, my small local gun shop/indoor range had a line 3 people deep at their ~65-foot long gun counter and the line ran out the door. There were 5 counter people working on 4473s continuously. It has never been that busy in the past.
In addition, I had to wait over an hour to get into the range because of all of the new shooters. The new shooters included a couple in their 70’s with their brand-new Ruger LCPs. I hope they have or are getting their carry permits.
The last two weekends have been busier than usual but not as bad as that weekend.
I stopped into the local Cabela’s store last week. The checkout lines were long, but the lines to buy guns were incredibly long. Like, 30 or 40 people. This was on a Tuesday night. In western New York state.
I avoided the crush. Shopped on the interwebs and used a tabletop FFL. I’ll be able to pick up my newest acquisition right after Christmas (damn 10 day wait), and my daughter picked up her Christmas present (in a free state) yesterday and I’m pretty sure she is giving it a break in today).
where you live in the sticks and the only screen you watch streams a live feed of your compound,….but it beats watching CBS, ABC, NBC, and PBS.
I think Hillary and Bernadette are going to be smacked upside the head (and major shocked) when their libtard pollsters figure this out.
My brother told me last week he’s buying a pistol for self-defense and intends to get his CPL. My sister-in-law and her husband scheduled a CPL class for the two of them next month and, after researching pistols the last month or two, went out and each bought a pistol today. Be prepared.
Two friends from Rhode Island bought their first guns last week. And they both joined the NRA.
#winning
Yes, now is a time of opportunity. My last three trips to my LGS I heard people asking about classes to learn how to use a gun, as well as CCW classes.
However, we can easily run off these potential converts by the “cultural bundling” addressed here recently. We should not demand new gun enthusiasts pass a laundry list of litmus tests Republicans love to apply. It is possible to simultaneously support the Second Amendment and action to limit CO2 emissions.
I agree about the “cultural bundling”.
I also agree about cutting CO2 emissions and getting rid of wasteful, Earth-damaging forms of energy production: Ban solar and wind power, and switch the country to 100% nuclear!
Oh, I’d say solar and wind have niche uses, like places where the power company wants ten thousand dollars to build a line to your house.
That would be an individual expense, government should concern itself only with nuclear, or STFU about the weather.
Agreed, Larry.
I was responding to a suggestion from Mitch that solar and wind be “banned.” Not just “no longer subsidized to make it look like it makes sense” but “banned.”
Come to think of it, I don’t want to subsidize nuclear, but rather, just tell the idiots who keep blocking it out of unfounded fears to just fuck off and let us use it.
I have been convinced (I could possibly be unconvinced) that nuclear cannot exist in a government-free way, subsidies should not be required but financing will always be, building the basic plant is simply too expensive. Plus, if I were the CEO, the govt supplied financing would come along with a caveat that if new regulations, 5 years and 10 billion dollars down the road, preclude completion of the project, the government will never be repaid.
“Nutnfancy or Hickock45” lol. That’s actually not a bad answer, though I’d add MAC to that list.
As many others have said, the past two weeks at the gun store and range looked exactly like the gym will look in two weeks. Not a spare inch of floor.
Great for us, horrible for Hillary.
MAC all the way! =D
Let us hope that this is true. One thing that seems to still pervade in America is that we are not a people with a sheep mindset. When crap starts happening, many people’s response is not to demand that the government just crack down and protect them but rather to take matters into their own hands and begin protecting themselves.
For example, France is a country with a population of 66 million people. Not as large as America’s, but not anything super small, like Norway for example, Yet, the French government has been able to crack down on civil liberties there in response to the Paris terrorist attack in a way that would never be accepted here in America in response to an even worse attack. For example, there was no such crackdown after 9/11, and to the extent of things that were done, they proved to be highly controversial, with some demanding impeachment of President Bush.
This same mindset seems to spill over to the possession of arms and self-defense. Whereas in other countries, the demand is to ban guns, here, many people’s response is, “Maybe I’d better look into getting a gun…”
More anecdotal evidence… I’m getting lots of emails and FB private messages from people asking for advice on their first firearm purchase. I got one such request from a cousin who is a BIG-TIME liberal (in Massachusetts, no less). At first I thought he was yanking my chain, as he has challenged me on the “gun debate” many times. He wasn’t kidding.
People ARE waking up.
I know one person who does not own a firearm who just got his carry permit and is buying soon and know others (that I never thought would be interested) who are starting the same pursuit. I’m also seeing packed ranges and lots of new shooters.
I do believe that Americans by nature have a “go get ’em” attitude instead of relying on the state, in spite of the left’s best attempts otherwise. I have a theory that this is why Walking Dead is so popular…it’s all about the appeal of “how would I handle this” that has Americans loving the show so much. We tend to be our best when challenged and right now we are feeling challenged!
If HILLARY! does run on gun control, she will lose by a wide margin.
I’m pretty sure she is stupid enough to try anyway, believing her own “push-polls” telling her what she wants to hear. Like ’94, that would be just so much fun. But then, if she figures it out at some point, it would be fantastic watching her try to back away from 20 years of hysterically tyrannical rantings to tell us “I never said that!” on a thousand different subjects.
Hey jerkwad, my family owns two Subarus with GOA and assorted other gun paraphernalia on the back window. I resent that statement 😉
I prefer function over form. It’s why I own 3 sigs, 2 CZs, and a brand of cars that has never let me down. Plus the BRZ is just about the most fun a man of middle class means will ever have driving.
Bull. Show me a convertible BRZ Turbo and we’ll talk.
Hillery has already walked back her statement “we need to look at the Australian solution”
Apparently someone (Bill?) told her to STFU about extreme gun control until after the election.
If she is the dems nominee, is there any reason to not get off your butt, and vote for Republican candidate, and don’t flame me, the reason we have current president is people sat it out!
From my observations on several news outlets that allow comments from readers, to listening to various radio talk shows, this surge in new gun buyers is an outgrowth of a far larger breakdown in trust & confidence in the government. It isn’t a US-specific issue, either.
This has been coming on incrementally. San Bernardino wasn’t a one-off event that did all this by itself. No, what has happened here is the following progression:
1. The Obama administration takes on health care as a signature issue – and they blow it, big time. Obama made two big promises: If you like your insurance plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
Both were lies, and Obama knew they were lies when he said them – repeatedly. Most people don’t know that Obama knew he was telling bald-faced lies, but they can see in their insurance billing that the claims of “saving $2500 per household” was nonsense on stilts, and nearly everyone with an individual plan in the private marketplace was taken away from them, and replaced with something different.
This has really sunk in this year, and now we’re in insurance renewal season and people are seeing premiums still going up, and choices still going down. In Wyoming, we’re down to only one carrier – which means that they can charge pretty much whatever they want. Most of the Obamacare exchanges are going belly-up, etc, etc.
Liberals love, love, love to talk about health care as their signature issue. It is now apparent that the liberals blew it, and they never knew what they were talking about. This is an issue where the public gave confidence to the Democrats in polling, reliably, for the last 40 years. Now, that confidence is shaken to the core, and I’m hearing more elderly people’s confidence in Social Security/Medicare being shaken. These issues were the domestic core of many people’s confidence that “government knew best.”
2. Now we switch to foreign policy/defense. Obama has clearly bungled the middle east. From Libya, to Egypt, to Iraq, Syria, you name it, everything he’s touched in foreign relations has turned to crap. But, truth be told, most Americans wisely don’t pay too much attention to foreign affairs… until…
3. The Paris shootings happened. Now people sat up and took notice of the fuster cluck that is Obama’s ME policy. More than a few liberals of my acquaintance had to admit that Obama’s policies are what is driving the flood of “refugees” into Europe. People who normally don’t pay attention to Europe or foreign affairs see pictures of the flood tromping into Europe, and the mess they leave in their wake, and start to pay attention. Even if only 1% of Muslims in that flood are terrorists, that’s a lot of terrorists – and lots of victims at a kill ratio of at least 8 people for every terrorist.
4. Obama’s pronouncements of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/whatever-they’re-called-this-week were now in stark relief to reality, and Obama did nothing to say “OK, I underestimated them,” or “we were caught off-guard” or any mea culpa. Obama can’t say these words, because his ginormous ego prohibits him from doing so. Supposedly oh-so-smart people who were pronouncing ISIS as a paper tiger in the international terrorism sphere only this past spring were made to look truly stupid – as most academics are, in fact.
Now people’s confidence in the Obama administration’s competence was really on rocky ground. Obama’s diffident and clinically detached reaction to Paris left lots of liberals shaking their heads – because, after all, many liberals are emotionally involved in their politics. Obama was anything but emotionally reassuring in his response. Several big-name liberal writers expressed their frustration with his response to the event and his policies in the middle east.
5. SB now happens. And the people see how the press and politicians had a narrative already spun up and loaded, ready to go… the typical “white male Republican Tea Party member with a Confederate Battle Flag on his GM pickup truck rear window and naked female profile mud flaps!”…. until it turned out to be a Muslim couple. Couple. Man and woman. Recently married, even… with an infant child.
Now people sat up and said “Whaaa? Dafuq?!” Liberals I knew were parroting the canned narrative for the first hour. Oh, I got some crap. I warned some of them that “first reports out of these things are usually wrong…” and they refused to listen.
48 hours later, I asked merely “Want me to go out with my 12 ga ‘semi-automatic assault shotgun’ with some duck loads and shoot you some crow for dinner?” The only response from these liberals was either silence or profanity.
Leftish women of my acquaintance looked at ONE fact that shook them to their cores: That the female terr gave up her child to her mother-in-law, and then went out to die in a suicide attack. To these women, this is an indication of how much Muslims hate us – enough to give up their infant child. To some of the women with whom I’ve discussed this, they see no other details about the story. The press’ obsession over guns, gun laws, straw purchases, etc – all blows completely past these women. As one woman put it “All those details about the guns, gun laws, ammunition, bombs and crap is like listening to you men discussing baseball statistics – it is just a bunch of know-it-all men spouting noise. The woman GAVE UP HER CHILD SO SHE COULD GO DIE. You g-damn men just don’t get it, do you?”
My initial reaction to this particular woman was “Right, it’s always the fault of us men. I didn’t vote for Obama… did you?”
“Shut the *&&^ up.” (again, with liberals spouting obscenities when someone points out that they were wrong)
Women often think they’re never wrong in these conversations with men. Two leftish women of my acquaintance now realize they made a big, big mistake voting for Obama… and yet, I’m the butthole for reminding them that I was right, and they were wrong. Someone please remind me again who thought the 19th Amendment was such a bright idea…
The female terrorist and her handling of her baby is a really visceral issue for some women. This one fact is a game-changer, I believe.
Then it comes out that this woman lied on her visa application – that the woman took the lead in shooting people up, and that the woman never attended the baby shower thrown for this couple’s child. This latter point also gains lots of female attention. Women see the world through different eyes than we men do, and in this case, the female terr did things that completely and fundamentally offend the minds and emotions of American women, and that the female terr got into the country with such obvious red flags on her visa application means that no one is minding the store. Anyone can waltz on in.
6. The bizarre and detached manner in which Washington DC reacted to the news (not just the Obama administration, but the establishment GOP as well) cemented the impression that there is no one in DC who “gets it.” Then Trump calls for a temporary ban on immigration from Muslim countries, and the press and DC go positively ape – pronouncing it “unconstitutional” (when it is completely constitutional and legal, supported by both statute and case law). About 70% of Republicans and slightly less than 50% of Democrats support Trump’s position – a majority of Americans support Trump’s position. But DC is completely tone-deaf on the issue, and the recently passed omnibus budget bill lets in 10’s of thousands more “refugees” and funds their relocation into your communities.
7. Today, we have two stories in the NY Times, reporting that a) Norway has instituted programs to counsel and advise Muslim “refugees” that they can’t just rape Norwegian women as they’d like (whoa! You can’t just go out and rape women on a whim? Whowouldathunkit?! No one ever told me this… or had to, quite frankly), and b) that more and more elected officials in the EU now believe Hungary’s Prime Minister was right when he called for border control, fences and rejecting refugees. It was once said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality – well, in Europe, there are lots of politicians who are getting a curb-stomping as a result of this flood of supposed “refugees.”
People in the EU and the US are realizing that their elites are selling them out on security/terrorism, and there’s no one upon whom you can depend but yourself and maybe some really good friends and your family. The rush to buy guns is no longer a US-specific issue, we’re just way out ahead of most nations in the EU, that’s all.
Excellent reply.
Re your point 5: We can actually turn “look at this [orphaned] baby” back on the grabbers and those who refuse to acknowledge radical Islam as a threat.
Let’s be aware of the cultural bundling discussed in the LA Times. That’s where we assume from one observation that if you like one thing you also like twenty other things. For instance if you’re a Dem then you aren’t a gun owner.
I might be in a Prius (okay I’m not) but I may be totally 2A. Bernie offers many voters a choice where they can be fiscally conservative and socially moderate or liberal. This voter may want clean air and water and guns!
So let’s be the bigger open generous ones in this fight and not inadvertently exclude someone who isn’t a camo wearing long bearded truck driving……wait! I did it right there.??
How does Bernie offer that choice? I choose to be conservative in my spending and save money only to watch the dollar become more and more worthless as we sink in debt. Bernies rush to throw more water on a sinking ship isn’t going to help that. Free college right, yay now we can inflate the number of useless degrees while continuing to pretend everyone should go to college. Free healthcare, sweet, now I can pay for the alcoholics, chain smokers, drug addicts and fatties bad decisions. Guns? Bernie is against those scary things. Right to a trial before losing civil rights? Bernie doesn’t support that.
This why statism and Socialism is in itself immoral, because it removes choice.
It warmed my cynical heart to see my LGS packed to the gills yesterday. Diversity on display, and a lot of good education coming from behind the counter. I had to make a couple of laps to just soak in the giddy feeling I had.
And hopefully there’ll be a nice, old High Standard military model under the tree….
Good to hear more people are getting into shooting. I was in Cabela’s yesterday, and it was pretty busy. My sister was just talking about getting a gun to carry.
Climate change denying? Are you serious? I get it, some people are Republicans/conservatives, but of all the things to be against… Do some academic reading and educate yourselves on what’s actually happening. I don’t trust anyone when they tell me their sole opinion, but when there’s a huge multitude of scientific studies and research done on a topic, I’m very inclined to formulate my own thoughts on the matter; be that picking apart anti-gun narratives with each individual FBI crime/active shooter statistic set for accuracy or fact-checking and noting corroborating individual credible academic scientific information.
If nothing else, reducing our carbon footprint to avoid pollution similar to that in major Chinese and Indian cities is a generally good thing to do. So’s preparing alternate means of power (be that nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, etc), in case oil dries up or gets too expensive. Because it will eventually dry up.
Don’t just take any one person or political party’s opinion on anything. It’s fine if you believe or think a certain way, but at least dig into the details of both sides and the information each stance is using and formulate your own thoughts on each matter.
Ahem.
Anyway, glad there’s been a rush to buy guns. Hopefully that sways a few minds on 2A. Especially here in CA with our upcoming anti-gun propositions and ever-tightening rules.