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AR-15 (courtesy houstonpress.com)

Like so many of these anti-gun agitprop screeds, 3 Reasons I Went From Being a Gun Nut to Supporting Gun Control [via houstonpress.com] reveals its bias from the git-go. “I have a confession to make,” Chris Lane begins. “Once upon a time, I was a gun nut.” The term “gun nut” isn’t necessarily pejorative. Lots of firearms enthusiasts call themselves “gun nuts.” Used here it is. Of course, Mr. Lane immediately goes out of his way to tell the world that he was a “good” gun nut. Like this . . .

I wasn’t planning for the coming apocalypse or anything like that, but I owned a lot of weapons and ammunition for a guy living in a comfy house in central Houston. People could’ve easily mistaken me for a character from an episode of “Doomsday Preppers,” except I didn’t own a bunker. Yet.

I could field strip Glocks, 1911s, Kalashnikov style rifles, and AR15s almost with my eyes closed, and went shooting at various Houston area ranges weekly. I’d grown up around guns, and felt comfortable with them. I considered them a normal part of my life.

Then at some point I just lost interest in having a bedroom that looked like an armory, and I started to question why I owned so many weapons. Mind you, this change in attitude was not something that happened overnight, but eventually I started liquidating my large collection of firearms.

And what, pray tell, led to Mr. Lane’s change of heart? He lists three reasons, in reverse order. Let’s take them one at a time.

Americans Have Weird Attitudes About Freedom When It Comes To Guns

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.

To paraphrase Janice Joplin,, Lane believes that freedom is just another word for something you have to lose. A bit. Because other things are more important. Like . . . safety. You know; for everyone. (Don’t be a nuisance, m’kay?) Not a new argument, certainly, but you have to wonder what’s more important than the freedom to defend your life against criminals, crazies and government tyranny. Well you do. Lane doesn’t. Not in any coherent way.

Many Gun Owners Believe That They’re Powerless Without Their Guns

Some of the hardcore gun owners I met were convinced that America is heading towards an Orwellian future where no one is free and the government controls every aspect of our lives. To many of them, the only thing standing in our evil government’s way is their personal stockpile of AR15s. They seem to ignore the fact that if the government went to such an authoritarian extreme, it would have the resources to effectively vaporize any suburban “patriots” who decided to raise an armed resistance against it.

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.

Since when does owning a gun mean that you buy into the “paranoid” (Lane’s word) gun culture? If you own a car are you buying into street racing culture? Lane admits “paranoid” gun owners are minority, anyway. What “many” (but not most) gun owners believe is their business, as are their religious or political beliefs (or sexual orientation). As long as their beliefs don’t infringe on my rights, what difference does it make?

Lane buys into the oft-repeated meme that individual gun ownership is meaningless in the face of government firepower. We’ve debunked that asinine assumption many times. Suffice it to say, no. Except to add this: the existence of armed Americans has deterred the government from realizing the ambitions of all governments: imposing tyranny on its people. I’m sure Lane doesn’t accept that premise. So one more word: Taliban.

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.

Once again, we’re looking at the anti-gunners’ toxic mix of psychological projection and elitism. I don’t feel comfortable with a gun so you shouldn’t have one. As far as Lane’s confession that he went about his business feeling “weak and paranoid” when he was armed I don’t think those feelings disappeared with his partial – partial – firearms “liquidation.” Not judging from this article.

Rather than fighting over what the Second Amendment really mens, perhaps it’s time we should at least look at where we are at now, and try to look at gun violence and our collective preoccupation with deadly weapons, and figure out a better way to do things. Doing nothing isn’t helping, and the body count continues to rise daily.

What, exactly, is Lane proposing to do to reduce the firearms-related body count, the majority of which involves suicide? Nothing. Not a damn thing. His rant is nothing more than an attempt to endear himself to gun control advocates; an empty plea for unspecified action on the issue of gun control based on his own queasiness about gun ownership. In the final analysis, it’s an onanistic exercise in anti-gun agitprop. In case you didn’t know.

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94 COMMENTS

    • So damn stupid. Not one of those reasons is a legitimate, believable reason to go from a person who enjoys guns, to someone who decides to “liquidate”.

      Lies all of it.

      • It reads like the NYMag feminist fan-fiction hoax from July, told from the point of view of some historyless cuckold ‘husband’ who was hoping that his wife was happy enough out banging ‘Paulo’ while he stayed at home to clean, watch the kids, embrace feminism, and listen to ‘Loretta Lynn’.

        The entire anti-gunner “awakening” trigggers (no pun intended) the uncanny valley of repulsion. Its background feels plastic, its rationales aren’t reasonable.

        And, like the NYMag’s hoax, it makes no converts from the pool of people it means to lead by its false example.

        Frankly, you anti-gunner morons were doing better with your ‘outraged moms’ and cooked statistics. Go tell Bloomberg you failed.

  1. –Then at some point I just lost interest in having a bedroom that looked like an armory–

    That’s OK – Your interests can change over time. Me, my bedroom looks like an armory. I have guns, knives, swords, nunchaku , staves. and I like it that way. All of them deadly, all of them capable of taking a life. Yet non have ever done so. (Well some of the rifles, shotguns, & handguns have been used to harvest game animals).

    —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 do not and have never experienced fear while carrying. (Experiencing fear for me is pretty rare when not carrying too though). So, if carrying a gun isn’t for you – don’t do it. Doesn’t mean you get to make the decision for me.

  2. 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 ….they probably should be; and so should the general public. Think the founding fathers blindly trusted government?

  3. Since when does owning a gun mean that you buy into the “paranoid” (Lane’s word) gun culture? Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean some people are plotting to promote some sort of totalitarian government to enslave you.

  4. “People could’ve easily mistaken me for a character from an episode of “Doomsday Preppers,” except I didn’t own a bunker. Yet.”

    Having lived in southwest Oklahoma and hearing a tornado pass by a few hundred yards from me, a ‘bunker’ is your friend when you call it a ‘Storm Shelter’…

    “I could field strip Glocks, 1911s, Kalashnikov style rifles, and AR15s almost with my eyes closed,”

    Almost? Almost?

    Son, you’re damn sure no ‘gun nut’…

    The Derp in that jack-wad’s screed is painful to read.

    (Almost as painful as hearing Janis Joplin being called Carole King…)

    🙂

    • I caught that, too, but set it aside; thinking that maybe King wrote the lyrics for the song Joplin made famous. That kind of thing isn’t all that uncommon, after all.

      Then the paraphrasing of the lyric threw me off, since it’s actually the opposite of the lyric and more than just paraphrasing.

        • No worries, Mr. F.

          For years, and up to as recently as literally YESTERDAY, I was singing the chorus of “Blinded by the Light” as “wrapped up like a douche”, without even pausing to ask myself “What the hell does that mean?!?!”

          Found out that it’s really “revved up like a deuce” and that Springsteen was the original songwriter and performer, and my head about exploded.

          So I really have no room to talk or question others on this stuff.

    • I agree. People can sell off collections if they’re strapped for cash, but turning anti seems implausible. For someone with but one gun, maybe grandpa’s old revolver? Perhaps, but not a self-professed gun nut and certainly not one who’s done serious thinking about firearms freedom.

      You don’t go from enlightenment to ignorance, without some kind of massive head wound or other disease or defect of the mind, that is. It’s like unringing a bell. It really just can’t be done.

      • Hell, the grabbers lie about everything. They would rather climb a tree to tell a lie than just stand on the ground and tell the truth.

      • @My Jew Friend

        -I would say it is like a guy divorcing a perfectly good woman, for a guy. That happens only because the guy finally realizes that he doesn’t belong anywhere else but on his knees, in the presence of real men.

  5. Just another weak, paranoid nut. Guns had nothing to do with his mental illness. The anti’s will be happy to know that at least one mentally ill person has prevented himself from owning firearms. As it should be, no government agency involved.

  6. I don’t believe a word of Mr Lane’s dissertation here. He states: “I could field strip Glocks, 1911s, Kalashnikov style rifles, and AR15s almost with my eyes closed”.
    Easy enough to disprove. To anyone in Houston, just ask Mr Lane the first step of field stripping an AR and AK style weapon. See if he can answer. I’ll lay anybody 2 to 1 odds that he won’t be able nto tell you, in spit of his printed words to the contrary. Oh, he will have lots and lots of words to say, but they will all be a cover for the fact that not included would be anything akin to; “push the button at the rear of the receiver”, or “push the takedown pin to the right with the nose of a cartridge and tilt the upper forward”. Or ask him what’s the difference between a bolt and a bolt carrier. I’ll go 4 to 1 on that question….

        • “As(k) him step 1 of stripping “ANY” firearm.”

          “pull the trigger, right?”

          In the general direction of an anti?

          🙂

        • I haven’t been in shooting very long (almost 2 decades), but I’m pretty sure that is the second half of that first step is to be sure to look down the barrel while pulling the trigger to see if anything comes out. Makes total sense. As much as someone goes from a gun enthusiast to a gun control freak.

          BTW, I call BS on this guys “credentials” also. This doesn’t smell right.

    • I used to tell my kids how we had to field stop the M-16 while we were blindfolded. It had to be done in under a minute.
      One day he asked me if that story were really true to which I replied yes. He pulled out a blindfold and an AR-15 and said, “Prove it!” I stripped it including the bolt carrier in 48 seconds. I put it back together in 47 seconds. 40 plus years after basic training and it was still there. It made a believer out of him!

      • Russian school kids can be (and are) trained to strip an AK in 20 seconds, and reassemble it in another 20:

        That said, I always wondered what the purpose of the exercise is. When you’re doing routine cleaning, you don’t want to rush, you want to do a good job and clean it well. OTOH, if you’re trying to fix a malfunction, there are separate drills for that that are generally much more effective (and faster) than doing even a partial strip.

    • Same here, his wording betrays him. I can’t speak to field stripping 1911s or AKs, because I don’t know, either. But an AR? A GLOCK? C’mon. Especially a GLOCK. Except for the trigger, it’s basically one step and the four components come apart on their own.

      Easy enough, eyes open or closed, even for a newbie, and not something one would offer as evidence of one’s firearms bona fides.

      • Your not a real gun nut until you can field strip a ruger mark III, I can do it (not blind folded) and reassemble in 2 min. Use to win range fees with that one.

      • Agreed. A glock or beretta 92 is nothing to strip. push a button and it falls apart. The real test would be what he said about a 1911. If he could reassemble a 1911 blindfolded, now THAT would impress me. I’d go 50 to one against THAT.

    • “field strip a kalashnikov”

      Contradiction found. The only time you “field strip” an AK is when its finished eating its brownie or fruit cake and you need to stuff in another one.

    • If he’d said he could field strip a Ruger Mark Series pistol blindfolded, Then I’d believe that he actually was a “gun guy”, instead of some piece-of-shit writer who googled “popular firearms in the USA”.

      Most people can’t strip Marks with both eyes open, and three hands. Or at least, put them back together.

  7. Ahhh, your “Carole King” link goes to a Janis Joplin performance of a song first made famous by Gordon Lightfoot, which was written by Kris Kristofferson.

  8. try to look at gun violence and our collective preoccupation with deadly weapons, and figure out a better way to do things. Doing nothing isn’t helping, and the body count continues to rise daily.
    The vast majority of gun violence occurs in larger Donkeycrap controlled cities where gun control is prevalent and a lot of that involves black youth drug gang members.

    • Its simple, but not easy.
      Step 1. release all the people in prison for ‘offenses’ that were not against another person. All the drug offenders, tax protesters, whistleblowers and such go free, no strings attached.
      Step 2. Use all the newly vacated cages to lock up the violent offenders, who we now let go to prey on the sheep with slaps on the pee-pee and probation.
      Step 3. relax and enjoy the gang free streets.

      Obviously, this will never be done, for LE likes violent offenders. They give them cushy 80K a year jobs. Where else should the more violent, bully types with below average IQs go?
      http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836

  9. Americans Have Weird Attitudes About Freedom When It Comes To Guns

    Compared to the rest of the world, Americans have weird attitudes about freedom, period. That’s why American Exceptionalism is a thing. But Americans did not invent our attitude toward defensive weapons. Molon Labe was uttered by King Leonidas I prior to the Battle of Thermopylae, in 480BC.

    The right to own guns is a freedom, but it’s not the freedom.

    On the contrary: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

    The right to life is, in fact, the pinnacle natural right of man. Without the right to life, our other natural rights are rendered moot. Thus, the right to keep and bear arms, as the most efficient and effective means to exercise the right of self-defense, is derived directly from the supreme right, which is the right to life.

    Many Gun Owners Believe That They’re Powerless Without Their Guns

    This statement is nothing more than pure, unadulterated, progressive psychological projection.

    Some of the hardcore gun owners I met were convinced that America is heading towards an Orwellian future where no one is free and the government controls every aspect of our lives.

    Have you seen the UK lately? You know: where muggers depants defenseless victims on the streets of London, and where the Parliament is now trying to force the English to blunt their culinary tools?

    Thinking the government is out to get them is a very simple and fairly stupid way of looking at things…

    The Founding Fathers knew that human instinct would lead to an inevitable conclusion, if the right of the people to keep and bear arms was not enshrined as a bulwark against government tyranny.

    The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

    Guns Are Deeply Entrenched Symbols, And It’s Unhealthy

    More projection – and the entire statement serves as a perfect example of such projection.

    Rather than fighting over what the Second Amendment really mens, perhaps it’s time we should at least look at where we are at now, and try to look at gun violence and our collective preoccupation with deadly weapons, and figure out a better way to do things.

    The people of the “gun culture” that you malign are not committing “gun violence”. Look elsewhere.

  10. You lost me @ “gun-nut” you were fulla-something.

    Go hyphenate with something else (don’t use “gun” I mean) hell, just stop hyphenating yourself. Just be the nut that you are.

    btw – not buying the disassociation with ‘gun-nuts’ if you thought THEY were crazy, you’d just want guns more.

  11. It’s good to know that at least one mentally challenged person doesn’t want to own a gun. Wonder how he feels about knives and bombs?

  12. Sorry, but even here in the UK (despite much nonsense babbled by some excitable and ill-informed mediatards) when I owned a gun, it was because I enjoyed making up a batch of .45ACP and then turning it back into empty cases, noise and neat groups with some like-minded friends.

    Didn’t feel safer for having it (nor any less safe either), didn’t want it to defend against a ruthless State (I’m pretty much part of the State and frankly it doesn’t have the competence to be efficiently malicious), just enjoyed the sport and the company.

    • “…it doesn’t have the competence to be efficiently malicious.”

      Yes, yes it does. Government peons tend to be incompetent, but the people at the top know exactly what they are doing or else they wouldn’t have been able to accumulate so much power for themselves.

  13. When I carry a gun:
    – I am less likely to get into arguments.
    – I am less likely to curse and make rude gestures to other drivers.
    – I am more aware (than usual) of my personal space and that of others, and respect both more.

    I am an aging but still strong, tall, and broad-shouldered male. And I can do the intimidation thing very well on the rare occasion I need or choose to.

    Carrying a gun makes my demeanor less aggressive, certainly. I suppose you could equate that with less powerful … but only if you respect aggression as a good thing in social situations.

    • When I carry a gun:
      – I am less likely to get into arguments.
      – I am less likely to curse and make rude gestures to other drivers.
      – I am more aware (than usual) of my personal space and that of others, and respect both more.

      That’s true for me as well, and I suspect that it it true almost universally. There are extremes on every spectrum, but by and large, the gun culture is exceedingly polite. Just compare, say, the Indy 1500 gun show to the typical mall at Christmas.

  14. I really hate that term gun nut, When you’re a car collector they don’t call you a car nut That’s BS! I’m glad you became a gun control advocates because we don’t want you! Put that in your pipe and smoke it you progressive liberal

    • I really hate that term gun nut, When you’re a car collector they don’t call you a car nut That’s BS!

      Your right to a point … the more proper term tossed around is “gear head” or “petrol head.” “Car nut” is usually only used by those who don’t know the correct terminology.

  15. Once upon a time, I was a gun nut.

    Well, “former gun nut,” do you know what to call a story that starts with “once upon a time?”

    A fvcking fairy tale.

    • Absolutely.

      Everyone knows that all true stories start with “So there I was…”

      Also, the amount of alcohol involved determines what percentage of truth a story has (inverse proportionality)

  16. What gun owner calls their AK or WASR a “Kalashnikov style rifle”? A fraud.

    You never owned a gun, Mr. Lane. If that’s even your real name.

    • I have been a gun enthusiast since I was 12 years old, and I tend to use that as a blanket term for AKs, WASRs, VEPRs, Saigas, SLRs, SGLs, etc. I’m not defending the idiot. I’m just saying that the term is not necessarily incorrect.

  17. The correct phrase is;”Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

    Now that that’s settled: If the subject of this mini-essay doesn’t want to own a gun that’s fine with me. I will in no way attempt to force the guy to go down to the the corner gun shop, jump through all the hoops, fill out all the gun registration papers, plead the state for a carry permit, and pay some state toadie for the state granted privilege to exercise a RIGHT the state didn’t give him to begin with.

    Now, since I have determined that he doesn’t need nor should he expect me, or for that matter any other “gun-nut” (his words, not mine) to burden him with my opinions as to gun ownership I do expect him to offer me the same courtesy and keep his hoplophobic nose out of my business.
    [W3]

    • That’s why he said, “paraphrase”: v. – express the meaning of (something written or spoken) using different words, especially to achieve greater clarity.

  18. You nailed it Robert. He’s just trying to establish himself credentials among the antis as a “BTDT expert”. IE: full of shit.

  19. “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.”

    NO, no they are not you fucking liar. The only place they are represented this way is in an anti gun diatribe falsely accusing regular gun owners of being dangerous or imbalanced.

    The only way guns are symbols of masculinity is in not allowing oneself to give in to fear of an inanimate object and of the unknown, to conquer that fear and replace it with understanding. In a man’s mind being an adult is tied to “being a man”, in a woman’s mind being an adult i’m sure is tied to “being a woman”.

    No one lives in fear because they carry a gun. Living in fear may cause someone to choose to do so, but this author has cause and effect backwards, but most who carry a gun do so only with the mindset that it is one extra last resort “just in case” they face the worst. The emotion of fear is not involved.

    And no one sees them as the only way to deal with conflict, not even gangsters. Even a gangster can use other implements for violence, as for the rest of gun owners, you know the lawful ones, the most common way to deal with conflict is to let it slide, which is ranked closely with commenting on blogs. Ooh scary the gun owners are arguing with each other on the internet, since it’s in the comments for a gun blog, lets count that as using guns to settle conflicts.

    This man is DIALED BACK. I think he picked his nose once with something way too long and way too sharp and sneezed in the process. If he truly felt that way about his guns in the end then I think it indicates mental illness, and I am not being hyperbolic. If your bedroom looks like an armory, get a safe, put some away. If you don’t want to keep them or get a safe, sell them and keep one or two for defensive purposes. If you carry out of a sense of fear but have not received any specific threats or live in a particularly dangerous area, then there is something wrong with the way your mind works.

    /rant

    *sigh*
    I feel better now

  20. There are quite a few Veterans who post on here, maybe they can enlighten us as to just how well our ability to “vaporize” a bunch of ragtag civilians with ARs has worked out for us in Iraq/Afghanistan. That argument is one of the laziest in their arsenal.

  21. Lane is correct in his self description, he’s a nut. I strongly suspect he is not as genuine as the written word suggests.

  22. His first point is spot on correct. We see it on this website all the time in the comments.

    Yeah yeah 2A right!!!!!!

    But, only for citizens, capital punishment is ok even if the wrong people get killed, mandatory military “service”, nuke the Middle East etc.

    Hasn’t anyone noticed that the U.S. Is dropping in freedom???

    Does anyone even know the U.S. Claims to own you worldwide and demands you pay taxes EVEN IF YOU DONT LIVE HERE? Only the U.S. and North Korea do this.

    As much as I push for 2A freedom, sometimes I ask myself why when so many people have no problem with police state nonsense from liberals and conservatives.

    So I do understand point 1 all too well. As far as points 2 and 3, the writer is a dumbass.

  23. Ever have two bums walk out of a dark alley, stare down your wife and her lady friends? Yeah when one of them starts rifling through his pocket on approach I was far from afraid of my gun…

  24. I’d actually have some respect for someone who just one day decided guns were the devil, if they destroyed their guns and not put them into the hands of who knows who to recoup a bit of the investment. By just selling them these people are part of their own perceived issues, but I’m sure they have a million reasons to justify those actions to themselves. Same way a few of them own a house gun to protect their own families, yet would gladly disarm those of us with the same desire.

  25. Peace and safety-SEE: 1 Thessalonians 5:3 or Ben Franklin or anyone who isn’t a left-wing loon sissie. This is pure fictional twaddle from a liar….

    • “Since when was nudity a Constitutional Right?”

      Actually, I think he means ‘the pursuit of nudity’ as a subset of ‘the pursuit of happiness’.

      You’re guaranteed the ‘pursuit’, but not the acquisition…

      And the wise are cautious in what they wish for…

  26. I don’t suppose they’d publish an article with a title like “3 reasons why I stopped believing in gun control and became a gun nut.” I could write up a pretty decent one, I think.

    • Do it! Actually that might make a decent reader short essay contest. Everyone’s reasons for coming to the gun rights side.

  27. If any of you ” gun nuts” are reading this and somehow turn into an advocate for gun control, and can no longer stomach your armory … please call me. I will buy your collection at a nice discount to remove the offending items from your home.

    Unless you were a truly honest anti – in which case you will probably destroy them all in a burn barrel. But does anyone think this guy did that? Nope, just put his collection out on the mean streets for a little cash.

  28. “People could’ve easily mistaken me for a character from an episode of “Doomsday Preppers,” except I didn’t own a bunker. Yet.”

    I have mentioned this before. Long ago I knew someone who had a fallout shelter in the basement. Fully stocked. Also an M-1 and a shotgun hanging in glass cases prominently above the pool table where we kids got together. As a kid it seemed a bit strange. Then one day I found out from his daughter that (as the American side of a German Jewish family) he had lost close relatives in Germany in WW2. His Prepper setup did not seem strange any more.

  29. “….but I owned a lot of weapons.” “…and I started to question why I owned so many weapons.”

    Weapon: a thing designed or used for inflicting bodily harm or physical damage

    A firearm(gun) is a firearm. It only becomes a weapon when it is used as one. If you go to the range and shoot paper targets, or bowling pins, etc., your firearm is a firearm. When you use that firearm against a threat to your life, only then, does it become a weapon. Words mean things. How you choose to use those words, mean things. He chooses to describe his firearm “arsenal”” as weapons. That right there speaks volumes. I have owned a variety of firearms in my life. Some of them were never designed to hit anything but paper. Not that they couldn’t be used as weapons if necessary, but they weren’t by design, or effectiveness, meant to be used against anything but hostile paper. I do have a number of firearms that WERE specifically designed to be used as weapons. I am very happy that I have never had to use them as weapons. When I carry, I carry a firearm. The second I pull it to defend myself or others, it becomes the weapon it was designed to be. Some may say that I’m playing a game of semantics, but this is not an issue of which I speak casually. My uncle was a Range Officer at a gun club, and corrected my terminology regarding what was a firearm, and what was a weapon, right damn quick. This guy is using the word ‘weapon’ as an incendiary device because of what many think that word means. I wonder if he was really ever a gun-nut,….or just a nut with guns.

  30. I prefer the term “gun nerd” to “gun nut”. It’s basically what we all are. We love to geek out about about all the detials for firearms and firearm accessories. We go to what is the equivalent of comic cons when we go to gun shows. We go see movies that have guns in them. We meet up with friends to shoot guns or go by ourselves. Sounds like a pretty solid nerd culture to me.

    • But nerd culture never got anyone killed! (ignores Hiroshima, Nagasaki, rocket attacks, stealth bombers, biological weapons…)

  31. The so called “gun nut confession” by Chris Lane is an example of the latest attempt by the anti-gun left to employ a rather lame and thinly veiled variation of the old wolf in sheep’s clothing tactic to sell gun control propaganda.

    I heard a similar ridiculously lame attempt last week on the Tom Sullivan Fox Radio show where a caller identified himself as a person obsessed with guns and insisted he could not be trusted with a firearm because of an uncontrollable urge to commence indiscriminate gunfire any time he held a firearm, the caller then shared an anecdote of a firearm purchase where he fully expected to be denied access after the waiting period because of past criminal convictions and mental history, the caller went on to describe that even after he informed the gun dealer of his criminal and mental disqualifiers the dealer nevertheless sold him a weapon after he passed the background investigation.

    While most of the manufactured tales offered up by liberals playing the role of gun owner are not as wild and far fetched as the one told by the idiot caller on the Tom Sullivan radio show, most are just as flawed and easy to identify because all the stories rely on a twisted stereotype of gun owners as perceived by gun hating liberals.

  32. Interested in gun control but not above liquidating, which we can only suppose means selling, his collection. Seems to me if he were actually committed one way or the other, he already owns an “armory” of gun he could turn into a buyback to be destroyed or he could demil according to ATF standards to keep those guns off the street. That would be much more philosophically consistent.

  33. Dear Mr. Lane,

    I’m sorry you owned guns for those reasons. This does, indeed make you a “gun nut.” I am glad that you stopped. This is about you, right?

    Owning guns because you have a “weird” attitude about guns, you feel powerless, or it’s symbolic to you are lame reasons to grasp this kind of power (and responsibility.) Kudos for figuring that out and appropriately getting rid of your guns – you shouldn’t have any, if these are your reasons. (This is about you, right? Not “those people?” Says in the title that this is about you, so your general assertions have to be about you … not them even though the wording is all about “them.” Right?)

    Indeed, the first difference between you and the many (10’s of millions) legal civilian owners of (100’s of millions) of guns in the US is that they are reflective about why they own guns, on top of having better reasons than you for doing so.

    Even so, there is some merit to variations on your three reasons.

    – Nudity is not more regulated than guns. Indeed, anyone is allowed to be nude wherever and whenever they want, with certain, limited, individually justified exceptions. Guns, kinda the other way around, at least if the anti citizen gun ownership folks are to be believed. Look at what they say. “There’s no reason…” Well, nobody needs a reason to be nude, so no, the regulation is not the same.

    In particular being nude in your own home for your own reasons, or as a part of other daily activities – I find showering clothed to be bothersome, for example – is rather expected, and entirely your business. Even inflicting your nudity on others is treated in terms of its direct, and actual effect on them, balanced against your right to do as you please. You can be naked all you like. If nobody has their eyes shot out by your nakedness – sorry, burned from their skulls by the awesomeness of your form – it’s on them. The regulation of nudity is not constructed to be inoffensive to peeping Mrs. Grundies.

    – Leaving aside the limitations on federal imposition of martial law which might derive from civilian gun ownership – the standard “guns against tyranny’ canard (cough Afghanistan cough) – as a republic, the government serves at our pleasure. They are there, for example, to provide us additional safety and security, beyond, or better than, we could secure for ourselves. Just like individual cars are ours to use as, when, and where we choose, with limitations we choose to impose for our own benefit, not to use as the government says is good for us, choosing to limit us, for what it claims is our benefit. They are the implementation arm of a buying club.

    My safety is my problem. Since I can’t fit a police man in my pocket & can’t afford dedicated 24×7 armed security, private or publicly acquired, my ability to see to my own welfare is what takes care of me most of the time – getting me where I want to go, securing food & shelter, trading my talents and time to others for other things I want, and, yes, stopping someone ill-intentioned from harming the people I care about, if need be. Aspects of the government are there to help me do some parts of this, but I didn’t trade in my feet when the feds started building interstate highways.

    In this sense, a gun in citizen hands may indeed be a symbol – that we each of us own our own life, to make of it what we will.

    – I don’t know what kind of symbol your guns were to you. Indeed, in some criminal-dominated sub-cultures, illegal ownership of illegal guns is a symbol of belonging, status, and power. They are sometimes symbols of class, or more accurately caste: membership in the thug-caste who occupy some territories, where the lower castes exist only at their pleasure.

    These days we tend to speak disapprovingly of the dominance of groups of people by an armed warrior caste, who extract sustenance at the threat of violence, even when sometimes fig-leafed with a nod toward protection. There are plenty of geographies in the US (and increasingly among our European friends, although it never entirely went out of style there) where that’s the case. Some places it’s the only thing that has ever been. And no, I don’t mean the government at all.

    The people who pay sales tax to buy an AR-derivitave, are maybe not so much rent-extractors by violence. If you think that’s why most legal gun owners have guns, you have maybe watched too many movies. Indeed, if that’s why you had yours, it’s better that you don’t have them any longer.

    As for those of us who prefer civilians have guns, if they want to, how about you leave us to our preference as we are leaving you to yours?

    Just sign me,

    Less Nutty than You

    • Hear Hear!!!!
      I would have said this myself, if I were more eloquent and If I thought that a liar like Mr Lane was worth the effort.
      🙂

      • Thanks for the kind words.

        Even so, that rant could be shrunk by 1/5 to 1/3 – I get wordy when I’m pissed off. Also, a couple times I bring the snark the whole way home, vs. stopping one step short. The latter is more effective – leaves people to fill in the inevitable last step themselves.

        While our correspondent won’t ever read this, or be convinced, open letters are for the people listening in. That’s one reason why Piers Morgan never lets people finish. They might convince someone. (And the only reason to go on Musket’s show – when he had one – was access to his audience. Certainly not the enlightenment he brought to whatever he was ranting about.)

        Actually, Musket and our humble correspondent are fine examples pf how not to convince people. How you show up matters. Be admirable rather than … the other thing.

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