Regular readers know the term “Fudd.” It references Elmer Fudd, the cartoon buffoon who hunted wascaly wabbits and ditzy ducks without success. In the gun rights world, a “Fudd” is a gun owner whose single-minded obsession with hunting blinds him to threats against Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. He’s ready, willing and able to sacrifice his gun rights on the altar of public safety – because magazine capacity laws, universal background checks, modern sporting rifle bans and the like have nothing to do with hunting. Although antis love ’em, Fudds rarely appear in public discourse. But sometimes they do . . .
As I grew older I began to notice a different breed of hunter; men who showed up with multiple shotguns as if they were golf clubs needed for specific shots. While most of us wore jeans, t-shirts and hunting vests, these newcomers dressed like they were going on safari, wearing bush hats, shooting jackets (in the 100 degree heat), and cargo pants with more pockets than there existed implements to fill them. You would see them walking the fields; shotgun draped over one arm, can of beer in the other hand. We learned to stay away from them.
For these men hunting was a manhood thing, a way to get in touch with their alpha male, a way to prove they weren’t soft city dwellers and what better way to do that than to get together with some buddies and shoot some guns at whatever moved.
It was no coincidence that, at this same time (this being early seventies), the NRA changed their focus from hunting programs to promoting gun ownership and defending the 2nd Amendment from imaginary enemies.
Each trip afield meant running into more men concerned with the idea of shooting but unburdened with any concept of the etiquette of hunting. For an adult, all you needed was the cash to purchased a gun and a hunting license and you were good to go forth and kill.
This excerpt from I was the NRA at rawstory.com marks the moment when writer TBogg moved from being an NRA supporter – “We felt safe in the field because the NRA had taught us how to be safe”- to an NRA hater.
As the text indicates, TBogg is suffering from severe GOML (Get Off My Lawn) disease. The affliction that prevents him from seeing that the NRA is still teaching millions of Americans firearms safety – in the field, at home and on the streets. Talk about denial . . . The idea that the Second Amendment’s enemies are imaginary is utterly preposterous. As is his contention that the NRA’s fight for gun rights is [somehow] responsible for the [supposed] degradation of hunting etiquette.
That said, TBogg’s rant offers an important insight into the mind of a Fudd. His beliefs are based on the exact same elitism that anti-gunners’ display when they try to restrict firearms ownership to the police, themselves and/or their bodyguards. We’re good enough for guns. The unwashed rabble? Not at all.
The NRA has killed off the sportsman with their neglect and replaced him with the gun nut who spends more money on more guns, not out of a desire to feed his family, but to stave off a mythical jack-booted government bogeyman coming to take away those guns. This paranoid vision of America that the NRA sells is why we have the gun violence that we have today, because no sensible gun legislation can be passed because of what the father of one of Elliott Rodger’s victims described as “craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA.”
I’m not the NRA poster child that I was at age 8 anymore. I want nothing to do with those people.
I may be a natural born killer, but I’ll be damned if I’ll be an accomplice to murder.
Then publish and be damned. Because anyone who’s OK with disarming law-abiding Americans, anyone who works to limit or remove their ability to defend innocent life by force of arms, is, in fact, an accomplice to murder. That’s all folks.