Far too many Americans take pleasure in assuming the status of “oppressed” or “discriminated.” We’ve all seen the bumper-stickers advising us to “Fight Prejudice” or “End Discrimination Now.” When do we, the peaceful, hard-working, American gun owners get our own bumper-stickers or T-shirts? . . .
According to “JusttheFacts” website, in 2009 there were an estimated 80 million gun owners in the United States. That number works out to more than 25 percent of the entire population of the country. When faced with irrational prejudice and discrimination from the Internet elitists, I’d say that puts the American gun owner in the running for the biggest discriminated against class in the country.
Thank goodness we no longer have to rely on a closed-minded media to share information with each other. It’s a shame, though, that knee-jerk “guns are bad” online elitists are censoring material that could legitimately help a person save their life or that of someone else. Do you think of yourself and gun owners in total as an oppressed minority?
I think the fact that we are called “insurrectionists”, gun-nuts, ignorant rednecks (despite where we come from), etc. draws a pretty good parallel to every other oppressed minority that has ever been in this country.
I also believe that like those minorities, our own civil rights movement is occurring before our eyes. Support for gun control drops while FBI background checks on gun purchases rise. Looser gun laws in most states are popping up (while the worst become more so) and with McDonald and Heller have at least put to bed the notion that the 2nd Amendment is a collective right tied to government service.
At the end of the day I am still reluctant to tell classmates and friends that aren’t into the sport what I do for fun. I worry that they will think less of me if I do tell them. That in itself is the kind of discrimination that we suffer under.
The day that a pro-gun law is proposed and nobody writes an article about how the streets will be running red with blood is the day that we have won.
I feel like we are misunderstood. The media and other antis tell the american people that we are a bunch of ignorant, racist, and bloodthirsty rednecks. We need to show the american public that we are not like that and show them our true values of self-responsibility, respect for life, being aware of one’s surroundings, respecting firearms and what they can do, being safe, and realizing that there is evil in this world and there is nothing wrong with wanting to protect yourself.
+1!
Absolutely. We are an oppressed minority. Gun owners experience a form of online bullying and bigoted hate-crimes from the mass media, gun control advocates, and individual comments made online.
I totally agree. Since the first word out of any anti gun person’s mouth seems to be “reasonable”, the heavy implication is that we folks that own firearms are by definition “unreasonable”. I’m not unreasonable! I’m a regular guy that goes to work every day, pays my taxes, worries about my wife and daughter, watches baseball, lives in a house and not a cave. I drive a car, keep in touch with my parents, and get along with most of my neighbors. I’m just like the anti-people, except I own firearms.
There are three classes of people in the liberal/progressive universe (which includes most of print and broadcast news), that is perfectly acceptable to call names and represent in the worst possible light; white men, christians and gun owners.
The most hated in thier world would combine these into thier modern day ogre;
the white heterosexual christian male gun owner.
I hope that some day, a white heterosexual Christain gun-owning male can be elected President of the United States.
When that day comes…
…oh wait, that’s been going on for hundreds of years.
+1
anon,
Is there a point you’re trying to make? Thomas stated a simple obvious reality: in today’s modern American it is fashionably PC to attack white Christian straight males who own guns. That is the one core group the social progressives overwhelmingly attack. The average man from that group has never been close to being a super-rich powerful elitist.
It’s totally fine for anyone who isn’t white to say “death to the white race” today and have it deemed personal expression. But because of what a bunch of white guys did over a hundred years ago that nobody has a first-hand connection to today, if you’re white and say anything remotely offensive about someone who isn’t, even if they’re the biggest Douchebag on earth, they can write some sob story to the NY Times and you will be crucified on a national level. This same mindset can be applied to Feminism and it’s disgustingly hypocritical.
Gun owners today face a special kind of criticism. People automatically associate owning a gun with eventually committing murder. They think that somehow being in the presence of a gun wills you to do evil things with its magical powers. And the sad thing is, we’re discriminated against because this satanic magic mumbo jumbo passes for legitimate journalistic opinion.
Milsurp Collector,
Good observations. You don’t want to get me started on those femminist fascists.
I’m a gun loving atheist. How’s that for a minority? Does that answer your question?
We should form a club. 🙂
I second that.
Third.
How about gun-loving/scientist/atheist/small L libertarian/beer brewer?
Ok, but I’d also add that I live in a State which effectively prohibits concealed carry. Isn’t that discrimination? I’d like some of that beer to cheer me up as I cry myself to sleep every night 😉
Working on setting up the smuggling operation… the beer! The beer!
You mean there’s TWO of us?!
“Do you think of yourself and gun owners in total as an oppressed minority?”
No, because I’m not a pussy. Jesus, get a real problem.
Gun owners oppressed? In California, New York, New Jersey = YES!!!
I feel like the gun world created a crappy aura for itself. Not the “raciss rednecks” described above but an arrogant clique unwelcoming of novices. We’re slowly changing that image.
Oppression? Not in the United States. Self-imposed isolation would be the correct term.
Absolutely oppression. You should try living in California as a gun owner. And unfortunately we have a very vocal minority of gun owners that make us all look racist and intolerant.
Sadly, we give voice to these people even though it hurts our cause.
Who said California was part of the United States?
…What?
Hey now I resemble that remark! well not so much but still.. 😉
How many politicians do we see all the time shouting, “Gun control now; gun control tomorrow; gun control forever”? It’s acceptable to make disparaging remarks about gun owners in many circles. There are still many places where we are legally barred from exercising our rights.
That being said, the culture is getting better. In most states, the rules have improved, and while there’s still work to do, we have cause for hope.
I very much detest the “oppressed minority” meme that runs clear through American political thought now. Everyone wants to be a grievance group.
Most people of “oppressed minorities” are just lazy and they want to blame their lack of achievement on someone else. I’m not going there.
Hear hear. When did we go from being a nation of champions and challengers to one of victims? In the rush to be labeled as “oppressed,” we diminish those who are truly oppressed. Media bias sucks, but we are our own evangelists. I refuse to buy into the notion that being put down somehow makes me more righteous.
Misunderstood? Suffer? Sounds like another liberal lawsuit in the making. Sounds like folks need to get their big boy pants on and quit worrying what “Friends” think.
The great thing about America is that it’s an equal-opportunity oppressor. Once upon a simpler time, black people were the oppressees and white people were the oppressors. White Christian males now claim the mantle of “oppressed.” Women are always bitching about something. Jews still can’t get into the local country club. Mexicans, justifiably believing that their native land is a cesspool, seem disturbed that illegal immigration is frowned upon along the border because nobody wants to turn New Mexico into Old Mexico. Asians are too busy working and living the American dream to complain about much, but give ’em time. They’ll catch on. Whining is the American way.
No, we are not an oppressed minority. The war against guns isn’t a war against us — it’s a war against freedom. The whole damn country is oppressed, and gun owners should be smart enough to know it.
I’m oppressed because you won’t share your recipe.
You should go protest, Aharon. Occupy Ralph’s yard!
Carlos, that’s a good idea. I wonder if Ralph will cook for me if I camp out on his front yard with a protest sign.
I don’t feel oppressed but I do feel looked down upon. Often, people freak out when they realize I carry (this usually happens when I put my concealed carry in its holster in the house as I’m leaving). The only time I feel discriminated against is when I apply for jobs or school because being a white male from a middle class family, I have to be so much better than everyone else to get the opening. I could not get into many law schools because I had to have such better grades and test scores than minorities. That’s not fair but with firearms, it’s not the case.
I think you need to make the distinction between ‘favored class’ and ‘discriminated against minority’.
If you’re in a group that makes up 25%+ of the population, that’s not a minority group in the general sense of the word. Especially considering that that group is favored by one of the two major political parties in the country.
That said, it seems unlikely that gun owners will ever be a favored class in the way the upper-middle class WASP family is as far as politics go. And they certainly won’t be a favored class to any group that swings left of the US political center.
No one gives you anything in life. You have to work for it. If you really were a discriminated against minority, the negative effects you would get from it would be far greater than the bones society would throw you because they felt bad for you. Generally speaking, the old, the crippled and infirm, the poor, and people with the wrong skin color or sexual preferences will be the first to tell you this.
I demand reparations for decades of oppression!!
How about US Govt. surplus ammo at cost as reparation for gun owners?
Affirmative action for armed, law-abiding/non-criminals!
I don’t think Gun Owners fulfill the standard for being a full-on oppressed Minority. We are keenly aware that our Natural and Constitutional Rights to RKBA have been severely infringed. We recognize that so have those Rights for all American Citizens, whether the others see it that way or not.
Of all the people I know, only two have ever expressed dismay at my gun ownership, and no one has made me feel they are disapproving but hiding it. The majority are enthusiastic and interested or neutral and accepting.
I DO think we are an “at risk” minority because, despite whatever encouraging signs we see, the fact remains the Politicians are more interested in how legislation “appears” than what it does or who it affects. So, we live at the whim of political expediency, rather than the security of political conviction.
I think people believe whatever they want to believe until something happens to them.
Are gun owners an oppressed minority? Paging Kenn Blanchard…
IF ‘we’ are, suppose any ‘laws’/codes legislated and illegally administratively enacted should all fall under “Bill of Attainder” which are punitive laws targeting a specific person or group without any due-process, which is UnConstitutional.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder
Then again, technically speaking, strictly Constitutionally speaking, ALL Fed. ‘Gun laws’ are null and void. But since the ‘Patriot Act’ and 2012 NDAA, the Constitution is de facto not in practice or control, so who’s counting?
Do I think of gun owners as an oppressed minority? Absolutely.
If that were not the case, then there would not be a bunch of “gun free zones” like private property with “no guns” signs, all federal government buildings, and various places in various states.
Just imagine a ban on free speech in those places. No one would stand for it.
Love the picture. 😉
Ehh, words mean things. Seeing as no one blocked me from getting an education or a job, the depictions of me in culture are not universally negative, no one has stuck me in a ghetto, no one has leveraged the prejudices of society in order to make it virtually impossible for me to make personal progress, since I’ve never been harassed or beat down in the street for my “status”, since I can live in any neighborhood I want, since no one rolled up on my shore and put me in irons, since no one has systematically exterminated my kind… no, I’m not an “oppressed minority” based on being a gun owner. Getting called a nut from time to time (who cares? I don’t.) and not being allowed to carry in the post office is NOT a plight equal to people who can be described in a full historical context as “oppressed minorities”.
-D
I did a double-take at the photo with this post. That young lady could be a twin to one of my nieces. She shoots, as does her mom. Are we oppressed? I think yes, not to the extent that African-Americans were say in 1920. But we are definitely subjected to name calling such as the president’s use of “bible clutching, gun toting xenophobes”, and the justice dept. classifying us as potential terrorists. I am a potential terrorist in the same way that Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton are potential prostitutes, they own vaginas, don’t they?
” I am a potential terrorist in the same way that Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton are potential prostitutes, they own vaginas, don’t they?”-Major laughs from this one. +2
I agree. Oppressed? Yes, but not to the extent that historically oppressed minorities have been. Not yet anyway.
Minority? Sure. Oppressed? Not hardly. That’s why we own the guns. That’s what the 2nd Amendment is all about – raising the cost of oppressing a minority.
The history of gun control laws shows their racist roots – the first ones were enacted in the old Confederacy states to keep guns out of the hands of free blacks.
Gun control has a long, proud history of trying to oppress minorities.