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“Can one be a responsible, guiltless gun owner who keeps up his skills at the range, or does the mere act of joining the gun culture and economy, of bringing another weapon or two off the assembly line, make me complicit?” – William Alexander in What happened when a 64-year-old liberal attended his first NRA convention [via latimes.com]

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77 COMMENTS

  1. It depends on who you ask. If your question is posed to liberals, I am sure they will see you as a traitor. If you ask that of most gun owners, we will welcome you.

  2. Thank god I’m not a liberal/lefty….the psychological torture these people put themselves through over even the simplest of questions has to be a living hell. A life of endless hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance would be difficult to endure.

    • ^This…as soon as a I read the quote I thought, who cares? Do you enjoy shooting? Do you want the best possible way to defend yourself? If you answer yes, then screw the politics of it all and enjoy yourself. Speaking for myself there is absolutely no moral dilemma at all. Why do we always have to be so analytical and philosophical over the simplest things?

      • Feigned. (LWSFTJ – Libs Writing Sh_t For Their Jobs)

        They’ll do anything stupid to “get the conversation going” and, oh hey, look who’s just been passive-aggressively asked to defend a pro-gun position.

        What part of this was about guns?

        F all of them.

    • That was my take, too, so I scrolled through as usual to see whether anyone else had already approached the comments from that angle.

      These people seem to live every moment of their lives in overwrought agony. That overwhelming victim mentality of theirs must be exhilarating to wield. I find it exhausting just to watch.

    • I love the image with the guy sweating over two buttons labeled “gender is a social construct” and “people can be born the wrong gender”. The one with “you don’t need guns, the cops will protect you” and “cops are evil racists” is pretty good too.

  3. This truly is a mental illness. I imagine they could never mow a lawn or walk through a field or god forbid lay down a blanket for a picnic without experiencing traumatic flashbacks of the first time they watched the Secret of Nihm and saw the look of horror on the little cartoon mouse faces as the thresher mowed the field.

    Going out of your way to beat yourself up with imaginary guilt is sick and worst of all pointless unless the point is to make yourself feel sick.

    I don’t hate myself and I thoroughly enjoy every second of my life. I’m supposed to feel sorry about that? I’ll keep loving my life and you can keep hating your life. I won’t try to stop you. Please stop trying to stop me.

    • You are exactly right. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that nearly every far left person I’ve ever met has had some sort of real mental disorder. Perhaps mental disorders are the disease and liberalism is a symptom? Or the other way around?

    • The Secret of NIMH is a great movie!

      Also, as I discovered as I grew older the NIMH in that movie is the National Institute of Mental Health.

  4. Complicit in what, exactly? Inner city violence?

    No. No more than buying a fast little sports car makes one complicit in illegal street racing. Just like violence in inner cities, it all comes down to somebody – some individual – making a choice.

  5. Engage in all the handwringing and angst you wish. Owning a gun is really stupid-simple.

    Do you wish to be the next Pettit family? Do you wish to be the next couple tied and with your throats cut?

    Owning a gun makes me no more guilty of anothers crimes than my buying a car makes me responsible for the next drunk driver.

    • “Owning a gun makes me no more guilty of anothers crimes than my buying a car makes me responsible for the next drunk driver.”

      No, according to them, it makes you guilty of a far, far worse crime.

      Climate murder.

      You do know what the penalty should be for that, don’t you?…

        • Ding ding ding! We have a winner!!
          “Climate science” is a self perpetuating boondoggle to separate people from their money and any power they possess as an individual. Gun control is the same mentality.

        • Climate ‘science’ and gun control are both hoaxes and swindles. Gun control relies on the erroneous beliefs that the government can and will protect you from criminal thugs and that the government will never turn on it’s own people. Climate ‘science’ relies on total ignorance of any real science. a) We are living in an ice age and the glaciers that melted 12,000 years ago are coming back to kill us all, b) Before man came along atmospheric CO2 was at it’s lowest level since complex multi-cellular life appeared on the planet, and c) plant’s grow faster, produce more food and require less water when CO2 is higher. Painting that into ‘we’re ruining the planet with our SUVs’ is quite a swindle indeed!

  6. Complicit in what, exactly? Inner city violence?

    No more than buying a sporty little import makes you complicit when someone dies in the LA street racer scene.

    Edit, I see jwm beat me to the analogy. In either case, though, at the end of the day, it’s a choice: to speed or not to speed, to drive drunk or call a cab … or to point the gun at another person and pull the trigger. Pretending it’s not, denies both us and the person making the choice of their humanity.

  7. A few things strike me funny. He never actually says he owns a gun. He said he was brainwashed into wanting a gun by old black and white tv shows and Bambi frolicking in his backyard, notice the simple and silly, but innocent, things that got it into his head that told him he wanted to take up a hobby that could kill. Then he went to the NRA convention to browse for guns. Does he not have the internet? Are there no gun stores anywhere near his home? He certainly would have mentioned he went to interview people for an upcoming book he’s working on if that were the case and not lie about looking for his first rifle. Then he’s talking about little old ladies fearing being attacked noting that he’s never heard of it happening, speakers telling people how to fortify their homes against burglary and armed intruders with contemptuous tone. Then goes down the street to see a group of protesters, some who have lived those gruesome statistics of assault and home invasion. But never really reconciles that those tragedies can befall anyone and to have the tools to protect oneself is all some want. This guy is not a liberal gun owner, he’s a progressive writer looking for a payday at the expense of people’s rights.

    • You’re right….I actually read some of that article and this clown isn’t a gun owner at all, just a journalist. And this is just a typical lefty hit piece on gun owners and the NRA.

    • “But never really reconciles that those tragedies can befall anyone and to have the tools to protect oneself is all some want.”

      You know, I’m surprised the ‘Climate Change’ Nazis haven’t been demanding laws making the wearing of seat belts a crime.

      After all, since vehicle drivers are responsible for climate murder, those drivers should face the risk that they could be injured or killed in an accident.

      Serves ’em right for killing the fragile environment. Maybe they will then start to think long and hard before they belch CO2 into the air.

      The same with guns. Kevlar for civilians should be outlawed. If gun nuts love those guns so much, why should they have protection from flying lead?

      (This is the twisted mind-set of the Left…)

    • The Brits have a perfect term for a guy like this: He’s “too precious”. Talking to liberals like this makes my skin itch.

      • Ha
        Southerners have a saying also, “Bless his heart…”

        Combine the two, “Bless his precious heart.”

        Now my Cracker friends have a saying…
        “Eff him and the horse he rode in on.”

  8. Liberals in America have defined themselves as shameless hypocrites by their words and actions to the point that nothing they say can, or should, be taken seriously. This guy is free to own firearms and practice with them, but insofar as his pretense at moral, ethical ruminations over whether he, as a Liberal, ought to engage in those activities, STFU and keep your disingenuous fake intellectualism to yourself as you perpetrate your treasonous agenda and beliefs against the Republic and Freedoms the rest of us work to preserve.

    • It’s very difficult to take on a label in this country and not be a hypocrite. Left and right both have logical inconsistencies that are ignored with religious fervor. Few look at their own positions from a principled and honest perspective.

      • I never see pickup trucks at the shrink’s office next door. Only those funky little cars with the liberal bumper stickers.

      • Which is why so many people are starting to dump the whole left/right, liberal/conservative thing. They don’t mean much of anything substantial or rational anymore… if they ever did. Living with integrity, as a principled self owner, self responsible person does not require any of these political labels.

  9. From the article:
    “William Alexander is working on a book about his indoctrination into America’s gun culture. His last piece for the Los Angeles Times was on correctly using vous and tu.”

    Apparently being an anti-gun Nazi pays better then being a grammar Nazi!

    Also gotta love the video on the Harvard ‘study’ randomly placed at the top of the article. It claims 3% of gun owners own 50% of the guns. If true, what does that prove? Wanna bet that 3% of jewelry owners own 50% of the jewelry? Most Rolexes are owned by ‘super collectors’? So, we have a wide wealth gap in this country. What else is new?

    • That “study” is STILL not fully released, and the methodology’s been well debunked on this site.

  10. He pretty much covered every anti NRA talking point ever dreamed up by the other side.

    ‘The NRA needs to return to it’s roots of promoting gun safety only’.
    ‘90% of NRA members support Universal Background Checks’
    ‘The NRA convention was very diverse with the notable exception of race.’
    ‘Every person he talked to simply regurgitated the NRA Talking Points’
    ‘I walked a few blocks downtown to attend the Moms Demand Rally’

    That last one is a puzzler. The distance(as measured by Miguel over at Gunfreezone) is 1.3 miles from the convention center to the park where Queen Shannon held court for her adoring fans. He certainly didn’t go to the MDA rally. Unless blocks in Atlanta are a whole lot bigger than my hometown.
    He also professed to going with an open mind and yet managed to cover just about every bit of anti gun drivel and not actually learn anything to change his mind. Not so much as to find a single redeeming thing amongst 80,000 law abiding, peaceful, non felony convicted fellow countrymen.
    I’d be willing to bet he didn’t even go to the convention.

  11. This guy should just try self-flagellation or walking around in public with dildo (a la Cocks not Glocks) up his arse since he hates himself so much, instead of trying to fcuk the rest of us over.

  12. So just who is complicit the gun owner or the SJW/leftist know nothing? I submit to you that the leftist is the problem; they support turning loose gang bangers with multiple violent felonies, because they never had the chance of a good education, and they are the loosers of life’s lottery. Never mind the people they prey on, though he would feel better about it if the victims were white.

  13. So poisoned by the sickness of collectivism he is incapable of thinking outside of group guilt and demonization, that and his own tacit assumptions. My firearms haven’t murdered anybody in some number of years and seem to be on that very path today as well. What an abject schmo in place of a man that he thinks this puerile whining and stale virtue signalling is somehow insightful or philosophical. The best way to not ‘participate’ in violence is, well, to not participate in it. Hope that wasn’t too complex for the friendly neighborhood poet/philosppher.

  14. I’m a sixty year old liberal gun owner and I don’t feel one iota of guilt for BEING a gun owner.

    Only fools believe that the police have either the duty or the physical ability to protect individuals.

    That leaves me the choice of being a pathetic, supine victim or of standing up for myself.

    Being a victim doesn’t make you a good person. It just makes you maimed or dead.

    • ‘Being a victim doesn’t make you a good person.’

      Careful, talk like that will get you kicked out of the liberals’ club these days.

      • They’re not liberals. They’re “progressives”.

        What’s a “progressive”?

        Somebody who thinks that we shouldn’t forget all of the “good” that Stalin did.

        They’re about as “liberal” as a mass grave at Katyn…

  15. how the hell did a group hijack the word “liberal” and over time have society understand it to mean govt registration lists?

    • That was FDR that co-opted the term ‘liberal’ and flipped it on it’s head. The Democrats have run with that ever since.

      • The twisted term has infiltrated Merriam-Webster. Now “liberalism” means having the govt solve social justice issues. Here it is:

        such a philosophy that considers government as a crucial instrument for amelioration of social inequities (such as those involving race, gender, or class)

    • The same way they went from being the champions for slavery to being the champions of minorities, even as they strive to provide excuses for failure and thus keep people enslaved. The difference between the 1860s and today is that they want to enslave everyone except themselves. Not all liberal progressives but the elite of liberal progressivism; the Clintons, Obamas, Pelosis, Reids, Feinsteins and all the rest. Smoke and mirrors.

  16. As I posted on the LA Times site in response to his article:

    Gee, how interestingly facile your simplistic division of society into dangerous neighborhoods and Gardens of Eden makes your sophomoric, binary, either-or prison of ideology. The only possible reason to have a gun is self-defense, ownership of which is therefore delusional when the owner lives in a quiet suburb. In that case, shouldn’t ownership be mandatory if you live on the South side of Chicago?

    You fall into the standard totalitarian mindset trap that if you can make a case, then all should follow your advice like rats after a piper. Except that your “anything not prohibited is mandatory” control freak philosophy is out of step with the fundamental basis of American freedom – which is that everyone is free to make up his or her mind on things, unfettered by overarching government constraints, except in narrowly predefined and citizen-authorized areas. (Google “Constitution” – it will help.) It’s called variously the marketplace of ideas and the laboratory of democracy. No amount of verbal reality-warping will change that reality.

    If you don’t want a gun for self-defense, or hunting, or paper punching, or re-enactment, or casual plinking, or rodent control, or any of the hundreds of recreational uses to which guns are put, including listening to loud noises, then don’t buy one. But don’t preach to those of us who enjoy them and enjoy exercising the discipline required with any potentially injurious-if-misused machinery, including welders, woodworking tools, cars, private planes, and a wealth of other freely (at least for the moment) available equipment.

    You, and those like you, are the agents that have pushed the increasing number of people sick of being dictated to and strait-jacketed into electing Trump, voting for Brexit, and rebelling against overarching authority. There appears to be no mirror into which you can look and see your true selves for what you are – modern cranks and busybodies. Stay home!

  17. Golly gee we are a quite similar age. I haven’t bought into that liberal puzzy shite since I was a teenager. Turn in your man card and join Catelyn in the tranny train…

  18. the problem with “we just want to keep guns out of the wrong hands” is that nothing they do keeps guns out of the “wrong hands” just makes it harder for the “right hands” to get them.
    That’s a feature and not a flaw, in their eyes.

  19. That pearl clutching libtard William Alexander is simply Dan Baum without any literary talent. The entire article was a steaming pile of crap.

    • Dan Baum is the man, and the fact that the media has not given him a higher profile just demonstrates that they do not want anyone with a balanced or nuanced understanding of the gun issue to have a platform. All they want is a shriek-fest between Yosemite-Sam cosplayers on one side and bug-eyed quivering magazinephobes on the other.

  20. There was a time when owning a gun was so boringly ordinary it did not even stand out. Now its a political statement you get on youtube and red pill about. Boy scouts, CMP, war trophies, higher rates of military service, toy guns, knives, in home ec, and wiskerless boys operating farm equipment was part of the fabric of this nation.

    MAKE

    AMERICA

    COMPETENT

    AGAIN

  21. This world is getting tough for those of us who believe in the 2nd Amendment while also believing in things like reproductive freedom, marriage equality, and covering pre-existing medical conditions.

    The gun issue has gone from a constitutional question to pure cultural turd-flinging, and, from my perspective, the politicians who are right on guns are increasingly horrible on everything else.

  22. I really get laugh out of just how fixated progressives are on the NRA, like it’s the one and only portal to American gun-culture. If this guy wanted to get into the hobby he could have just taken a drive to his local shop. But that wouldn’t have fit his agenda now would it, some perfectly nice average joe working the counter instead of the cross-burning klansmen traipsing around the *shudder* NRA convention (sarc).

  23. The author of the LAT piece admits he’s “working on a book” about America’s gun culture.

    “Looks can be deceiving. No matter their age, gender or social class, every person I spoke with regurgitated the same NRA talking points”

    And, while divining this nugget, he is unable to discern how pervasive the anti gunners’ talking points are in his words and thoughts. Prediction: if completed, the book will s*ck.

    • Exactly. Complicit in exercising your natural, human, and constitutionally protected civil rights with several million other responsible Americans? The horror…

  24. The problem that I note is that he says he’s going with an open mind but somehow everyone he meets is a Lefty cartoon fantasy of what they think gun owners are like.

    At best, homeslice has a serious case of confirmation bias.

    Where are all these half-lunatics putting bulletproof film on their windows and living in perpetual terror? I’ve never met one.

  25. The raging liberal acquaintances in my social circle have all accused me of having a hand in every mass shooting since I started buying guns. Apparently my money enabled firearms companies to produce one extra gun, which conveniently landed in the hands of a murderer…

  26. What a drama-llama. Just think of it as buying a golf club, and using it at a driving range, dipshit.

    Guy can feel guilty if he wants, but it’s nothing but an ego trip because whether he gets a gun or not doesn’t make a a fart’s difference in the wind anywhere but in his mind.

    • Another thing is, this guy is happy to be a cartoon of a liberal and to go to the NRA thing, which is going to be mostly cartoon, by-the-book neocons. It’s like the WWE version of politics and philosophy; noisy theatre.

  27. I try avoid talking to liberals in general, which means I really do not talk to anybody, seeing Wisconsin is a liberal bastion of the highest order. Definatly do not talke about guns here….most are liberal Fudds, and while they do belong to the NRA, they also strongly disagree with things such as repealing the NFA , carry conceal or even being allowed to own rifles that use 30 round magazines.

    • “Wisconsin is a liberal bastion of the highest order.”

      WHAAAAT?!?!?! Get out of Madison. Now. (Or is it Milwaukee?)

      Trust me, once you’re outside the big cities* you won’t encounter many liberals – they’re as rare as hens’ teeth. And there are a whole lot of rural areas and small towns in between those cities, with a lot of nice (non-liberal) folks. Get out of that urban hole while you still can!

      *Madistan, Milwaukee, Appleton, Racine, Kenosha – oh, and now La Crosse too, ’cause it’s a college town…

  28. The liberal is evil. A liberal is racist to their core. Just as the KKK wanted blacks disarmed, the racist liberal also wants the blacks disarmed. The Liberal calls the police racist but the liberal keeps blacks disarmed. The Liberal supports gay marriage, hates traditional marriage and supports the welfare state destroying the traditional black family. The liberal will send their children to private school. But only the liberal works to prevent black children from doing the same thing.

    Malcolm X was wrong. Only the white liberal is the Devil.

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