Oh SenorBeef, clearly your mind has been twisted by ownership of scary weapons. No one would ever want to own a rifle for shooting paper targets, they’re only good for mowing down children and puppies (probably). For putting holes in paper a simple 3-hole-punch is more effective.
Was this in response to my post?
Nope, just a weak attempt to lighten the mood.
The grouping on 3-hole punches is atrocious. You need a high-precision sniper punch to get much accuracy. Preferably semi-automatic.
Oh, I didn’t say non-gun-owners weren’t real men. You misunderstand me. I’m speaking of outspoken gun control advocates. I’m indifferent to people who don’t own a gun - I don’t care how they live their life - but I’m speaking of the people who wish to deny my right to do the same.
I’ve been in dozens or perhaps hundreds of gun control debates in various forms over the years. I was an enthusisatic gun hobbiest for a good period of time. I’ve argued against a lot of gun control proponents. I’ve met a lot of other dedicated gun hobbyists and gun rights advocates. And I’ve had a rather strong falling out with that group over the fucking insane direction conservatives have gone in the last decade, so I’m not their apologist nor, in general, their friend.
As with all things, you can’t make blanket statements that cover every single individual in a group, but you can observe generalities and trends.
Most of the gun rights advocates I knew were conservative or libertarians, and most of the gun control advocates were liberal, but it’s not a rigid line. Quite a few liberals are wildly pro-gun. In general, conservatives are more likely than average to be manlier men, and liberal guys are far more likely to be douchebag weenies. I don’t even know that anyone could reasonably dispute that, except with the lame counter-example anecdotes they always come up with when any sort of stereotyping scares them. Having traditional many values doesn’t mean they’re right or wrong about political issues, but it’s a general trend that seems like it would be obvious to me any observer.
So even just using those trends - that conservatives tend to be less like douchebag weenies on a person level, and they’re more likely to be the rugged individual types - and that conservatives are more likely to be pro-gun or gun rights advocates and liberals the opposite, then you’d expect the trend to skew as I stated.
My personal experience has confirmed this pretty clearly. Almost across the board. I’m having a hard time coming up with an exception from my experience, now that I think about it.
Now, you sat by and said nothing while all the gun control proponents in this thread circle jerked each other, all talking about how the tiny-penised super paranoid gun nuts were sitting in a saferoom desperately clinging on to as many guns as they could get ahold of, and apparently this characterization didn’t merit objection.
However, when I made a much more restrained characterization, which is actually just naturally what you’d expect given the political tendencies of both people on this side of the issue, suddenly your objection is so strong that you think I must be engaging in parody. You’re just being blind.
Where I went with that - that gun control advocates are often feminized men who resent men who fall in line with more traditional male values, and that the behavior of those men reflected poorly on their own, that’s conjecture, and I prefaced it by saying I was adding my own dime store psychology. But it’s reasonable conjecture. It fits with what you’d expect based on how this issue generally falls on the political scale, and it fits almost perfectly the hundreds of people on both sides I’ve met and argued with.
I suspect you don’t actually know any real “gun nuts”, or perhaps one or two that are skewing your perspective, but the characterization of them as being ultra scared of life, thinking about their guns all day, desperately clinging to them is comically off. I know that this is an almost universal view amongst liberal douchebags, but it’s entirely off base. It fits your biases, so it seems perfectly reasonable to you, but it’s utterly baseless. It’s just self-congratulatory circle jerking based on, what I’m guessing to be the accuser’s own insecurities about it.
Now you say you’ve seen me be reasonable on other topics, but I’m being just as reasonable now. I’m using the same life experiences, debates, logic, and skepticism that I use to approach any argument. It’s just that in the past, I’ve probably said things that were generally favorable towards your worldview, so you viewed them as reasonable, and now I’m saying things hostile to your worldview, so now I’m unreasonable. But I’m not saying these things because I’m a knee-jerk conservative apologist, clearly. I’m actually saying this as one of the relatively few non-conservatives or libertarians intimately familiar with the workings of “gun culture”. With people I share a hobby and passion for gun rights advocacy with, and not very much else. I have no reason to be an apologist for them as a whole. I’m just telling you that your characterization of gun culture and what gun nuts actually are is entirely off, and you have no idea what the fuck you’re (collective you) talking about.
I can say with a lot of confidence that that I understand the people on both sides of the issue better than probably anyone here, whereas almost all of the gun control advocates in this thread have no idea what “gun culture” or “gun nuts” are actually like. If you think I’ve gone from reasonable to wildly unreasonable only one this one issue, that only reflects the strength of your own biases.
No, a person who collects Katana swords or Star Wars figurines is a dork who dreams of one day getting laid.
That’s a lot of broad generalizations about my character based on a single post I made that I’m pretty sure suggests none of the things you just said I did. And before you bitch that other people have made broad generalizations, I will point out that none of those people were me.
Your suggestion that gun control advocates are feminized and not real men is stupid and sounds like a joke. I wish you had been joking. I am so god damned tired of being disappointed by people.
Gun ownership being as bad as slavery wasn’t ridiculous enough to strike your dissapointment meter, but stating a pretty obvious truth that conservative men value traditional male roles and attitudes more than liberal men does? I don’t even view that as significantly controversial. I’m gonna go ahead and turn that dissapointment beam right back around on you.
Gotta keep the matches down, or next thing you know they’ll be running the country.
Can we get a moratorium on analogies involving guns? They defy comparison. They’re not like Star Wars dolls, or slavery, or cars.
That’s true. They’re like screwdrivers.
Would it be OK to shoot a Pit bull with an AR-15?
What if I made pit bulls fight each other with AR-15s?
First of all, I’m not sure what your point is with continually poking at me for not expressing equal disappointment over some other stupid shit that some other people said. What would you like me to say? “Gee, SenorBeef, I think that the stupid shit the other people said is just as bad as the stupid shit you said”? OK. Their stupid shit is as bad as your stupid shit.
As for your “obvious truth” about conservative men and male values or whatever, 1) I dispute that this is some kind of “obvious truth,” and 2) that’s not what you said. I’m sure that’s what you would like to have said, because it sounds a lot better and less stupid than what you actually said, which was this:
So, to reiterate, gun control advocates = feminine, dependent, not real men. That sounds really, really stupid. I cannot believe you are actually attempting to defend it (albeit, not actually defending it, but defending an alternate version of it because presumably you realize how dumb your original statement sounds).
As for your whole fantasy scenario about how I must have read some posts of yours that I politically agreed with and that made me think you were reasonable and so I agreed with you but now I don’t agree with you so you’re not reasonable blah blah blah: Actually I just like your posts in the Game Room and find them well-written and interesting. I expect people that I find well-written and interesting to not spout off silly stupid crap like “gun control advocates are feminized and not real men.” Obviously that was a mistaken assumption on my part.
The average intelligence and reasonableness of US gun owners increases a little bit.
No they aren’t at all like screwdrivers. The point of screwdrivers is to construct. The point of guns is to kill someone. I hope that explanation of the difference between a tool that is useful and civilization could not do without, and something which is primarily to kill your fellow human beings that we could all do without was enlightening.
No it isn’t. I have 7 guns and I’ve never killed anyone. In fact, one of my guns has been in my family for over 70 years and none of it’s previous owners killed anyone with it. If the point of it’s existence is to kill someone, we’ve been remarkably restrained about it.
Nice to meet you. I am descended from not just one or two slave owners but dozens of them starting at Jamestown all the way through the Civil War. I even had a great-x grandfather who pissed his slave off so much he got hacked to pieces. There is a lesson in there somewhere.
What about Star Wars dolls with guns?
How about if I fire an AR-15 on a conveyor belt? Would the bullet even leave the barrel?
How about a chainsaw? I think that’s a good analogous thing. Or a big sharp knife. They both have uses besides killing people, but can be used to kill people, and sometimes people die accidentally from a big “whoops!” while using them.
Then what’s the point of the guns? They’ve always been there to either promote a violent act (revolution, crime, etc.) or to defend yourself from one.
The tradition is one of violence. Guns = violence. They have no purpose outside of it. Target shooting is just a way to be better at it. Hunters in our age only do so for sport, not for necessity. Those who do need to hunt for subsistence could do just as well with bows. Nobody needs to hunt moose or bear, either.
I’m not trying to piss people on one side of the debate off - just noting that your sentence here isn’t compatible with what we know guns to have been used for.