Originally published at: The Right’s New Country Club: Inside the Bizarre World of Luxury Gun Clubs - TPM – Talking Points Memo
This book excerpt is part of Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. The story of modern gun culture is partly about how reactionary forces worked lawmakers and the judiciary to transform America’s relationship with firearms. Congress granted extraordinary liability protections to the gun industry, while the Supreme Court reframed the Second Amendment, ignoring…
Are they really “new”? Remember DIck Cheney and his trigger happy buddies? Not to mention “big game hunters” the Trump boys.
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In one photo, Donald Trump Jr., known to many as “Donnie,” is seen toting a rifle and flashing a huge grin while seated next to a dead buffalo he had just killed.
In another picture, Eric Trump is seen sitting atop his fresh kill, another buffalo, smiling as the dead animal lies still on the ground.
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If this makes you feel like a real killer, none off this is available if you go to war.
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“God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” – Genesis 1:28
A lot of ink has been spilled of what God meant by subdue and dominion over. Americans better hope God meant it was our jobs to drive thousands of species into extinction each year, destroy ecosystems and enslave, violate or kill others. We are such pious people after all.
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As someone who enjoys shooting, is good at it, served 22 years active duty with marksman awards from both the USA and Germany, I think these sound fun if more money than I’m personally interested in spending. Remember there are liberals who enjoy shooting. While I support “well regulated” things like mandatory training, I think people who want to shoot should be allowed to with minimal interference.
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This kind of thing always makes me muse about who they really want to shoot. What kind of face do you really see on that bear, anyhow, Mr. Very Rich White Guy?
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My family were gun owners for generations. I still have the .22 cal rifle my maternal grandfather was given for his 14th birthday; the same rifle my mother used on her high school rifle team. I inherited a double barrel 16 gauge shotgun and a cap-and-ball Pennsylvania (not Kentucky) long rifle from my father. I was given a .22 lever action rifle and an NRA (pre-LaPierre) Safe Hunters course for my 14th birthday.
I enjoy target shooting at my county’s government owned and tightly regulated (deliberate choice) range. I am an unsuccessful deer and elk hunter. Having seen many gun nuts up close, I do not consider myself to be one.
The current gun culture seems to have begun in the mid ‘70s when LaPierre took over the NRA. There already were many who centered their lives around guns, but his militant activism brought them out of the niche they inhabited into full view, and convinced them of their superiority. I do believe there is a subset of gun owners for whom the blast and recoil of their gun is a psychological substitute for sex, and so “taking away our guns” is synonymous with taking away one of the few ways they can get off. I have even heard “get your rocks off” in reference to shooting.
The AR-15 and AK-47 rifles are good as orgasm substitutes since they not only fire rapidly, but due to their lower recoil and larger magazines than hunting rifles they can be fired for a long time without damaging your shoulder. Unfortunately, they are both designed for killing human beings and are lousy hunting rifles. (Several manufacturers are now touting AR-15 models as “Modern Sporting Rifles” even though their usefulness in hunting doesn’t extend beyond small game at short range in areas where there is no brush to deflect their light-weight bullets.)
This core vein of gun fetish that runs through that culture that makes me pessimistic that we can ever reign in the madness the NRA has created, even with the retirement of LaPierre and the subsequent bankruptcy of the NRA. Mass shootings in other countries have resulted in significant restrictions on guns, but here we see daily mass shootings and merely shrug and give “tots and pairs.” It’s a psychopathy we may never rid ourselves of.
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I like to shoot too, although I don’t anymore for 2 reasons. The first is a remnant from not wanting to have a firearm in the house while I had kids. Being able to secure it seemed simple, but screwing that up seemed pretty simple too. The second is that it carries a certain stigma, both from the pro and anti camps.
I don’t think that all gun rights advocates are wild eyed radicals a half step from armed insurrection, but the loudest and most powerful voices on the pro gun rights side advocate policies that demonstrably have not worked. Similarly the loudest voices on the anti side have advocated policies that haven’t worked. We hear routinely that most gun owners are responsible and want to see gun violence eliminated, I accept that as true. However the silence on the failures of the existing policies from the responsible gun owning community in general must cause people to question their sincerity. These policies are for the most part not the positions of the most extreme anti-gun ownership community but the most extreme pro-gun ownership community.
That is the problem in my opinion, more sensible proposals are rejected by the extreme elements on both sides. It seems that the responsible gun owners side with the extreme gun owner positions because they fear treading a slippery slope, but if they are the majority then the slippery slope is on the side of the extreme gun ownership position.
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Hell, I know guys (and girls) who’ve been to that shooting resort in Vegas, and they are some of the biggest leftists I know. American gun culture is far less of a left/right divide than a lot of people no both sides want it to be. The biggest difference is, effectively, in the ‘please drink responsibly’ equivalents from politicians. American gun owners’ beliefs on responsible use tend to line up more with the Democratic Party’s, as we’re shown with polling after every mass shooting that breaks into the news. But their votes go Republican for a bunch of different reasons, and the biggest one is the one we keep coming back to on these boards, over and over, on every issue.
Democratic messaging is utter shit. It comes from the milquetoast leadership, and rolls downhill.
Fix the messaging, start taking a goddamned stand, rather than weakly whining and wringing hands, and show the American people you’re not pushing some radical agenda, and we’ll do better.
This, in part, is because the responsible gun owning community can’t get any oxygen or exposure. The NRA dominates the discussion and the fundraising, and it’s long-since become an industry-advocacy group.
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Going to war means you get an M-16 which will probably jam at the worst possible time and stale MREs if you are lucky.
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That would be my analysis as well.
This is a problem for both sides in this fustercluck, the communities demand ideological purity. At the moment suggesting that the answer to the gun violence issue is not more guns may cost the responsible gun owners friends, while suggesting that a solution like what Britain has simply won’t work in the US will cost liberals who want to see actual solutions friends as well. Creating all these issues as culture war issues forces people to decide on a clan, and the clans demand absolute loyalty and obedience.
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You also get a 5 time Draft Dodger, a non combat Sec of Defence and a non combat 4star{really a 3 star} backing you.
Knowing the Sec of Defence will do push ups and scare the Hell out of enimes.
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Not for a few decades. The modern M-16 and M-4 are pretty reliable, unless you treat maintaining your equipment the way most Americans treat maintaining their health.
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“It’s a part of who we are as Americans, allowing us the freedom to be individuals and for each of us to pursue our own unique happiness.”
Unless you’re gay or trans, natch.
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You say that like the queer community doesn’t have guns, too…