Sunday, January 23, 2005

Don't Shoot Ourselves in the Foot

Anyone who has read this blog knows that Bill and I are gun nuts. We want to protect our gun rights and to recover those that we have lost. Still, there are people out there who fear gun owners. They believe that we are violent people: that we want to shoot black people, that we want to kill Jews, that we want to kill gays. But gun owners don't want these things. We just want to enjoy our sport, collect our guns, reload our ammo, and pass our guns to our children. Right?

Well, you can't always prove it when we gunnies become our own worse enemies. View from North Central Idaho and Alphecca discuss a thread on the AR15.com forum about gay symbols, which includes verbal attacks on gays in general. View from North Central Idaho read the riot act on the forum (posted 01/21/05 at 12:34:29 PM). Say Uncle backed him up on 01/22/05 at 1:29:39 PM.

Alphecca and View have covered this subject well. Bill and I are only spilling more bytes on this issue because we believe that the stereotypes that all gun owners are violent, white, straight, male, and conservative hurt our gun rights (one of our earliest posts touched on this topic). We know that gun owners are more than this stereotype, but anti-gun groups, gay groups, and others read comments like these in public forums and they become even more adamant that we must be disarmed.

There are gay people in Denise's office who honestly believe that the red staters want to put them in concentration camps. She has offered gun training to them and they refuse to learn. Instead, they say they need to pass laws so people can't get guns and that they need to elect Democrats so they no longer need to fear their own government and their fellow citizens.

Later in the AR15 thread, some people argued that gays and Jews have been against our gun rights. It is true that some gays and others have infringed on our rights. It is also true that some straight, white, Christian males have tried to take our guns.

We gun people are in a minority and our gun rights, as we know them now, can end. Our grandparents had more gun rights than we do today, and I want my grandchildren to have at least the same gun rights I enjoy now. We are not going to win this battle by giving ammunition to our enemies.

Take a look at this press release from the Pink Pistols, an organization of mostly gay people dedicated to arming gays for self-defense. In the release, they vow to fight a proposed gun ban in San Francisco. They are our allies. Don't disparage them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

People may think that people just make up the "the fears about concentration camps". I assure your there are people who really believe that. Totally irrational? Yes. But those people actually exist. I posted an email from a lesbian friend about that shortly after the election. I've taken her out shooting. She does okay and she once talked about purchasing a gun. But now she thinks she just needs to leave the country "while she still can".

I managed to make a significant point in a political debate with her once. It was just before the 2000 election. She couldn't see why I, even as a gun owner, would have a problem with Gore. I ask, "How would you react if a politician wanted to register all gays?" The shocked look on her face was really something to see. Until then I don't think she had really understood the significance of the threat against gun owners or how her view of the "threats" against gays by candidate George W. Bush paled by comparison. She still voted for Gore but I think she could begin to see why someone that voted against Gore could be less than evil.


-joe-
The View From North Central Idaho