Confessions of a Liberal Gun Owner

Interesting article. Check out the "proud papa" moment described at the end!



January 27, 2013

Confessions of a Liberal Gun Owner

By JUSTIN CRONIN

BELLAIRE, Tex.
I AM a New England liberal, born and bred. I have lived most of my life in the Northeast — Boston, New York and Philadelphia — and my politics are devoutly Democratic. In three decades, I have voted for a Republican exactly once, holding my nose, in a mayoral election in which the Democratic candidate seemed mentally unbalanced.

I am also a Texas resident and a gun owner. I have half a dozen pistols in my safe, all semiautomatics, the largest capable of holding 20 rounds. I go to the range at least once a week, have applied for a concealed carry license and am planning to take a tactical training course in the spring. I’m currently shopping for a shotgun, either a Remington 870 Express Tactical or a Mossberg 500 Flex with a pistol grip and adjustable stock.

Except for shotguns (firing one feels like being punched by a prizefighter), I enjoy shooting. At the range where I practice, most of the staff knows me by sight if not by name. I’m the guy in the metrosexual eyeglasses and Ralph Lauren polo, and I ask a lot of questions: What’s the best way to maintain my sight picture with both eyes open? How do I clear a stove-piped round?

There is pleasure to be had in exercising one’s rights, learning something new in midlife and mastering the operation of a complex tool, which is one thing a gun is. But I won’t deny the seductive psychological power that firearms possess. I grew up playing shooting games, pretending to be Starsky or Hutch or one of the patrolmen on “Adam-12,” the two most boring TV cops in history.

A prevailing theory holds that boys are simultaneously aware of their own physical powerlessness and society’s mandate that they serve as protectors of the innocent. Pretending to shoot a bad guy assuages this anxiety, which never goes away completely. This explanation makes sense to me. Another word for it is catharsis, and you could say that, as a novelist, I’ve made my living from it.

There are a lot of reasons that a gun feels right in my hand, but I also own firearms to protect my family. I hope I never have to use one for this purpose, and I doubt I ever will. But I am my family’s last line of defense. I have chosen to meet this responsibility, in part, by being armed. It wasn’t a choice I made lightly. I am aware that, statistically speaking, a gun in the home represents a far greater danger to its inhabitants than to an intruder. But not every choice we make is data-driven. A lot comes from the gut.

Apart from the ones in policemen’s holsters, I don’t think I saw a working firearm until the year after college, when a friend’s girlfriend, after four cosmopolitans, decided to show off the .38 revolver she kept in her purse. (Half the party guests dived for cover, including me.)

It wasn’t until my mid-40s that my education in guns began, in the course of writing a novel in which pistols, shotguns and rifles, but also heavy weaponry like the AR-15 and its military analogue, the M-16, were widely used. I suspected that much of the gunplay I’d witnessed in movies and television was completely wrong (it is) and hired an instructor for a daylong private lesson “to shoot everything in the store.” The gentleman who met me at the range was someone whom I would have called “a gun nut.” A former New Yorker, he had relocated to Texas because of its lax gun laws and claimed to keep a pistol within arm’s reach even when he showered. He was perfect, in other words, for my purpose.

My relationship to firearms might have ended there, if not for a coincidence of weather. Everybody remembers Hurricane Katrina; fewer recall Hurricane Rita, an even more intense storm that headed straight for Houston less than a month later. My wife and I arranged to stay at a friend’s house in Austin, packed up the kids and dog, and headed out of town — or tried to. As many as 3.7 million people had the same idea, making Rita one of the largest evacuations in history, with predictable results.

By 2 in the morning, after six hours on the road, we had made it all of 50 miles. The scene was like a snapshot from the Apocalypse: crowds milling restlessly, gas stations and mini-marts picked clean and heaped with trash, families sleeping by the side of the road. The situation had the hopped-up feel of barely bottled chaos. After Katrina, nobody had any illusions that help was on its way. It also occurred to me that there were probably a lot of guns out there — this was Texas, after all. Here I was with two tiny children, a couple of thousand dollars in cash, a late-model S.U.V. with half a tank of gas and not so much as a heavy book to throw. When my wife wouldn’t let me get out of the car so the dog could do his business, that was it for me. We jumped the median, turned around, and were home in under an hour.

As it happened, Rita made a last-minute turn away from Houston. But what if it hadn’t? I believe people are basically good, but not all of them and not all the time. Like most citizens of our modern, technological world, I am wholly reliant upon a fragile web of services to meet my most basic needs. What would happen if those services collapsed? Chaos, that’s what.

IT didn’t happen overnight, but before too long my Northeastern liberal sensibilities, while intact on other issues, had shifted on the question of gun ownership. For my first pistol I selected a little Walther .380. I shot it enough to decide it was junk, upgraded to a full-size Springfield 9-millimeter, liked it but wanted something with a thumb safety, found a nice Smith & Wesson subcompact that fit the bill, but along the way got a little bit of a gun-crush on the Beretta M-9 — and so on.

Lots of people on both sides of the aisle own firearms, or don’t, for reasons that supersede their broader political and cultural affiliations. Let me be clear: my personal armory notwithstanding, I think guns are woefully under-regulated. It’s far too easy to buy a gun — I once bought one in a parking lot — and I loathe the National Rifle Association. Some of the Obama administration’s proposals strike me as more symbolic than effective, with some 300 million firearms on the loose. But the White House’s recommendations seem like a good starting point and nothing that would prevent me from protecting my family in a crisis. The AR-15 is a fascinating weapon, and, frankly, a gas to shoot. So is a tank, and I don’t need to own a tank.

Alas, the days of à la carte politics like mine seem over, if they ever even existed. The bigger culprit is the far right and the lunatic pronouncements of those like Rush Limbaugh. But in the weeks since Newtown, I’ve watched my Facebook feed, which is dominated by my coastal friends, fill up with anti-gun dispatches that seemed divorced from reality. I agree it would be nice if the world had exactly zero guns in it. But I don’t see that happening, and calling gun owners “a bunch of inbred rednecks” doesn’t do much to advance rational discussion.

Thus, my secret life — though I guess it’s not such a secret anymore. My wife is afraid of my guns (though she also says she’s glad I have them). My 16-year-old daughter is a different story. The week before her fall semester exams, we allowed her to skip school for a day, a tradition in our house. The rule is, she gets to do whatever she wants. This time, she asked to take a pistol lesson. She’s an NPR listener like me, but she’s also grown up in Texas, and the fact that one in five American women is a victim of sexual assault is not lost on her. In the windowless classroom off the range, the instructor ran her through the basics, demonstrating with a Glock 9-millimeter: how to hold it, load it, pull back the slide.

“You’ll probably have trouble with that part,” he said. “A lot of the women do.”

“Oh really?” my daughter replied, and with a cagey smile proceeded to rack her weapon with such authority you could have heard it in the parking lot.

A proud-papa moment? I confess it was.

Justin Cronin is the author, most recently, of the novel “The Twelve.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/op...pagewanted=all

Interesting, but he still has some mental problems. A recent letter to the KU Kansan had a student write about his hatred of guns was because of something that happened when he was 9 years old. That event was the Beltway snipers. He was never a target, he was never close to a target, he didn't even know a victim. He was frightened by watching it on TV and watching his father be reluctant to get out of his car to pump gas. That seems to be the case with this guy at well. Emotionally frozen as a child.

So what is your point?Oh right there is none.

The hysteria over "assault weapons" is a legislative trojan horse .. It's one of those "pitches" which few will complain about for "fear" of being ridiculed and marginalized, but when the ink is dry on the legislation the scope of the "definition" will encompass more than just "assault weapons" as that term is appropriately defined and narrowly interpreted ...

A current article demonstrates the fallacy of the "argument" about violence in the U.S. and the demise of the "assault weapons" as a solution ... demonizing the thing, as opposed to the person .....



http://news.msn.com/us/bloody-weeken...des-in-january

As a "photo op" I would think that the "assault weapons" would appear at the bottom of the pix ....

.. instead there is one lonely pistol.

"Bloody weekend pushes Chicago to 40 homicides in January"

Who's the mayor of Chicago? Obaminable's buddy. A LIBERAL.

I'm just guessing, but I bet none .. NONE .. of those were purchased at a "gun shop" where there is a mandatory background check and NONE of the purchasers would qualify for a CHL. Just guessing, you understand.

I'm also "guessing" that NONE of the sellers or buyers would be filing some dumbass form with the Government to disclose the transaction or "transfer" of the firearm ... even if they actually had a serial number for identification. Just guessing, you understand.

40 killed in one month. 40.

It is ok if they kill 'em in Chicago just not your home town?

Interesting, but he still has some mental problems... Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

Really?

What qualifications do you possess that lead you to feel justified in rendering that diagnosis? And do you think that since, in your view, he publicly outed himself as one with "mental problems," the authorities should deny him the right to own firearms?

After all, there's a lot of consensus surrounding the view that people with "mental problems" shouldn't be allowed to own guns of any type.

What qualifications do you possess that lead you to feel justified in rendering that diagnosis? Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Originally Posted by LexusLover

I don't care what anyone says, that was funny!

I am not a gun grabber. You'll have to ask them who and why they will take away someone's rights.

As for his mental abnormality I base it on the little things he said; like diving for cover just because someone displayed a firearm, like thinking that firearms have some kind of evil hold on the owners, and saying it is not right to call gun owners "red necks" but just after he calls Rush Limbaugh and "the far right" (the "far right" consists of liberls, moderates, republicans, democrats, libertarians, non political people, and anyone who believes in self defense against violence and overreaching government) names for making "lunatic pronouncements". The author over reacts, is hypocritical, seems prone to panic. His reactions are outside the norm. If you are outside the norm then by the textbook you have mental problems. The important thing is how you deal with your mental illness.

The author over reacts, is hypocritical, seems prone to panic. His reactions are outside the norm. If you are outside the norm then by the textbook you have mental problems. The important thing is how you deal with your mental illness. Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

That's simply a ridiculous statement.

Why don't you say what's really on your mind? Do you think the guy suffers from "mental illness" just because he's an unabashed liberal? Judging from your usual posting style, I'd bet dollars to donuts that you do.

How was your stay at the Holiday Inn Express last night, Mr. Barleycorn?

I am not a gun grabber. You'll have to ask them who and why they will take away someone's rights.

As for his mental abnormality I base it on the little things he said; like diving for cover just because someone displayed a firearm, like thinking that firearms have some kind of evil hold on the owners, and saying it is not right to call gun owners "red necks" but just after he calls Rush Limbaugh and "the far right" (the "far right" consists of liberls, moderates, republicans, democrats, libertarians, non political people, and anyone who believes in self defense against violence and overreaching government) names for making "lunatic pronouncements". The author over reacts, is hypocritical, seems prone to panic. His reactions are outside the norm. If you are outside the norm then by the textbook you have mental problems. The important thing is how you deal with your mental illness. Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

One out of seventeen people in the US has mental problems.Add the amount of guns in the US and there is a prescription for danger.

Actually the number of people with the textbook definition of mental problems is most of us. Ask a shrink. No one is exactly sane as far as they are concerned (remember textbook definition). Everyone has a little something. Maybe they get irritated by stupid people, maybe they ignore their families for work, maybe they have a mild case of OCD that makes them a hell of a lawyer, or maybe they post on hooker boards in the middle of the night. Normal is boring and center of the bubble, exactly normal is not normal. Of course leave it to Washington to decide that ANY finding of mental disorder would disqualify you from gun ownership (shades of the Soviet Union).

You attempted to post a statistic, care to back it up?

Actually the number of people with the textbook definition of mental problems is most of us. Ask a shrink. Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

So now we have it. A "shrink" decides if we can possess a firearm.

Yes the FBI will turn the background checks over to the medical profession.They will be coming for your guns.

Actually the number of people with the textbook definition of mental problems is most of us. Ask a shrink. No one is exactly sane as far as they are concerned (remember textbook definition). Everyone has a little something... Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

Uh, OK -- got it! The fact that you think "most people" have "mental problems" caused you to reflexively opine that the author of the subject article must be mentally ill. Have I got that about right?

Everyone has a little something. Maybe they get irritated by stupid people... Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

Few of us are irritated by stupid people who do us the favor of sticking to activities like watching mindless TV shows while drinking beer. But when they ignorantly pop off about things they know nothing about...well, it can get a little annoying!