Hiya Riy,
I just got back from a "refreshing" vaca to the mountains, so I'll do my best to give an answer to your questions/comments.
First let me say this....
OK... you don't care for guns. I can live with that. You acknowledge the Constitutional Right as envisioned by our founding fathers, it seems. Futhermore, you have stated that you are able to understand the difference between a tool and an action.
On top of that, you have stated that you are not interested in banning firearms.
You just said that you don't care for them.
OK. I can live with that. It seems that you can live with me as well. As I see it, we have no issue.
What I don't get really is the point of your post. I get the impression that you have CHOSEN to indentify with activist opponents to our rights.
If you CHOOSE to identify with those who seek to remove rights protected by our Constitution and in the face of our founding fathers, you CANNOT expect to be treated any differently than those with whom you choose to identify.
My advice to you (should you choose to consider it) is to stop identifying with them. From my view, you'd be a non-element in the equation. I'd have no quarl with you, and presumably you'd have none with me.
However, those who actively stand against our rights... well, all bets are off.
At any rate...
Here's my take on your post....
I don't like guns.
I don't have anything against you owning them if you want to, but I don't like them.
Stated above. We should have no quarl... unless something materially changes on your part.
In fact, I prefer that the people around me don't have guns.
Fair enough. I prefer a lot of things as well.
To me, guns are a lot like mass media journalists; they are protected, they cannot be effectively regulated despite anyone's best efforts, they are ostensibly necessary to a free state and their supporters enjoy reminding us of the fact, they are everywhere you look, they are loud and obnoxious, they have potential to be part of a greater good but are just as easily a tool to be used for tremendous wrongdoing, and, like a nasty car wreck, people just seem to fixate on them regardless of their views.
I am still trying to figure out how the firearm that I have in my gun safe is being loud and obnoxious.
I thought you said that you understood that they were TOOLS.
No, my dear... the only loud and obnoxious ones are the journalists that you have mentioned who KEEP SENSATIONALIZING everything.
Why do no journalist go on and on about that car accident? A car is a tool as well.
When I see a gun, I see Nancy Grace; lots of hype, lots of noise, lots of misinformation, hard to look at. That's just me.
Many things are hard for me to look at as well. Aren't we a quirky bunch? But its OK as long as WE know we are.
I say this with both conviction and humility... I am a journalist.
OK.
I come to your site as a member today after having spent the better part of the last year lurking as a guest only. I've read a tremendous number of posts in that time. And, in that time, I've also developed a tremendous fascination with gun culture.
I'm happy that you have taken the time to read. Thanks for that.
I'm not an "anti" but I will readily admit that I am bordering on it.
Why are you bordering on it?
The last time I checked your journalism is a BOR issue as well. Shall we all go "anti" 1st Amendment and shut you up?
See... that's the trouble with rights. We have them, too. When you start looking at infringing on mine, your's are next.
And why would you want to do something like that anyway?
And before anyone should suggest that I find someone to take me out to the range to "convert" me, let me explain that I grew up in a very pro-gun family and was schooled in the ways of the gun from a very young age. In fact, my heritage is in large part the reason that I find myself here at all (at least until the inevitable point that I am branded a troll and rendered persona non grata) .
Again.... Fair enough. I don't want to convert you. I'm quite OK with you leaving us alone and we leaving you alone. I'll not cross that line and I hope the same of you.
My father you see is deceased. He was a decorated veteran, an avid shooter and accomplished marksman, a local NRA leader, a respected community leader, and an apparently well-liked member of this board until his passing. The latter fact determined by my sister and I only upon delving into his personal affairs after his death. Now, as much as some of you might be tempted to offer some form of condolence or other well-meaning expression, please withhold doing so. I have no regret in the fact that my father has passed. Nor does my sister.
The man, despite being revered by virtually all who met him, despite being nearly locally iconic in his role as a neo-classic Texas gentleman rancher, and despite his lifelong devotion to all that is considered sacred by the multitudes of pro-gunners here and elsewhere, was possessed of certain peculiarities of personality that rendered him considerably less beloved in the eyes of those who knew him inside his residence. While I will spare all the burden of a detailed disclosure, let it be known simply that he was not the kind of man that most parents would prefer their children to visit. He was also not the kind of man most parents would wish their daughters to marry. And, despite his public remonstrations regarding gun-control and its' infringement upon responsible, God-fearing American heroes such as himself, he was, as several members of our family might argue, perhaps the last person on the planet that should be afforded the right to own a firearm. I argue that now, as a 38 year-old woman, just as readily as I wish I could have when I was an 11 year-old girl all too familiar with the business ends of my father's various and creatively-employed implements of assault.
Thanks for the background. Considering what you write next, it leaves as many questions as answers, however.
For that reason, I'll stay in the present and address the person here-- and not him.
Yet, despite this, I am able to separate the tools from the man wielding them.
I question this-- considering that you consider them loud an obnixous. But OK.
Despite the horrors inflicted by my father, I managed to find and marry a good man, have a fulfilling relationship, raise two daughters of my own to near-adulthood, and cultivate a successful career as a nationally syndicated writer. Indeed, my sister was not so lucky. Nor was our mother.
OK. Glad and Sad. A lot of life is overcoming our past. I'm glad you did. But I don't understand how this particularly pertains to the question at hand really. Nor do I really see you as being unique in this regard. All of us have histories. I have one as well... but I'll keep it to myself.
Still, and again, I don't like guns.
That is your right.
I don't like them around me.
That is your preference.
But as a borderline "anti" I would like to give gun owners everywhere the benefit of the doubt.
Thank you.
I try very, very hard in fact to do so. Sometimes it is profoundly difficult for me. You see, I would wager that among the ranks of this board there are no small number of self-appointed defenders of individual right who, like my father, wear but a very thin gloss of veneer over the churning internal stink of hatred and depravity that is their true being.
Excuse me? You consider being a "defender" of our right that is CONTINUALLY being attacked as hatred?
I seriously believe that you are unable to seperate us from your father. It seems that perhaps you have some unresolved issues with that.
But I highly resent your characterization of those who are active in standing against the Bradies, Joyces, and VPC's of the world. Can name any organizations that exist solely to infinge on the 1st amendment right that pays your bills and you so avidly use? I just named three of many that are against ours....
I presume that you are not a member of any journalistic societies or organizations then.
I thought so.
But understand that I am a reasonable and rational woman who knows that at least some of you are truly as good a group of people as you proclaim to be, and, as such I do not wish to color all of you with the same crude and ugly stroke of brush with which I am about to obliterate the last remnants of my father's ill and lurid history. Those, you, deserve at least that much from a borderline "anti" like me.
If you chose to characterize any activists in our community in the same distain you seem to hold for your father, then I would question how reasonable and rational you are.
I'd suggest that you revist the notion of firearms after you resolve your feelings towards your father. I don't know him, he's come up as an example of gun ownership a few times in this post.
I'd rather not be measured by a person outside of the sphere of my influence. I'd further prefer that I wasn't measured by a person whom you have issues with.
It would be unfair, and dare I say it... irrational.
But tell me...
Why then, given the fact that "I" am capable of giving "you" that benefit; given the fact that I am able to objectively reason through the illogisms that struggle so hard to compel me to not only write you off, but also commit my considerable energy and resources to supporting, with pen and with pocketbook, the cause of those that would see your rights decimated and ground to shards... WHY THEN do you choose to disparage me and others of those like me?
If you identify with the opponents of our Constitutional Rights, you may well get caught in the net of some disparaging remark. My earlier advice of not choosing to indentify with those comes to mind.
But does it really suprise you that disparaging remarks against people whom such difference of opinion exists-- not to mention the emotional component...
Does it really suprise you that people say things like that?
How many Redneck jokes have you heard? Or how many have you told?
Hillary told a group of people not long ago "Why the Hell would anyone want to live in Mississippi"
Later that week, she told voters in Iowa that she expected them to be better than Mississippi.
And lets not forget that Obama considers us "bitter" and "clinging to our religion and guns."
My dear, marginalization and disparaging comments are far from uncommon in our world.
Don't identify with a group that we have cause to feel that way about if you are not of the mindset of that group. If you ARE of that group, then get over it and quit wondering why.
Why do you call us sheep?
I don't. I have a few names reserved for opponents, but you have stated that you are not one of those.
Why do you assail the fact that some of us, like me, choose to live in San Francisco?
I don't. *I* wouldn't live there-- and I've lived in 5 of the largest 10 US cities within my lifetime.
But likely, you wouldn't like to live where I live, either.
Why does our concern with the environment and healthcare result in invective?
Say what?
Where are you getting your correlations?
I am getting the impression that you have formed a long of your views based upon generalizations.
I talk about the issues with environment and healthcare routinely among my friends. Oh.... and I am a Republican. That ought to knock the sampling out of whack.
You see, there are many, many of us out here who all of you consider "antis' who are not at all.
Wrong. If you are anti-2nd Amendment, then you ARE an anti.
If you are something else, then you are something else.
If I disagree with you on another position, well I disagree with you on another issue. I may do so vehemently. But that doesn't mean I consider you an "Anti- 2nd Amendment" person.
There are some of us who, were we to give in to the temptation to slip logic in kind at the butt of your own tendencies to do so, would have damn fine reason to be "antis", would be very good at it, and would represent a considerable benefit to the cause of your nemeses.
What exactly are you trying to say here? That you'd be good at being our enemy? OK... fine.
We are legion. And our words are mightier than bullets. And we don't run out of ammo.
And likewise, we don't either. You see, WE also have the 1st Amendment. (It was a package deal-- buy one, get the rest free-- while supplies last.)
It may suprise you to learn that we have writers and those trained in mass comm, too. I'm one of them.
So, the next time you feel like hurling wisdom at us, the next time your own brush feels heavy and wanting for a target, consider that there are a few of us who haven't yet decided which ring to throw our dogs in. And our dogs are big. And our dogs are hungry.
Lets cut the crap. I don't like veiled threats.
If you identify with anti-2nd Amendment activist, you get exactly what you can expect.
If you aren't one, then why the hell have you come here trying to threaten us? Or is there more you haven't mentioned...
With regards,
A loud, powerful, logical, well-connected, female and liberal California journalist who really doesn't want to take away your guns, but leans further in that direction every time she sees your lack of personal self-control.
Clearly.
-- John