Hoplophobes and kids

[XD40coyote]

I guess I never turned out anti because neither side of the argument ever entered into my upbringing. The news media ( shame on them!) had more to do with my interest in guns than anything, and at first I was mighty cynical and had a foot on each side of the debate.

The other night I was bored out of my mind and was looking at my old gun articles scrapbook that I put together in 1993 or something. The articles contained within were basically from 1989 to 1992, and were a mix of newspaper and magazine articles. The main thing I noticed was the absolute proliferation of articles and editorals about " assault weapons". The media was so obsessed with this and with guns in general, how else did I collect such a huge # of articles? Most were negative anti gun junk and I about got sick trying to read any of them. At the time I clipped them out to save, I was a different person who was semi anti. I can also confirm this by looking at journals and drawings and other assorted art/writings of mine from the time.

So what happened?

I matured! Also I started to meet real gun owners and lots of them. Most of my customers hunt with some sort of firearm. I also got to know one who uses an AR to hunt deer with ( MD). When he first told me this I was thinking " what? who hunts with those?", but all one has to do is be open minded! Over the years, I found that this segment of gun owners WERE NOT the evil that the media paints them to be. Visits to gun stores in 2000 showed me that the "gun nuts" who work at such stores are not evil crazy people LOL. That was also when I became a gun owner ( an "ultra evil" handgun no less!), and it was not to go and shoot a bunch of people at a mall or to rob convenience stores with.


BTW anyone recall that "All in the Family" episode where Gloria and her hippy husband object to Archie Bunker buying a toy gun for his little grandson? How they got all mad at him and railed on about the evils of guns? That was MANY years ago that I saw that and is the only episode I can even remember anything of!