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Last Updated: Aug 28, 2009 - 10:45:21 AM |
Recently I have come to realize just how much impact our training,
experience and other factors have on how we view our firearms. Everyone
is different but some general principles can be seen in the various
groups of shooters. Each and every subgroup which makes up the shooting
community has its own views and perspectives and we should understand
them if we wish to improve ourselves and strengthen our community. Too
often we develop an us-versus-them mentality within the shooting
community and this hurts the entire gun culture and the it is only
through understanding one another that we can come together as a group
and face our true enemies. It is with this in mind that I offer my
perspective on how we differ.
I am a survivalist, I was
raised to view things through that reality tunnel. As such I look at
weapons as a total system, not just the weapons themselves but the
parts, magazines, cleaning equipment and everything related to care and
use of the weapon I view as a whole. I consider my ability to support
the weapon and keep it running without outside help. I look at the
weapon in the context of how many jobs it can do for me instead as a
specialized instrument designed to do one job superbly. I also choose
weapons which can be expected to run with minimal care, not for years,
but for generations. The goal of obtaining and training with my weapons
is to allow me and those with me to survive without the normal
mechanisms of civilized society. My weapons are tools to allow me to
master my environment no matter the nature of the challenges I am
presented with.
The collectors see their weapons in a more
mechanical and artistic sense. It is the weapon itself, its history,
its design that attracts this person. While the collector may well
enjoy shooting his possessions he does not see them as tools for
controlling his environment but simply to enjoy them as objects.
Likewise the target shooter views his weapons as a means of honing and
demonstrating his skills, not using those skills in the world outside
the range.
The hunter looks first to the game and chooses the
weapon accordingly. The rules of hunting call for clear shoots with
little obstruction to either observation or shot and will involve an
absolute minimum of shots fired. The hunter expects his weapon to
function perfectly every time, and given the limited nature of its
operation should do so for many years. The hunter sees, not an
adversary but a target. Even the most dangerous animal, while the
hunter may respect it, has little chance of turning the tables and
becoming a threat and none at all of being a threat at a distance.
The
armed civilian on the other hand tends to look only at the narrow issue
of carrying a handgun concealed on their person. The handgun is their
primary (and sometimes only) weapon and they view it as such. You hear
questions of finish, weight, size, caliber and effectiveness. You often
hear them discuss the issue of carrying several handguns, and even
whether spare ammunition should be ignored in favor of other loaded
handguns. The ability to hit at a distance, to penetrate hardened
targets, to kill large animals, etc. are completely foreign to their
way of thinking.
The Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) has an
entirely different set of issues (I speak here of regular LEO's, not
SWAT or specialized operators). The LEO's job is not to harm or kill,
but to subdue and detain. The primary weapon of the LEO is the
handgun, but it is just one tool among many. Tasers, pepper-spray,
batons and other non-lethal options come before the pistol and the
shotgun and patrol rifle come after. To the LEO lethal force is
something to be avoided if possible and any action must be limited in
scope (no spray-and-pray allowed) and is strictly reactive in nature.
Lastly
we have those who have been trained by the military. Military trained
personnel are different from all other members of the shooting
community in that they are 'Active shooters'. The job of the military
is to take the fight to the enemy, even in 'defensive' situations the
job is to see the enemy and hit him hard. The soldier is trained to
respond to a threat actively and offensively in an environment with
little concern for the niceties of civil law, this is not to say that
the soldier is lawless or kill happy but rather that the circumstances
and environment that they are trained for is so radically different
that it cannot be judged by the same standards as the civilian. Once
the soldier has reentered civilian life many of these lessons remain
and the person tends towards the same type of weapons they used in the
military, think of how many former soldiers go on to purchase the
civilian versions of their service weapon. Think too of how many times
we have heard of former soldiers who act offensively when confronted
with violence in the civilian world.
Why is all of this
important? Because we in the gun culture often our own worst enemies.
We fail to empathize with our fellow gun owners and shooters. Look at
the example of Jim Zumbo, a long time hunter and shooter whose complete
failure to understand those outside of his personal sub-culture led to
others in our community to cast him out and destroy his career. The
problem is that most of us are guilty of similar transgressions, albeit
not to the same degree and not as publicly. I myself have been guilty
of dismissing and disrespecting certain shooters, without understanding
that just because I find their activity silly or incomprehensible
doesn't make them any less my fellow shooters. We are all in this
together and we all have the same enemies. The anti-gunners want all of
our guns, not just the pistols or the "assault weapons" or the other
specific target of the month. Just because I think dressing up like a
cowboy and slinging a sixgun is silly does not make those who enjoy it
idiots anymore than my ownership and use of semiautomatic rifles makes
me a rampaging psycho. We all need to start trying to see things from
the others guys perspective and agreeing to disagree on the details and
remember that we must all hang together or we shall surely hang
separately.
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