A gun enthusiast looks at a shotgun during the annual National Rifle Association (NRA) convention in Dallas, Texas, U.S., May 5, 2018. Lucas Jackson/Reuters
The following is an excerpt from 'Arms: The Culture and Credo of the Gun'[1] by A.J. Somerset:
I like guns. That's a difficult admission, as if confessing to some kind of perversion, though it ought not to be. People like all kinds of things: cars, sailboats, acoustic guitars, fountain pens, Swiss watches, split-cane fly rods, canoes. Nobody has to justify liking these things, as I am continually asked to justify liking guns. My reason is simple: shooting is fun[2], just as blasting music is fun, or canoeing, or fly fishing, or driving a powerful car at irresponsible speeds. Nobody thinks you're weird for liking power tools.
But people are likely to think you're weird for liking guns. In their eyes, you become one of those gun nuts. And although I like guns, I do not like gun nuts. I do not like hearing people talk about keeping a gun handy[3] to deal with goblins, or to resist socialism, or to survive the coming collapse. And in the aftermath of a gun-related tragedy, of a Newtown or an Aurora, I detest the voices that squawk about their right to bear arms in the face of suggestions that, you know, maybe we should make guns just a little bit more difficult for the average person with homicidal intent to buy. I like guns, in other words, but I'm uncomfortable with gun culture.
Courtesy of Biblioasis
In this young millennium gun culture has grown more radical and less tolerant of any who depart from its tenets. If you
