The Great Gun Hiatus

I've mentioned before that I owned no guns from 1998-2008. The reason I got rid of everything is because I was going to grad school in New Jersey. I knew enough about New Jersey to know that I didn't want to go through the hassle of proving that I was worthy of owning guns, and I decided to just do without. (Not to mention that, as a grad student, I wasn't going to have a lot of time to go shooting even if I could find someplace to shoot.)

I hadn't planned on sticking around New Jersey after grad school, but I was also planning on actually finishing my Ph.D., and we see how well that worked out. In retrospect, it was frighteningly easy to get out of the lifestyle. And this is what the gun control folks (or statists in general) rely on. They're essentially sniping the people who don't want to put up with the hassle, and as they thin out the herd, they change popular culture. People stop viewing guns as everyday objects and start seeing them as things that only police, military, and homegrown terrorists have.

At my local gun club, they open every monthly meeting by welcoming any guests and asking them to introduce themselves and say a little bit about what brought them there. At the first meeting I attended, I expressed my reason for coming thusly: "I'm here because I'm looking for someplace to shoot. I also believe it's part of my civic duty to promote responsible gun ownership." What's unfortunate about summing things up in that latter sentence is that one might naturally assume that the emphasis is on "responsible". The emphasis was actually on the "gun ownership" part. I want more people to own guns, or at least know reasonable people who own guns and don't see anything peculiar in it. I can't go head-to-head with Michael Bloomberg, but I can do my small part.