>Most arguments I've seen in favor of 'gun
>rights' exhibit what I view as a terrifying and monstrous disregard
>for the safety of others - or an outright delusional view of the role
>of force in society and law and order, or most often of all, both.

I think what you're seeing there, unfortunately, is a consequence of how thoroughly (and, on both sides, often deliberately) polarized the issue has become. Very few of the visible commenters on either side will acknowledge the possibility of any middle ground at all. This is a self-perpetuating state of affairs, since each side, seeing that the other refuses to consider any kind of concession at all, increasingly casts itself in the role of an underdog fighting for its basic survival. That's not a climate that invites consensus.

Meanwhile, those of us in the middle - people like me, shooters and collectors who don't regard the concept of rational regulation as an existential threat or an affront to our basic rights - get so tired of being regarded as The Enemy by the strident ban proponents and the super-aggressive advocates that we see no viable option other than to retire from the field altogether and just let them fight it out.

(The thing that bothers me most about where the whole debate has come to is that the aggression and rampant ad hominem on both sides make it increasingly unlikely that whatever regulation we ultimately end up with - and we will ultimately end up with some, society won't let this shit go on indefinitely - will be rational.)

>So it's important to draw a distinction between shattering the
>diseased gun culture and actually stigmatizing guns, or worse,
>gun owners simply on that basis.

Unfortunately, not only is that a recognized tactic, it is something the most visible part of the Gun Lobby is managing to do without any help from the other side...

The other day someone on my Twitter timeline retweeted a news item about a kid being arrested for bringing a rifle to school, and I remarked at how much the times had changed, given that when I was in high school, a number of my classmates routinely brought their rifles to school in November - because that's when deer season is. Slightly to my surprise, the reaction I got (apart from people thinking I was snarking on the authorities for overreacting, when I was in fact observing that 25 years ago there would've been nothing to react to) was someone flat-out calling me a liar and saying that would never, ever have been allowed.

So, like I say, how times have changed.

One last observation in this same vein, and then I'll go find something else to talk about. A few years ago, my mother was teaching elementary gifted-and-talented at a school an hour or so north of here. You think I live in the sticks, this place is the sticks and a half. Anyway, they were doing a unit about life in colonial America, and Mom had the idea of arranging a demonstration to show the kids what the colonial American, particularly in really remote areas like Maine, was up against in terms of sourcing a decent food supply. Most of these kids had older relatives who hunt, but hunting in the early 21st century is not the same enterprise as hunting in the 16th.

To that end, she went to the administration of the school and the local constabulary and asked them if she could arrange for me to bring a flintlock rifle in and show it to the class. That way, we reasoned, they could get a feel for how long, heavy, and generally unwieldy such a thing is compared to a modern deer rifle, and what a lot of paraphernalia goes with it, and how long and involved a process preparing it to fire is. This demonstration would obviously not have involved actually loading and firing the rifle, but even in pantomime, it would be obvious how much harder it is to employ a muzzleloading flintlock rifle in the field.

Keeping in mind that this is a profoundly rural school, we were somewhat surprised by the administration's reaction to this proposal. The local cops were interested, and would have been perfectly happy with it if we had undertaken to bring no live gunpowder onto the school grounds; we would have had to coordinate it with them closely, as they were going to have to send one of their guys to "supervise" in order for the enterprise to be in compliance with various laws about firearms on the grounds of public schools, but other than that, they had no problems.

The school's principal, on the other hand, reacted as if we had proposed that we train the children to fire indiscriminately into a crowd with an AK-47.* "Horror" is not too extreme a word to describe the official reaction. Mom's contract was not renewed at the end of that school year, and no one would ever tell her why not, but we both have suspected ever since that it was in large part because she had the temerity to propose such a course of action.

All of which is a long-winded way of not really explaining why one feels a bit odd discussing these matters in public nowadays, particularly with all the lunatics, assholes, and deranged Walter Mitty types out there diligently making the opposition's tarring brush wider and wider.

However! In view of the support expressed here, and taking the point that letting the increasingly toxic climate chase me off my own porch does nothing to counteract the problem, perhaps I'll keep on with Gun of the Week for a while longer, anyway.

--G.
* A dark irony there is that, quite by design, one does not require training to fire indiscriminately into a crowd with an AK-47.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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