America's gun madness: How guns went from tools to ideology to identity

[marmar]

America's gun madness: How guns went from tools to ideology to identity
I was taught to handle and shoot guns as a boy. But the insane, murderous gun culture of today is something new

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
MARCH 27, 2021 12:00PM


(Salon) The target range was in the basement of one of the old buildings on the main post at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It had a low ceiling, and I remember posts every 10 feet or so holding up the floor above. Our father, who was then a major in the Army, sent my brother Frank and me there every Saturday morning for NRA target shooting with .22 caliber rifles. I guess you could say it was part of our introduction into manhood. I was 13 and in the 7th grade at the time. Frank was 11 and in the 6th grade.

They took guns very seriously at that Army post. We spent the first couple of Saturdays disassembling and assembling and cleaning the target rifles and learning what they called "range discipline" and safety at the firing range. I think three weeks had passed by the time we were first given a few .22 long rifle rounds to shoot at small bullseye targets hung about 25 feet away.

"Ready on the left! Ready on the right! Ready on the firing line!" I can still hear the sergeant's voice booming from his position just behind where we lay prone ready to fire. "Commence firing!" he would bellow, and we were then allowed to pick up one of the five .22 rounds we had been given and load it into the bolt-action receiver of our target rifles and fire it downrange. We would repeat the process four more times, and then we would hear the sergeant call out, "Cease fire on the firing line!" Then we'd get up and turn our firing position over to the next boy.

....(snip)....

That's what the NRA did back then. It sponsored courses in gun safety, range safety and shooting competitions and promoted hunting with rifles — hence its name, the National "Rifle" Association. I don't remember my father being a member, or Frank or I having an NRA membership. On an Army post, the NRA just did that stuff:, They ran the gun safety course and shooting competition because that was their purpose, their reason for being.

....(snip)....

And then one day in 1985, I went to a gun show in New Orleans, where I was living at the time, and this is what I saw: table after table covered end to end with military-style assault rifles and machine pistols and AK-47s and chrome .44 magnum handguns and more assault rifles and silencers and kits that would transform a civilian AR-15 rifle from semiautomatic operation into a fully automatic weapon of war. Tables covered with Nazi memorabilia, Luger pistols from the Nazi era, Nazi helmets, gray Nazi uniforms, black Nazi uniforms with SS insignia, Nazi medals like the Iron Cross, swastika flags. Whole tables of Confederate flags, Confederate memorabilia like gray "Kepi" caps with crossed-rifle insignia, Kerr M-1855 revolvers used by the Confederate cavalry, Lefaucheux M-1854 revolvers carried by Confederate officers, gray wool Confederate uniforms — some replicas, some original — Confederate officer's swords, Civil War-era bayonets and "short sword" fighting knives carried by Confederate soldiers. More Nazi flags, more Lugers, more Nazi helmets, more assault rifles, more silencers, more of everything in a gigantic convention center hall that took 20 minutes to traverse … and that was a single row of tables. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/03/27/americas-gun-madness-how-guns-went-from-tools-to-ideology-to-identity/

[ChazInAz]

1. Truth spoken, here.

My personal experience.
My first exposure to shooting matches the author's: safety training with old, bolt action .22s in an NRA range at age fifteen. A very long time ago.
For many years, I was a professional knife maker and hobbyist gunsmith. (I like to build replica antique black-powder firearms. Quite good at it!) Since there aren't very many knife shows in the world, I'd frequently exhibit my blades and wheel-locks at gun shows.
That's where the author and I intersect experiences, again. The character of many people who were both exhibitors and buyers there appalled me. My family immigrated from Hungary in 1956, my father never spoke of his experiences in the Hungarian air force as an officer during WWII, but I have suspicions. Let's just say that fascist memorabilia makes me uneasy.
Yet there it was as the author described: flags, guns, uniforms. A huge NRA table always occupied a whole end wall of the exhibit hall, recruiting and disseminating propaganda. Every day, the "festivities" were ironically inaugurated with "The Star Spangled Banner" and Pledge of Allegiance. After all, these people are loyal, all-American patriots.
Eventually, I just said "Scroot" and stopped exhibiting at these after one especially patriotic specimen dismissed my copy of a Jakob Dickert Pennsylvania long rifle (Took me a year to build.) as an "Obama gun".

[pfitz59]

2. I attended an NRA hunter safety course when I was 10

Required to get a hunting license. I liked hunting birds with a small bore shotgun. I stopped hunting years ago, and am appalled at the cult which is the current "gun culture". If it was just about putting food on the table, fine, but these "ammo-sexuals" dream about killing "the other". They are sick.