Prof Meets Gun 2: Gun Range Visit & Gun Answers
A couple of days ago I pointed at UD, an academic who was planning to visit a gun range to, you know, actually get some actual facts, rather than just go with the antis told her.
Here UD comments on her experience.
Two things: first, she’s having to deal with the obligatory canard that wanting to shoot guns is all about penis envy.
Second, she’s asking her readers for advice on whether or not she try shooting herself. She gets some very good, very positive answeres.
Five people, four of them local, have offered to take [UD] shooting at a range.
Before she talks about that, she wants to thank all the gunnies (This is one of many new words UD has learned; and here’s a new phrase, courtesy of one of the readers of her other blog: freaking the mundanes. Which in this case refers, I guess, to UD freaking out gun control people.) who’ve written comments here or who’ve emailed her to express appreciation for her willingness to get closer to guns rather than, as she’s done before this, rail against them at a distance. She’s been delighted by the helpfulness, courtliness, and humor of many of these responses.
Almost every single person I’ve ever seen or heard says exactly the same thing about their first contact with gunnies. As Heinlein says, “An armed society is a polite society.”
No one advises her not to shoot, except for one clown who warns her that she might end up as the president of the NRA (a ha-ha-only-serious comment if there ever was one). The anti-freedom crowd has zero presence in this discussion.
My answer on both points:
You should go shooting exactly because you “have reservations”.
Face your fears. Resist peer pressure. Take command of your life.
If you can get about without a minder, you can handle a gun safely. For inspiration, watch this girl go through a tactical shooting exercise. If she can do it, so can you.
Since you’re fending off attacks by your peers on the “necessary and boring” sexualization of guns, let me provide you with my standard response to charges of “penis envy”:
My father owns a walking-stick made from a bull’s penis stretched over an iron rod. He is the only person I know who can, heh heh, beat off an attacker with his penis.
I admit that my own, personal penis is pitifully inadequate for self-defense purposes.
Clearly, women should be left defenseless, since they are anatomically unsuited for it. Plus, it makes them so much easier to subdue.
It’s also true that the elderly and handicapped do not deserve the right to self-defense, since their wang-fu will likely be inadequate for a variety of reasons. We don’t need such human rubbish, anyway.
And I admit, I’ve always found it disturbing that we must publicly brand our police and military as puny weaklings by issuing them handguns and rifles.
Go to the range. You’ll have fun.
Welcome to freedom.
By the way, from comments there, in one of the comments I found this excellent article with links to sources rebutting most of the gun control propaganda. It’s an absolute gold mine. Strongly recommended.
[Series note]
I didn’t realize this was going to turn into a series. I’ve retitled the posts so far, but have left their URLs untouched so as not to break any existing links. Note that my numbers are not consistent with UD’s.
Posts in this series:
Prof Meets Gun 4: UD Visiting Gun Show, Range
Prof Meets Gun 3: On Scholars Visiting Gun Ranges
Prof Meets Gun 2: Gun Range Visit & Gun Answers (This post)
Prof Meets Gun 1
Tags: first time shooter, Guns, prof meets gun, professor meets gun, University Diaries