Your Gun is Bad and You Should Feel Bad
When something makes me angry, I tend to joke about it. Making jokes about things is kind of a coping mechanism for me. It’s a way of dealing with my anger. I guess the mentality is that if I can make a joke about it then it’s not worth getting angry over. That doesn’t work to make me less angry, mind you, but the attempt is there and I should get credit for that at least. I often make jokes about a certain mentality I see in the gun blog world that just irks me to no end.
Raise your hand if any of these completely made up quotes sound strangely familiar:
- “Why would anyone buy this gun when they could get a Glock?”
- “If you spend less than $1500 on a 1911 you’ve bought a piece of junk.”
- “You should be ashamed of yourself if you bought a [Taurus/Hi-Point/Other cheap brand].”
- “If you don’t shoot at least 2000 rounds every weekend then you shouldn’t have bought a gun.”
- “If you’re not going to spend thousands of hours with a professional trainer then you are more dangerous than criminals.”
I don’t know about you, but it’s almost like I’m reading some random gun blog when I look over those quotes…and that annoys me to no end. I’m not one for that whole touchy feely hippy everyone should get along utopian junk. I understand that conflict is part of life and so on. My problem is that we, as gun folk, are fighting a constant battle for support. One of the easiest ways to win said battle is to overwhelm with numbers. In order to do that, we need to constantly be attracting new people into the group.
Have you ever walked into a store for the first time and everyone there kind of turns and just stares at you? I’m not talking just gun stores, I mean any small store or diner or bar. It makes you feel like you’re intruding. It doesn’t make you comfortable and it certainly doesn’t make you want to spend your money there. It’s the same thing here. We are all representatives of the industry we love. We have the ability to make new shooters feel welcome or to drive them right into the welcoming arms of our opposition.
While I recognize that I am, in fact, complaining about jerky attitudes on the internet (which is where jerks go to grow and reproduce), this elitist and jerky attitude that I see among many blogs is counterproductive to all of our overall goals. There is a difference between confident and condescending and so many people get that wrong. It seems like so many people have been shooting guns since they were a fetus that they forget what it’s like to start out. They don’t stop to think how their phrasing can be taken. There’s also the fact that some people are just unapologetic douchebags.
Not to sound self-serving but it’s one of the main reasons for my writing guidelines on this site:
- Don’t be an elitist jerk
- Be friendly and fun
- Don’t talk down to the reader
- No politics
- Educate, don’t alienate
- Research Everything
- Don’t assume something is common knowledge
- Only 2 Doctor Who references per year.
Every article I write, I check it against those guidelines before I publish although, admittedly, I’m kind of breaking a couple of those rules with this post. My reasoning with those rules is that I want this site to be a stark contrast to a stereotype. One of the reasons that many people are anti-gun is that their only exposure to them are Hollywood and the anti-gun crowd. Then they go to one of the many blogs that show up top on the list and see these condescending or political fueled posts that really come off as quite nasty and it’s only going to confirm their established views. While we will never convert everyone, even one or two people joining our side is better than pushing that same number closer to the other side. That’s why I wanted to create a friendly site that was only about education and fun. Yes, there needs to be politically oriented sites because information, like Spice, needs to flow. Even on those sites, however, we can all do our best to welcome new shooters with a friendly atmosphere rather than say “well, if you’re not already with us then you’re never going to be so we don’t care about you.”
So if someone buys their first gun and wants to tell me about it, I don’t care if it’s a Hi-Point or some uber-1911 that they took out a second mortgage to buy, I will be excited about it. It’s not fake excitement either. I am genuinely happy for that person because I know that they are entering a very fun world. At the same time, I try not to bash any firearm. If it’s not good, it’s not good and I’ll point it out but I’m not going to be brutal about it. It does no good for a writer or the industry as a whole to say “your gun is crap, you should have bought a Glock”. All that does is pad your own ego and that, to me, makes you just as bad as the anti-gun crowd. Why? Because while they’re trying to attract people away, you’re helping them out by driving people right to them. In my book, that’s betrayal from within
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