I believe that the shooting sports (unlike such stylishly sanitized designer pursuits as fly fishing for the 90s) serve as the politically incorrect metaphor for that most unpopular of citizens – the Classical Man (as opposed to the Modern Man). As such, when I am asked by one who fears and loathes firearms, why anyone would find fascination in weapons, my answer is, ‘For the same reason that makes you afraid of such things’.
Jack Chleva
Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries Vol. 6, No. 3, March 1998
[I didn’t buy my first firearm until the Clinton’s were elected. I read banned books and I buy banned firearms. I push the envelope because I think it’s the required response. I push back because they started the pushing.–Joe]
Same here. I was exposed to shooting as a kid, but I didn’t own a gun myself until my friend Jason told me there were Romanian Kalashnikovs available for around $300 dollars. That interested me just as a fuck you to Bill Clinton’s AWB, but then I rediscovered that I had once liked shooting. It was downhill from there.
Funny, I would have considered you a lifelong shooter. Granted I didn’t own my first gun until Bush Sr. was in office, that was mostly because of age. However, I had been shooting for as long as I could remember.
I grew up on a farm with lots of guns around but we didn’t do much shooting. I shot maybe a total of two hundred rounds in the first 35 years of my life. After I left home, for a long time, there was never money or a place (that I knew about) to go shooting. After the Clinton’s were elected, but before they took office, I bought my first gun. Since then I have fired over 100K rounds.
I grew up with .22 rifles, plinking mostly. Our mother would buy ammo for us and say, “now be careful” and that was that. After high school I pretty much forgot about shooting, having become something of a leftist scum bag.
My friends continued to shoot, and when Clinton’s hard core BS was imminent, they told me I had better get a gun while I could.
Within days I bought two– a 15 + 1 round capacity Glock 10mm and a little .38 snubbie. Since then I’ve lost count of how many guns I own, and I’ve started a business selling firearm accessories, and I’ve become a pro freedom amateur writer.
For all that you can thank the Left for going apeshit with power in the 1990s. It woke me up.
Lyle, I love my Glock 29. I don’t understand all the hatred of the 10mm, I personally love the cartridge.
But I grew up shooting .357 magnums, so I don’t mind the recoil at all.
I grew up in Suburbia of Liberal parents and among Liberals and went to a Hippie Farm College instilled with a “Guns Are Bad” philosophy. Late in life I inherited an 100-year old rifle when my Grandpa passed away at age 98, and it started me on a new track away from mindless conformity. 🙂
Robb: It was right before the “Brady Bill” went into effect. I knew next to nothing of firearms except which end that fast-moving lead thingy came out, and there was no time for lessons or research. I wanted a standard capacity auto pistol and I was reading the specs for the various offerings at the local outfitters. Comparing muzzle energies, I noticed that the 10 mm delivered the highest energy of all their in-stock self-loaders. I already had the little .38, so I had to have the G20 of course.
Since then I learned about Cooper, the FBI’s relationship with the cartridge, the Bren Ten story and so on. Now I often refer to my 10 mm as a “.40 Smith & Wesson Magnum” just to mess with people. I like it well enough, it’s had many tens of thousands of rounds through it, and when friends go hiking in Bear country, they ask to borrow my Glock 20 and some 200 grain TMJ loads.