This was a nice couple in their 50’s, fairly conservative, into classic cars, and in the market for a .38 for home protection. They were not loony-tune lefties by any means. They also mentioned a good friend who owns many guns and reloads. The conversation rolled along smoothly until the topic of “Uzi’s and machineguns” came up. As you can imagine, it wasn’t me talking about “Uzi’s and machineguns.”
I explained that there is little difference between an Uzi and any 9mm handgun or carbine and that legal machineguns are virtually never used in crime. That so called “assault weapons” are also rarely used In crime and that millions and millions of them are owned and used every day without hurting anyone. That the Second Amendment isn’t about duck or deer hunting, it is about being able to defend yourself, your family, your community, your state, and your country.
That is when the woman said something really chilling. She said that those crazy people who want all of those military weapons and think they have a right to that kind of capability just infuriate her and scare her to death and even though she doesn’t think people should have machineguns, those crazy people make her wish she had a machinegun to just shoot them all.
What on earth do you do with something like that?
Jeff Knox
February 18, 2010
A Lot of Work to Do
[We sometimes don’t realize just how disconnected we are from the mindset of a lot of other people.
I’m probably not the best person to answer Jeff’s question. I think they way I would handle it would be to ask if she felt the same way about blacks, Jews, or homosexuals.
Long term what we have to do is “come out of the closet”. We have to get people to see us as normal or even better, as human with sheepdog tendencies. Take people to the range, get your shooting events mentioned in the mainstream media, and make it possible for people to think of you as little different than someone who goes to a different church than most of the people in the neighborhood.–Joe]
Here lately I call upon a concept I got somewhere on the Internet. That woman and I have a “systemic misunderstanding”. When your world view and mine are so different that the addition of information does not improve communication. It has saved me a lot of time and fruitless argument. I dust it off and use it often.
The other day I went to the dentist, wearing the Kalashnikitty shirt that I received just before Valentine’s day. After the visit he asked about my shirt, mentioning that he didn’t know anything about guns. So I told him a brief history of the AK-47 designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov. The words machine gun, assault weapon, and evil black rifle never made the conversation. There were no politics about bans, registration, or confiscation. It was simply a history lesson. And my dentist liked the shirt. (How could anyone find Hello Kitty offensive?) In fact, it was a conversation almost exactly like when someone asks me something about my religion.
Reputo’s comments about the conversation being like unto being asked about religion is actually pretty close to the mark.
Now imagine being asked that question and replying that you are Jewish and the response is a tirade about the international Jewish banking conspiracy and how all the Jews knew about 9/11 and the solution is simply to ban Jews from the US and if they won’t leave then wishing one had a machine gun to kill all the hook nose hebrews.
Yup. That just about sums it all up.
If she is having thoughts of pre-meditated mass murder, maybe she shouldn’t be looking at .38 handguns, or any firearm for that matter. There are lots of other things a couple in their 50s could do for home protection that don’t involve firearms.