What Liberals Need to Understand About "Gun Guys"

[Ben]

Article in The Atlantic by a liberal, gun-owning author about his experiences open and concealed carrying over an 18 month timespan. I don't completely agree, and in a few instances completely disagree with his points and his identification of "conservative" gun owners (most especially "gun guys" - completely leaving out female gun owners), but it was an interesting perspective to read.

Given it was The Atlantic, I also thought many of the comments were interesting and unexpected. There were a good number of self-identified liberals and/or Democrats" who said that the current gun control push has disaffected them and pushed them into being Independents.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/what-liberals-need-to-understand-about-gun-guys/273736/

[ArfinGreebly]

Tom Gresham had that guy on GunTalk last week.

[TommyGunn]

Tom Gresham had that guy on GunTalk last week.

Yup, heard it, and I bought the book.  Now to find the time to read it.

A lib who ... "likes" guns?   Color me skeptical.

[Ron]

Good quote at the end

but I am more attuned to the gun guy complaint -- "I am over-managed and I am under-respected as a citizen and a human being." I think the right has a point there. We need to stop fearing capable, empowered, independent-thinking individuals.

[MillCreek]

Some very good comments as to how the Democrats are alienating a lot of gun owners.

[AJ Dual]

I find with a lot of gun owning liberals, not counting blue-collar union members, is that they're really just zeroing in on Libertarianism, just from the Left instead of the Right.

Identity politics, emoting over reasoning, and entrenched "our team vs. theirs" mentality keeps them from making the rest of the leap.

[Jocassee]

These are precisely the kind of people the Democratic Party says it exists to serve. Over and over, people I met on my trip would say, "I don't get it. Democrats are the party of the working man. How can the Democrats do this?" They feel so alienated that they won't listen to the Democrats on climate change or health care or immigration or anything else. As a Democrat, it broke my heart to hear this over and over and over again. These are our guys. These are our people, and they hate us. We take this anti-gun position and we're giving these people away, and we're getting nothing in exchange. We are not making the country safer.

He was so close to the truth here, then he blew on past it.

[lee n. field]

Tom Gresham had that guy on GunTalk last week.

That was a good listen. 

[longeyes]

He was so close to the truth here, then he blew on past it.

It's been a while since the people who run the Democratic Party were for the average working person in America.  Economic well-being arising from freedom is alien to their agenda. 

[Blakenzy]

Well, the blanket use of the term "liberal" (or "conservative" for that matter) is teh stoopid. These labels are needlessly distracting and can't really capture everything a person is about. Describing people as pro-Freedom/Rights or pro-Statism would work better.

[TommyGunn]

Well, the blanket use of the term "liberal" (or "conservative" for that matter) is teh stoopid. These labels are needlessly distracting and can't really capture everything a person is about. Describing people as pro-Freedom/Rights or pro-Statism would work better.

I thought the idea was that some people are in favor of some statist ideas and others in favor of other, usually non-overlapping fascist/statist ideas and thus, once you've figured out what their prefered statisms are you can more easily lump them in with the demorats or repukeagains.......

perhaps I overthunk the problem..............