I’ve had this tab open for ages. No, not the diet soft drink that preceded Diet Coke. A story at nymag.com called The Scary Reason Some Men Like Guns Better Than Women. It’s a disarmament-flavored doozy, riffing on a list in the author’s landlord’s apartment entitled “10 reasons why a handgun is better than a woman.” Ready for a sample? . . .
For years the NRA defended laws that kept guns in the hands of known domestic abusers. Which makes it all the more chilling to recall the No. 1 reason on my college landlord’s list of reasons why guns are better than women: ‘You can buy a silencer for a handgun.’ The sickening truth is you can buy a silencer for a woman. It’s a called a handgun.
To paraphrase the bard, turnabout is unfair play. Anyway, for a little editorial balance, here are three ways that firearms make men better people, not worse . . .
1. Guns make men more responsible
With great power comes great responsibility.’Nuff said? OK, a little more . . .
The antis like to portray male gun owners as stupid and cavalier. They reckon gun guys are so intellectually impaired, so testosterone-crazed, so unable to resist peer pressure, that they’re oblivious to firearms’ inherent dangers. In other words, male gun owners are prone to [drunken] gun accidents and [unjustifiable] firearms-related homicides.
Of course, there are some gun guys who fit that description. But these irresponsible/criminal gun owners are a small minority. In fact, they’re such a small subset of male gun owners that we feature them here on TTAG. With a warning: don’t be that guy.
The vast majority of gun owners are not “that guy.” They follow the four safety rules. But the responsibility thing runs deeper than that. The moment a boy first assumes control of a firearm is the moment he learns something profound about taking control of himself. Gun ownership is an important step towards becoming an adult, with all the responsibilities that implies. In that sense, guns help make him a better person.
2. Guns make men less confrontational
We hear about firearms-related confrontations all the time. And why not? As Don Henly sang, it’s interesting when people die. Especially when they die violently from gunfire. No wonder the gun control crowd are always talking about innocent people being shot, while the gun rights community focuses on good people shooting bad people.
The real story about guns in America? Tens of millions of male gun owners don’t get shot or shoot anyone. Ever. You can round down to zero the percentage of legal – even illegal – male gun owners who fire their weapon at another human being. Simply put, they don’t want to get shot or shoot. So they avoid confrontation.
In fact, most men who own guns don’t even carry them – even if they have a permit or live in a permitless state. How not spoiling for a gunfight can you get? More than that, those men that do carry a gun are chill. Out-of-their-way-to-avoid-or-deescalate-a-potentially-violent-confrontation-lest-they-end-up-in-a-gunfight-and/or-lose-their-gun-rights chill.
3. Guns make men cooler
Just in case you didn’t hear Colion Noir say it eleventy billion times, guns are cool. A man who can handle a firearm safely, responsibly and effectively has a major cool thing going on. Sure, a guy can lose his gun cool by drinking too much tactikoolaid or nerding out on ballistic coefficients. But gun cool is a gun guy’s to lose.
Not to beat around the bush (so to speak), at the risk of calling my heterosexuality into question, gun guys are sexy. Maybe it’s the intensity and singularity of focus required to shoot well. Maybe it’s that slow is smooth smooth is fast deal. However you look at it, ladies, beware of the man without one gun.
Women like Ann Friedman (who penned the anti-pistol polemic for New York) can’t see the positive impact gun culture has on men – even though she “grew up in a part of the country where hunting and gun shows are common, and gun laws are relatively lax.” Her political affiliation demands that she sees gun guys as a bunch of immature, reckless, feckless ignoramuses. Which begs the question: I know you are but what am I?
Get a better woman, problem solved 🙂
I definitely apply a lot more logic and care when carrying, but now I feel odd without the boat anchor in my pants, so I cant not carry at this point ha
I wanna get a Sig 238/938 so I can more comfortably home carry.
Sadly, unlike guns… Men get upset when their woman trades up for a more high end model.
“Sure, a guy can lose his gun cool by drinking too much tactikoolaid or nerding out on ballistic coefficients.”
What about giggling like a school girl while watching Forgotten Weapons videos?
OMG OMG OMG!!! Did you see Ian’s new upload with the M18 Hellcat Tank Destroyer???
AWESOME! Totes Jelly.
If Forgotten Weapons is wrong, I dont want to be right. But I could be so very wrong with an MG42 🙂
Every day, without fail, Forgotten Weapons is on my browse list.
Ian’s presentation is straightforward and the antithesis of ‘operator’. A refreshing change of pace.
Indeed. It is the antidote for OD’ing on political content.
I watched “Introduction to Magazines and Clips” in its entirety and was riveted for all 107 minutes.
“The sickening truth is you can buy a silencer for a woman.”
You gain more options with age. My grandfather used to turn off his hearing aides when my grandmother got on his case. Just last year I saw my father do the same thing. So, I suppose I can look forward to some compensation if my hearing goes in old age too.
you know Tab is still on the shelves here in Texas…i should check the date on the can it might be from 2 decades ago….
Bonus points if those cans have the old style removable pull-tab.
Would be a couple days older than two decades, however.
After reading the above, I hopped into the wayback machine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhGJvGhIzaw&feature=kp
Thanks for that.
Didn’t every kid make aluminum pop-tab chains?
Kinda funny how loooooooooooong those chains got the more Cheap American Beer dad drank…
I have to disagree with #3. Guns don’t make all men cooler. If you are already cool you are likely to be more cool with a gun. If you are annoying without a gun you are likely to me more annoying with a gun.
Just because a thing is cool does not mean that it will make you cool. Cool is attitude. Cool is presence. Cool is how you carry yourself, how you conduct yourself. A piece of metal on your hip will not change that.
Cool, is also not having to explain cool. 😉
Nice. 🙂
“The sickening truth is you can buy a silencer for a woman. It’s a called a handgun.”
What a disgusting horrible thought. And what a disgusting horrible woman the original author must be to have thought of that. Never in my life would I have thought that myself. A gun is to protect your family (and other things for those that hunt, etc..). And your family INCLUDES your wife (or husband). A man who beats his wife is a horrible man and should be strung up for all to see, no matter what implement he uses. But he who beats his wife is at fault. The Progressives tried this before, they campaigned so fervently that no one would beat their wives if there were no booze. So we banned Alcohol and ushered in the worst era of crime and death in the streets in American History. How many times do we have to make the same mistake before rhetoric like this stops?
+1
One of the reasons I got into firearms was to be able to protect my family. If I have to be a bullet magnet for my family, I want to be able to shoot back.
I once told my wife if I have to take a bullet for you I would like to send one the other way.
I hear stuff like this all the time from the anti-gun statists. And they have the NERVE to call us violent.
If we really were Violent, there wouldn’t be any Anti-Gunners left!
Well said.
“How many times do we have to make the same mistake before rhetoric like this stops?”
At least one more.
Riffing on samurai’s thoughts on the Prohibition Era, we must not underestimate the threat we face.
It’s rather remarkable how much the anti-gunners have in common with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti Saloon League (ASL) in the lead up to Prohibition. Note the demonizing of beer by associating it with anti-German sentiment; much akin to associating gun owners with terrorists.
For more, see PBS site for Ken Burn’s film “Prohibition”
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/roots-of-prohibition/
——————-
From Smithsonian.com, rather stunning parallels to Bloomberg’s gun-control ambitions:
“Wayne B. Wheeler: The Man Who Turned Off the Taps”
Prohibition couldn’t have happened without Wheeler, who foisted temperance on a thirsty nation 90 years ago
http://tinyurl.com/pqqlkxs
“Wheeler was a small man, 5-foot-6 or 7… who, in the description of the militantly wet Cincinnati Enquirer, “made great men his puppets.” On his slight frame he wore a suit, a waistcoat and, his followers believed, the fate of the Republic.”
“The ASL’s assiduous attention to Congress had made wet politicians wobble, uncertain politicians sprint for dry shelter and dry politicians flex their biceps. Heading toward the 1916 elections, the league’s political expenditures exceeded the 2010 equivalent of $50 million in a single year.”
On the premise she’s not a lesbian or that she became one because of. Sad that her taste in guys was so horrible that they treated her like dirt. Some people are drawn to the scum of the earth types while the nice ones go unnoticed beyond the potential of a platonic friendship.
The first time I put a pellet gun in my kids hands I saw the transformation (a boy and a girl). They went from giggling, silly kids, to quiet and attentive. They knew the thing they were holding could hurt them or someone else and they knew that was the time to shut up and listen to instruction.
Guns make good people better.
As far as stupid goes, well – you can’t fix that.
I would say it’s not the gun that did that. It was the awesome responsibility you were entrusting them with. Well-taught children know we expect them to live up to it.
I am reminded of a short story I read a long time ago. I believe the title was “Clothes Make the Man”.
I also think that people rise or fall to the level of expectations applied to them. If you tell someone enough times that they won’t amount to anything and will probably end up in jail, there’s a higher likelihood that this will come true. If you expect great things from the same person, it’s more likely that they will achieve more.
Sorry, but guns don’t make men cooler, more responsible and less confrontational. Guns make you armed. Nothing more. You are what you are and guns don’t change that.
brian is an idiot
Ad hominem replies are the sign of very small mind.. Who told you the gun you bought made you look cooler? The salesman?
“Her political affiliation demands…….”. Her political affliction demands. There, fixed that for you.
A true man is capable in both thought and action. He does not lose hope and he is not afraid to ask for help, but most of all, he does not disdain any tool that aids his capability — learning, wealth or weapons. All can be used for selfish or evil ends, but a real man uses them in the service of his family, community and nation.
Anything Steve McQueen does is cool. I want to be like Steve.
Steve is dead. You don’t want to be like Steve.
Steve McQueen the director is not dead. He has an Oscar, unlike Bullitt here. Not as cool, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSzUBvwe6kg
The Drive By Truckers – Steve McQueen
Damn you mesothelioma!
There is no free pass for extremists on the other side that just love to make up stuff to justify their beliefs and fantasies,
I don’t think the simple fact that a man owns a gun is cool. However, I have experienced that being relatively cool already, and knowing how to use a gun well can make a guy cooler depending on the company.
I know that the handful of women I’ve dated, and taken to the range have been quite impressed by the fact that I can shoot so well. Would that have been a deciding factor in their attraction too me? I don’t think so, but depending on the woman it can be icing on the cake. Maybe it’s a baser instinct to mate with a good protector(boo hiss patriarchy /sarc), idk.
I’ve also met women who I was attracted to but did not pursue, because the second they found out I owned a gun, they looked at me like I just drowned a baby. Like I said, it depends.
“Like I don’t have a million other ways to hurt that baby.” – Anthony Jeselnik
“nerding out on ballistic coefficients”
Dangit. Did ya have to go there?
COOL is as cool does. A gun does NOT make a man.
big time. a nudnick with an interest in firearms is still a nudnick.
Guns made me financially poorer but a better shot.
Owing a gun makes you cool if…
You take the time to get educated, the discipline to become proficient and safe, the self-sacrifice to prepare to defend, and the cahones to carry everywhere and not care who knows.
The anti-gun component of her splenetic screed is merely a condiment on the misandrist sandwich she’s serving.
Women like this hate males who comport themselves as actual men. They want males to be sallow, meek milquetoasts who are subservient to their feminist overlords. Any weapon in the hands of a man is bad news. Guns are merely a totem of independence in a worldview of these “Julia” feminists.
Men should simply ignore women like this. In time, they’ll be reduced to a misanthropic existence in a solitude that they deserve and have richly earned. If you want to feel sorry for this type of woman, and believe you must assist her… buy her a present she can use: a bucket of cat litter.
They don’t even want men to be meek (by the old definitions.) Meekness is power under reservation and control by the old definitions. They want men to roll over and play dead on command without an ounce of dignity, thus they have redefined meek to mean “overly submissive or compliant; spiritless.” However a bit of what I’m saying holds on in the use of “tame” as part of the modern definition.
Say a horse, for example is tamed. It is considered meek. It’s still a horse, and has all the abilities and powers of a wild horse, it just doesn’t use those abilities in knee-jerk reactions outside of a situation that actually puts the horse in harms way, or on command of its rider/jockey as it once did to new situations it has no control over.
Nailed it. I skimmed through a few of her articles to get a sense of where she is coming from- bitter anti-male snark, wrapped in the typical NYC “I am so cool urban elite female”. Predictable, tiresome, and not getting it, nor is she, in the future… a flip comment from another post, that says it all.
“Besides, when you’re working this hard to get your career off the ground, it’s nice to get laid once in a while”.
Really getting tired of you insulting and bashing Colion Noir. You made your point the first dozen times. You don’t like him. We get it.
Guns taught me to be a generally more responsible person. Gun safety taught me to be more adult in when guns are around, which carried over into other aspects of life.
Gun ranges taught me to not run my mouth to anyone on the street, or on the freeway, and to avoid getting into fist fights as much as humanly possible…I realized there’s a LOT more people out there that are packin’, and most of them can shoot waaaaaay better than me.
And, most importantly, guns made me re-think some bad life decisions that I could have made. There’s definitely been a handful of times where I might have done something stupid and then stopped, thinking “this could potentially lead to me losing my 2A rights, and that’s just not a chance worth taking, best just to walk away from this whole situation right now.”
I’m definitely a more mature, responsible, person after being exposed to guns and gun culture. And I’m grateful for that.
You guys act like this will be decided on merit. Let’s talk congressmen.
Is someone trying to punish Beretta for moving production out of state? If they commit to MD will this go away?
Does CT have enough juice to bring this to Colt? MA to S&W?
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