Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy (true story) with a gun he ordered from Sears. That was delivered to his home. Some of TTAG’s OFWGs may remember those days, when guns weren’t the Great Satan. When a kid could carry a rifle on a bus, or sling it across his back and bike down the street, without so much as a how-do-you-do.

Will we ever get back to those days? We will we ever see the repeal of the local, state and federal gun control legislation that spits on our firearms freedom (i.e., all gun control legislation)? What would it take?

Bloodshed, in the form of spree killer and terrorist attacks on what’s now called the Fatherland Homeland? Supreme Court gun rights restoration? A gradual spread of gun culture? All three and/or something else? Or is that era of normalized guns destined to be a forgotten dream?

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75 COMMENTS

  1. In two words….Sadly No

    When freedoms are given away or taken, they never really come back.

    • ^Exactly!
      I don’t think guns will ever be normalized again and that seems a bigger threat to preserving the 2A than any gun law could be. Our society up to this point has been brought up in a culture where guns and gun owners are a norm. This next generation is being brought up in a brainwashed society that denies the importance of guns and demonizes and mocks gun owners.

    • Perhaps you’ve never heard of the American Revolution. What happened was that the English Parliament took away English subjects ancient rights. In response, these Englishmen revolted against the Crown and won those rights back.

  2. I think things are about as “normal” as they’re gonna get. Laws may be changed in our favor but normalizing gun culture, outside of POTG ain’t gonna happen.

    • Agree. The world is a very different place now, and there’s no going back to the old days. But we can maybe move forward again to a different place that’s also good. Maybe. I hope.

  3. The SJW’s have ruined any chances of gun culture ever again becoming normalized. For the same reason my kids can’t ride their bikes down the street sans helmets without some neighbor throwing a hissy fit, the Left will NEVER relent on the quest to criminalize guns and everyone who owns them. It’s the Bloomberg “We’re smarter than you and we know better than you” mentality.

    The only way to effectively fight these nanny state fanboys is with quiet logic and small victories. Shouting back in their faces, refusing to yield an inch on the basis of moral high ground, or open-carrying an AR-15 just because you can – all of those things play directly into their hands.

    The liberals I know (mostly) aren’t dumb people. But they believe the propaganda, and have bought whole-heartedly into the bloody shirt waving. I’ve only been able to gain any ground when I’m able to sit down and intelligently disect the arguments with them.

    • I suspect that the alienating rhetoric of the SJW nutjobs is a significant reason that the democrats lost this last election. They help weaken the party from the inside out. If the dems ejected them from their ranks, I think the party would be frighteningly more influential. They may be enemies of POTG, but they are also a liability to our chief opponents, and that makes them useful.

    • “The liberals I know (mostly) aren’t dumb people.” They are not particularly smart either in my observation. They do not easily observe the truth of a situation, rather they depend on fixed ideas not based on any real facts and often false data. Really that is the opposite of intelligence. If they read, they either don’t read anything that might conflict with their fixed ideas or cannot duplicate what they are reading if it conflicts with their fixed ideas.So if they are reading something factual about self defense using firearms they cannot see the truth of it.

      Really, that is the essence of stupidity.

      • To expand on that, the big problem with most of my liberal friends is that they trust their news sources. They honestly believe that the NYT, HuffPo, MSNBC, CNN, et al are presenting unbiased coverage.

        If you aren’t watching or reading your news with a critical eye, you’re unlikely to become aware that you’re being lied to. That the “journalists” are using spin and subturfuge to push their own narratives. It’s the same thing Fox does, but at least they’re honest about whose side they’re on.

        I could spend all day disecting the ridiculous “news” stories my family and friends post on their FB feeds. But they jist laugh at me, so it’s not worth the frustration.

    • I prescribe to the notion that most of culture and politics is a desire for prestige at the expense of others. If owning a gun, as opposed to being anti gun, can be culturally viewed as prestigious and somehow democratic and non restricted to wealth, class, or race, then yes we can go back to those “good old days.”. Although history will show you gun ownership has never been popular AND democratic.

      We see more and more women and minorities joining the POTG, but how to ensrine the ancient and natural right to self defense as both prestigious and democratic I do not know. All I know is we have a duty as free people to be armed. We owe that to our ancestors, to each other, and our kin yet to come.

  4. No, not in the context of all the hipster, craft beer, pokeman chasing, emasculated pussies I see out there.

    • 1. Fuck hipsters.

      2. Craft beer is goooooood. Much better than that mass-produced swill that is now owned by a foreign company that has eviscerated the American workforce and treats the remaining employees like subhumans.

      3. A fair percentage of the pokemon hunters around here are armed. You never know when some nutjob is going to throw a fit and pound on the windows of your car while you’ve got kids in there.

      • How is craft beer emasculating? I had a Double Bastard last night with an ABV of 11 percent. Is that not manly enough for you and your Coor’s light?

        • Craft beer is wonderful, but after a session of sipping several fine bourbons (including the mythical Pappy), nothing seems to taste as fine as a cold PBR.

        • 11%…hahahahahaha. You’d really be juggling your turds if I explained to you was bourbon is.

      • American beer was literally world class before prohibition. It won international awards regularly. It has taken nearly a century for the American beer culture to begin to recover.

        And that leads me to my answer to the question of the day. Gun normalcy may return to previous levels after laws do the same, but both will take more time than I would like, and neither is guaranteed.

    • I take offense to tha Pokemon Chaser remark. It was a fun game that got kids, and myself outside and having fun. Is that really a bad thing?

      By the way I’ve been a proud and competitive pokemon player for close to 20 years.

  5. Guns will only be normalized if something bigger than 9/11 happens on US soil or we are invaded.

    Otherwise, it’s just all BS and posturing by all the snowflakes that don’t amount to anything when it comes to standing up to criminals, conflict, or violence in general.

    Darwin will sort them out.

    • How many antis do you think would actually take up arms in those 2 situations? They can’t even be bothered to take responsibility for their own safety much less to defend something like homeland and countrymen. They will just call (hope) on others to do it, same as they call on others to do the actual dirty work of disarmament.

      • I wouldn’t expect liberals to fight in the event of an invasion of the US mainland. I would, however, expect them to be the first to die due to their unwillingness to fight.

        • We ARE being invaded across our southern border and democrats have already adopted a Bent Over & Spread Posture, awaiting their reward.

  6. Guns are normal. Are gun grabbers ever going to not be POS (D)? That’s the real question, and “WHEN ARE WE GOING TO BAN THEIR SH_T”?

    SCOTUS coin flip on “Constitutionality” ain’t worth half a wet tick-turd, if the “support” of the Constitution doesn’t support what it says in its flesh-language.

    AND WE DON’T NEED TO REVISE OR REWRITE THE CONSTITUTION WE JUST NEED TO FIGHT IT OUT.

    We’ll see how abby-normal your guns are then, and we’ll buy ourselves 1000 years of peace [after we pound the living sh_t out of any of the rest of the POS world that feels like piling on or kicking us while we’re busy].

    Permanently F all else.

    • I think it is! Nice spot. Then he was jungle boy on early Gillian’s Island.

      I had one of those sonic blasters but broke it trying to load it with baseballs and whatnot.

      • That’s probably par, and ok too, you get points back if all of your siblings are whole (no missing eye, digits, limbs, etc.)

        ; )

  8. No. However, from what I have seen anecdotally the interest in guns is rising, which is a good thing. I live in VA and nobody pays any attention to open carriers, and there is a lot of firearms enthusiasm around here.

    • Yeah, it was a hard fight to get VA to that point with shall-issue and people not freaking out about open carry. It will continue to be a hard fight to move forward.

  9. Probably after the next revolution, insurrection, or foreign invasion. Might happen in some States before others. If the Feds ever decided to ban guns, I reckon there are some States that might raise the middle finger and the guns would come out. There are so many States that are now shall issue or Constitutional I’m not sure how the Feds could ever tread very far without major backlash. On the other hand, considering the total land area of the USA, more of it finds guns normal than otherwise.

  11. Guns were always normal in America, historically speaking. It’s just that the media went to the ffaarr to the left in the 60s and became a propaganda arm for the Democrat party. So they spent the past 70 years trying to vilifying gun rights in the media.

  14. Never be “normal” again. Heck I got very realistic toy guns when I was a kid. Now I’d get shot by some nervous rookie po-leece boy. Such is life. On the +side many millions of Americans are armed and have CCL. Even in Illinois it is being “normalized”.

  15. Not sure I agree with those that say its not possible to go back. Between Nerf, Airsoft, and paintball there are far more options for gun like toys which fire projectiles and can be used to normailze guns again.

    • I think the question is more accurate if you ask “whether the USA, with its current massive liberal coastal breeding grounds, will ever be able to normalize guns again?”

      Probably not until we can eliminate the stranglehold of the cultural sensitivity, politically correct nanny statist mentality that the media has so tightly grasped onto. Until our media sources can display the real side of gun culture, not just the CSI murderer aspect, then yes it can be normalized again.

      If you remove the influence of roughly 10-15% of the country’s landmass (I’ll let you guess which areas I’m talking about) then the voter constituency becomes significantly different

    • There are a lot of fine gun-type toys out there, but haven’t there always been? And even kids whose parents won’t let them have toy guns still manage to go pew pew with their finger. Plenty of parents out there have no problem letting their kids play with toy guns, but from what I see, many would never allow their child to fire a real gun. While it is certainly a step in the right direction to let kids play guns, it’s a big leap to the accepting actual guns as an everyday, boring norm. In many parents’ eyes anyway. Simply playing with toys does not automatically lead to normalizing gun culture.

  17. I think normalization will be unlikely in the Communist Progressive bastions (Hawaii, coastal California, Cook County Illinois, and the Boston-Washington D.C. Megalopolis). Elsewhere, I think normalization is happening.

    Consider this:
    About once a year I take my children to a certain public park with play structures. I am always wearing nice shorts and a short-sleeve dress shirt … and I carry a full-size semi-auto pistol openly visible in a holster on my hip as I watch and interact with my children at the play structures.
    — Three years ago, children and parents would notice and their eyes would get big as saucers and start murmuring questions among themselves … and maybe one or two would leave.
    — This past Memorial Day weekend, no one cared. No one got eyes as big as saucers. No one murmured anything. No one left.

    And consider the fact that local news sources are carrying more-and-more stories of good people using firearms to lawfully defend themselves in righteous self-defense events. People are beginning to notice and see the actual value of being armed.

    My most recent revelation involved a friend that I have known for about eight years who was born in India and move to the United States. When I mentioned the armed home invasion that happened near us last August, he asked if I had any firearms at home. I told him that I do. He was glad to hear it. Last month, I finally decided to tell him that I have a concealed carry license. He was thrilled to hear that and had lots of questions. Now he is preparing to go through the process to get his concealed carry license.

    When people from foreign countries are embracing firearm ownership in the U.S., we are winning.

    • “When people from foreign countries are embracing firearm ownership in the U.S., we are winning.”

      Our tactic would then be encouraging immigrants to not vote for liberals, which is something that seems to be problematic.

      • His friend is from India. The ones that come here are very hard workers and usually successful business people or professionals. I suspect that very few of them vote for the liberal persuasion. Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley come to mind as the more likely political persuasion.

  18. “Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy (true story) with a gun he ordered from Sears.”

    The rifle was ordered from Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago, not from Sears.

    • The way i remember it the .38 he shot the cop with was a returned british lend lease gun. Victory Model that some jobber cut the barrel down and modded the cylinder to take Specials instead of .38/200.

      Both guns were ww2 milsurps.

  19. You might be surprised at the true Democrats, working class heroes, that have guns in the home. Many people that have guns in the home do not have time or money to go shooting every other weekend, but still have them ready, “just in case.” Most will teach thier children, when they feel they are old enough(some kids are ready to learn at 7 or 8, others not until they are 15 or so), it is up to the parents.
    While I feel that gun safety should be taught in school, gun handling is a little different – a child can not be expected to know how safeties work, or how to unload a firearm safely, there are too many different types and even with the same make, different configurations.
    I teach my children and grandchildren that if they see one somewhere it should not be, to stay right there and send another kid to get an adult(like me, grandpa) to come and check it out. Do not pick it up, do not touch it. It alone, cover it with a jacket or something and come get me fast. I tell them not to let another kid take charge or touch it at all.

    There are many people that do not buy the conservative line and trickle down economics, crony capitalism, and the regulations the small guy has to go with in order to open a business. Many of these people do not want you in competition with them, they want you safely working for them, scared for your job with no dreams of being a pain in their side.

    That does not make all nonrepublican voters anti gun as it does not make all Republicans pro gun.

    • “That does not make all nonrepublican voters anti gun as it does not make all Republicans pro gun.”

      This is true, but as long as the democratic party leaders continue advocating gun control, “true” democrats will, in fact, by definition, be for gun control.

      Advocating anything else is a “no true Scotsman” scenario.

      • Very true, Mark. A vote for Hillary or Obama before her was a vote for gun control. No way around it. One of the primary reasons I didn’t vote for either, even though my social liberalism is in constant conflict with my fiscal conservatism and my belief in individual responsibility. It’s the same reason I can’t stomach voting for many Republicans, as they represent other things I’m opposed to.

        Hopefully the Libertarian party will never again make a mistake like Weld, and I can just continue voting my conscience.

    • Working class/gun owner who votes for a party that wants to disarm and replace him with 3rd world welfare voters.

  20. Define “normal.” If normal means how things were back in the ’60s, no. The law requiring background checks when buying from an FFL will never go away, and the only guns that can come to your door will continue to be black powder. As to the rest, much of the country has a “new normal,” with greater acceptance of carrying of firearms. But the opposite will occur in the liberal bastions on the east and west coasts, the only question being how far they will be able to spread their anti-gun hysteria. Just last night, the California Senate passed a bill that extends the 1 handgun a month, rifles and shotguns no limits, to one gun a month of any type. (Bill now heads to the assembly, where it will pass.) Inroads have been made in Oregon, Washington and a nearly successful attempt in Nevada, all driven by the liberal population centers that outvote the rest of the state. And although I think that the Supreme court must necessarily find a right to bear arms outside the home, as hinted at in Heller, the question will be whether they will allow “reasonable restrictions” and the standard of review of such restrictions.

    • “Normal” is like a standard commodity in trade. You don’t have to pass a background check to buy a knife, or a gallon of gas, or a truck. Sudafed is not “normal”, guns are even less so.

  21. While it still exists as a shadow of its’ former self, in the 60’s, Mad Magazine, under then publisher William Gaines, started indoctinating a generation of kids to the idea that any private gun ownership appealed only to bigoted assholes. True, he went after cigarettes in a big way, but after the Kennedys and Dr. King were killed he really pushed an anti gun adjenda.

    Parents who had grown up with the 50’s Harvey Kurzman Mad were often unaware how one sided this aspect of the satire had become.

  22. If anything, driving guns and gun culture ‘underground’ has increased the flair and mystique surrounding them. I’ve been around them all my life and am still fascinated by their design and function, not to mention their raw power. Think of this- John Wick is the best commercial Glock, Kel-Tec, Taran Tactical, and Benelli have ever had. Normal like Will Rogers? Probably not. A new and different normal, sure.

  23. WTF? Oswald ordered his rifle from a sporting goods store in Chicago, and it was delivered to a post office box, not his home. Do some more research next time.

  24. Normal was walking into an Oregon Ace Hardware in 1997 and looking at the long guns on a unlocked rotating rack. Will never see that again.

  25. It all depends on whether we regain control of our borders and educational institutions. The root of the problem is the socialist left – as it has been for over 100 years.

    Politics is downstream of culture. We lost control of our culture following the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, because we started allowing the socialist political cultures of central and south America to start flooding into the US.

    We all know where those cultures end up. There are only three outcomes in central and south American politics:

    1. Where they are now in Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, et al, with socialists/marxists running the show,

    2. A military junta running the country to prevent where they are now in Venezuela (as had been the case previously in Brazil, Chile, etc

    3. One, the other or both of the above, combined with opposing terrorist groups or drug cartels.

    Around the same time, the hard core leftists started their long march through the educational institutions in the US.

    The only way to retain a culture of liberty and self-governance is to eliminate the socialist left, where ever it is found. If the world had done so about 100+ years ago, we could have saved the lives of roughly 80 million people.

    • One thing we have to our advantage, kids *naturally* rebel from mom and dad. The utterly senseless bat-shit reaction that the left has to guns will spark curiosity among their young.

      The coming ubiquity in carry rights with the next SCOTUS justice will lead to universal exposure. Universal exposure will result in less fear.

      Couple that with our friends in Hollywood (*zero* sarcasm or snark) and their love of making movies that MAKE THEM MONEY, we have a potent combination to at the least hold onto our gains, if not expand them.

      Hollywood and the FPS shooter video game biz are the rope that will hang the Left’s dream of a gun-free world.

      And they sold themselves the rope…

    • This, stop importing low IQ groups who vote for marxism

      Stop allowing your kids to have their minds poisoned by marxists via government run schools.

  26. Look at the laws and attitudes of the UK concerning firearms and self-defense.

    15-25 years from now, significant parts of the US (Coastal areas) will be similar with only the middle part of the country withstanding this path to progressive utopia.

    The old “normal” is probably gone and hopefully I’m completely wrong about the above, but I see it coming.

  27. I had the revolver in the third clip, the Mattel revolver with Shootin’ Shells and Greenie Stickum Caps. My folks also got me the fancy lever action in the next clip, too – they were both swell! Besides Kurt Russell, I believe that was a pint-sized Billy Mumy in the water shootin’ commercial.

    As far as back to the good ol’ days – that ship has sailed. The full provisions of the GCA ’68 will likely never be repealed, so unless you have an FFL or C&R, you’ll not be having firearms shipped to your doorstep, even if other laws are repealed or relaxed (silencers, SBRs, etc.)

  29. Those 11 minutes brought back so many of my 11th birthday gifts.
    I got back then almost all of the Mattel toy guns.
    I remember pulling the tiny springs in the shooting shells to make them go farther.
    I ended up breaking off most of the tabs that held the bullet to the shell.
    My favorite was the 38 pistol. Always was running out of greenie stickem caps. They were I think 5 cents for a bunch of pages of them.
    But I seem to remember it being sold as the Dick Tracy Detective gun. O well I could be wrong.
    Best part was they were all free back then.
    My grandfathers company made the leather holsters for Mattel back then.
    So no Marx guns for me. Not a one in my house.
    There was also a bunch of kids guns sold back then because of the Vietnam War. In 65 or 66 before it became unpopular to be associated with it. I also remember having a RifleMans rifle with the big ring trigger.
    Those were great times to be a kid. No real gun issues back then. They were just toys and not thought of as anything else.

  30. There’s more guns than people in America now. Likely a first. Americas rifle isn’t a wood and steel hunting rifle. It’s an Evil Black Rifle. Hillary, the chosen one was derailed. A couple more scotus picks and a bunch of lower fed judge picks.

    We’ve won guys. It’ll just take a while for it to be realized.

  33. Klein’s Sporting Goods, Chicago, pre-1968. As a teenager, me and my friends used to marvel at the advertising in the back of gun magazines showing surplus firearms and ammunition.

  34. In the south guns will be become normal again to a point. You will never be able to get a gun mailed to you from your favorite mail order catalog again. I wish we could. But I have not seen a single person on TTAG or any where else support the idea of going back to home delivery. Libertarians are you out there????

    The issue of home delivery for felons would be a problem. If you think that would be a problem? You will have to make that case in public. I personally have no trouble tell people mail order was the only way law abiding black people could get guns and ammunition in America. Its how black doctors could get a Thompson Sub-machine Gun delivered to there office. They were the only ones who could afford the tax stamp charge.
    Nicholas Johnsons book “Negroes and the Gun: the black tradition of arms”, talks about this.

    I had a Johnny 7 rifle when I was a kid. And I had lots of water pistols shaped like a 1911 colt. I remember some of those toy gun commercials from Saturday morning cartoons. I miss Saturday morning cartoons still. The government took those away also.

    With the help of Black Guns Matter and other new gun civil rights groups things will get better. But the leadership in California, New York, New Jersey, etc will have to change. I see more blacks and whites and women open carry in Tennessee and Kentucky. The sky is looking brighter!!

    • Mail order shouldn’t be a problem with a system for background checks. The only objections would be that it goes through the mail and “but guns.” The second argument would be the harder one to overcome politically.

    • I support mail order without background checks. Any citizen who is not actively incarcerated should be free to order whatever their wallet can endure. Likewise, if someone is so mentally impaired that they cannot possess a gun, they should be institutionalized or in the custody of a caretaker.

      Either you are a free man, or you are not. I see no point in promoting the existence of a second class of citizen who are not trusted with freedoms we pretend to give them.

      I can dream.

  35. It will take a long march through the institutions, which is exactly how the big-brained administrative-staters (of all stripes) got what they have now. Politics is downstream of culture. Andrew Breitbart said in in 21st century US.

    BUT, Putin knows it. Merkel knows it. Castro knew it. Pol Pot knew it. Stalin & Mao knew it, Lenin knew it, the revolutionaries they followed knew it, the Nazis knew it, Bismark knew it, Wilson knew it, the rest of the early 20th century “progressives” knew it.

    It’s not remotely a modern notion. The crusader kinds knew it, the medieval church knew it, the expansionist Islamists knew it, the Romans knew it, Alexander the Great knew it, …

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