What it's like to be a gun owner living behind enemy lines.

“Mocking us here by saying we elected stupid leaders are only partially true, some of us are fighting back, some of us want to enjoy where we live, raise our kids and have grown up. That’s what it’s like to be in occupied territory.” – Corrections Officer David LaPell in What It’s Like to Live in a State Hostile to Gun Owners [via ammoland.com]

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70 COMMENTS

  1. In the long run, all blue states will become Chicago unless the Democrat crime syndicate is shattered. This will happen because gun control is now a pillar of their party platform. There no way for them now to abandon it and save face.

    • This is why it is important for people to realize that gun rights will not be solved by bipartisan effort –at least not for generations. The only path is by reforming the Republican Party internally so it will take action going forward, and ensuring their electoral dominance. And guns aren’t the only issue for which this holds true, either.

      • Democrats will NEVER be pro-gun, but Republicans have been flirting with anti-gun positions in the name of “bipartisanship” or “common sense” for a long time. Republican is not enough – make sure it is the right Republican!

        • Conservativism, not Republican. The progressives, with D’s or R’s after their names, will progress right over a cliff. Conservatives are the diamonds in the rough.

  2. “… some of us want to enjoy where we live, raise our kids and have grown up.” – Corrections Officer David LaPell

    This is another example where someone elevates altruism above all. The sad REALITY of our world is that forces of chaos and evil will kill us if we cling to our altruistic visions.

    Imagine that you had a modest, beautiful home and yard with lush grass and fruit trees — a home that you and your family love and have owned for generations. When you learn that an unstoppable lava flow is heading to your home and will consume it, will you stubbornly insist on staying at your home because you should never have to leave your home behind against your will?

    We have all seen unstoppable lava flows, avalanches, floods, wildfires, tornadoes, and hurricanes bear down on beautiful homes that no family should ever have to abandon — and yet those families abandon their homes to survive. Sometimes the unstoppable destruction that approaches your home is a mob of nasty people and you either abandon your home for greener pastures or stubbornly stay behind and parish. Just ask all the Jewish families and their descendants that lived in Germany in 1940 — if you can find any of them that actually survived.

    • We’ve also seen idiots build those houses in the clear path of disaster & express shock & suprise when it inevitably happens.

    • What definition of altruism are you using? Normally I’d just assume it was being used wrong, but I think better of you than the average person.

      • TX_Lawyer,

        Thank you for asking. I looked up the definition of altruism and I was surprised to see that I have had the wrong definition in my mind for my entire life.

        I used the word “altruism” (incorrectly): referring to a person’s view of how things should be in a perfect world where everything is good and there is no evil or suffering.

        I am embarrassed that I had the definition of that word so wrong in my head. Is there a word that encompasses a person’s view of their desire for how things should be rather than how things are?

        • “I have had the wrong definition in my mind for my entire life.” – I hate when that happens. It used to happen a lot more. My brother and I have a game called word challenge in which we challenge the correctness of a word the other has used. We started when dictionaries were only made of paper and ink.

          “Is there a word that encompasses a person’s view of their desire for how things should be rather than how things are?” – There is a word for everything. It’s just a matter of finding it. In philosophy, economics, and law, normative would be the word you are looking for. The “straight up” definition* isn’t clearly what you mean, but I think your use of it in this situation would be justifiable. The word Pollyanna would also work, but it isn’t exactly correct either.

          Normative is the best I can think of. Google has failed me.

          *adjective
          1. of or relating to a norm, especially an assumed norm regarded as the standard of correctness in behavior, speech, writing, etc.
          2. tending or attempting to establish such a norm, especially by the prescription of rules:
          normative grammar.
          3. reflecting the assumption of such a norm or favoring its establishment:
          a normative attitude.

        • TX_Lawyer,

          The best I can think of is the expression: “vision of Utopian society” rather than altruism.

          So, I would re-write my previous statement as:

          “This is another example where someone elevates their vision of Utopian society above all. The sad REALITY of our world is that forces of chaos and evil will kill us if we cling to our vision of Utopian society.”

          • I think there should be, and probably is, a word for the belief that the world will conform to one’s normative view, that justice will prevail by virtue of it being virtuous. That word would be the best single word for your sentence. It’s the view that Obama espoused every time he nattered on about “the wrong side of history.”

        • Mark N.,

          I think you got it with “idealism”.

          Thank you. That was driving me nuts trying to find the right word.

          • If you like idealism, check out quixotic. I don’t think there is anything wrong with being idealistic as long as one recognizes reality. (Idealism: the cherishing or pursuit of high or noble principles, purposes, goals, etc.; not idealism: the practice of forming or pursuing ideals, especially unrealistically).

        • also not trying to nitpick, but since we’re correcting grammar, you’re looking for “perish” not “parish”. The former is to expire/die, the latter is a churches congregation or area of responsibility, or the term for “county” in you’re from The Sportsman’s Paradise. +1 for your post though either way, you make a strong point. Although I do see why people would want to stay and fight, and the merits of doing so.

  3. I considered going that route, corrections, to obtain a permit in California.

    Decided to drag up and move to Georgia, best decision ever!

  4. well here’s the problem. YOU ARE OUTNUMBERED AND YOU ALWAYS WILL BE. It doesn’t matter how many kids you have or how righteous your cause for firearms freedom in those blue gulags, there are always more people willing to suck up the good MSM propaganda funded by daddy Bloomberg and his giant money cock. There are always more immigrants, more hood rats, and more people who will take that easy path in life that requires little to no thought and even less actual action on their part. Remember the end of Idiocracy? The smart guy had like 2 kids and they were super intelligent (by their standards) while the idiot had like 15 kids and each one was dumb as a friggin rock. Oh how you laughed at that but now look around, really take a look at what the kids are watching now on YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and cable. See that? Yeah nothing to stimulate the mind no complex problem solving no nothing really shit is like marshmallow fluff. Look at that homework too, nothing really challenging all the answers are pretty much given reading comprehension is just boiled down to answering simple questions about the simple story. Holy shit they don’t even cover the constitution or system of government!!! Now look back at Idiocracy, still laughing? Well just sit back and drink your Brawndo it’s got electrolytes and you need electrolytes.

    • It’s what plants crave. I have a different view of children than you, but that might be colored by my nephew who taught his class more of the multiplication tables than his teacher did.

      Also, this: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/06/30/quantification. Just because a kid is on an ipad or watching TV, doesn’t mean that the kid isn’t learning. That same nephew used to go to bed with the thing every night. That’s a large part of why he is always correcting his teachers when they are wrong. He didn’t learn half the stuff he knows from his parents or his teachers. Sometimes the only adults who know what he is even talking about are me and my brother.

      If you don’t count the ability to read and math, I know I learned more from TV than school. If you do count the ability to read and math, I’m not sure where I learned more. If you count youtube as TV, I’ve leaning heavily towards TV.

      Media is often only as stupid as the consumer.

      • I was referring to the popular cartoons my kids watch, stuff like Spongebob, the Amazing World of Gumball, and Teen Titans Go! Compared to the shows that were popular back when I was a kid (GI Joe, Transformers, and so on). They do get to play a few educational games on their tablets but they are much MUCH more interested in building things like the little robot kits they got for Christmas. The school however isn’t teaching them a damn thing. I end up spending an hour every night teaching them the proper way to math or challenging them on their reading.

        • TL;DR: Parenting is hard. Good educational TV is hard to find. Schools are garbage.

          GI Joe was patriotic, but that “knowing is half the battle” crap doesn’t make it educational in my book. Seriously, the entire program was considered educational because of that last minute or so taught you about stranger danger or whatever. And Captain Planet was hippie garbage. It only came out eight years after GI Joe.

          Try to get them to watch Wild Kratts. It’s educational and about animals. Some say it’s anti-hunting, but I think little boys will always love to kill things. Most of the stuff for little kids is educational. Super Reader and such. It is harder to get educational and entertaining stuff for the older kids. The History Channel, Discovery, and TLC are all garbage reality TV these days. Probably Animal Planet as well.

        • They dig Wild Kratts and a couple other PBS shows but really it’s a touch under their age range they’re in that weird in between age where they aren’t really a little kid and aren’t old enough to be tweens, so they spend a lot of time watching history channel and hunting shows with dad or trying to reconfigure their robot kits into a single super robot with which they will conquer humanity. Far as retro cartoon watching goes I can never really get them into the stuff I used to dig not even Looney Tunes. Can’t say I ever really paid attention to Captain Planet, he seemed a little uhhhh wellllll “colorful” and not really a believable super hero since just capping one of those kids would’ve made it impossible to actually summon said super hippie.

        • yeah I catch em on Cartoon Network every once in a while… My kids however get em on the YouTube or off old VHS tapes. My uncle recorded over commercials with Looney Tunes and you have not lived until you see a soap opera interstitched by Bugs Bunny in drag seducing Elmer Fudd or watched Star trek with Duck Dodgers hero of the 24 and a half century thrown in between scenes.

      • The problem smart kids have is dumb teachers. When my little brother was in elementary school the teacher was covering pi and stated it was 3.14 (It said so right there in her course manual). Little brother had been interested enough to look it up and raised his hand and told the teacher that it actually was a number that went on forever. She told him he was wrong, and when he brought in an encyclopedia to show her, she said the encyclopedia was wrong. This is typical of the kind of people who are hired to teach our kids. Pay close attention to the things your kids are learning in school because much of it is wrong or just plain crap.

  5. Taxes, my boy, taxes. Don’t tell us your continued presence in enemy territory isn’t working against the rest of us
    -Union dues used to promote antigun politicians
    -State/local taxes funneled to anti-gun groups, politicians (and subsidized by Uncle Sam aka those of us in pro gun states)
    -Representation in the House apportioned by population, which will never be filled by pro gun politicians
    -Contributing to the economy of your anti gun neighbors through business & labor
    -Legitimizing oppressive gun control systems by continuing to endure them. If you ditch your assault weapon for a bolt rifle or pistol grip for a blade, you’ve effectively supported the premise that it is an acceptable alternative
    -No, pretending you can educate hostiles doesn’t really work well enough if you aren’t convincing them to leave. No, you won’t be a test case, and even if you were, the local courts are so biased as to make the effort nearly pointless
    -Most importantly, nine times out of ten, you support non-gun related policies and politicians that directly led to your current state of affairs, but act like you had no responsibility for the gun laws that came after.

    • So while barry was president you refused to pay your taxes? Refused to work and participate in the economy?

      • “So while barry was president you refused to pay your taxes?” – On the advice of counsel, I’m going to decline to comment. /sarc for all the IRS agents reading this.

      • It is easier to get away from a city or state than a country. The point is it is possible to lend your resources to an area that agrees with your beliefs than stay in a state which uses your productivity against you.

  6. I can’t believe that when I got my first centerfire rifle in 1978, I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area. The M1 Carbine was $99 and came with two 15 round magazines. There was no 10 day “cool off” period and I didn’t have to register anything with the government. Full auto was an option if you could afford it. And you could buy any gun without consulting an “approved” list. I normally bought ammo at the Sears down the block and didn’t have to show ID to do so.
    Now, none of this is possible if I were still living in the same state. I doubt if there’s even a gun store there anymore. So sad how far my old haunt has fallen.

    • The one and only gun store caved to the regulatory pressure designed to drive it out of business, but for some reason it relented and re-opened.

      • High Bridge Arms the last gun store in SF was forced to close. No one came to protest this unconstitutional action. No one carried a sign in support of the gun store in public.(show me your pictures if you did) And this is my problem with so called ‘California gun owners” I was born and raised in Sacramento. I’m glad I moved to a free state.

        You voted for Obama just because he was black. Even liberal gun owners who knew he was anti gun but still voted for Obama. Because he made you FEEEEEL GOOOOD.
        It also made you feel very good to vote for open homosexuals. It didn’t matter that they were all anti-civil rights for guns.

        Tom Ammiano the first open gay to become senate president in California, was always anti-gun. He never supported civil rights. When asked to repeal the Mulford Act, a racist gun control law signed by then Gov Reagan, he said HELL NO. But he was a great homosexual. I hold the white homosexual racist Tom Ammiano responsible for keeping this racist law on the books. As a black gun owner I look at California differently than most people. After the Pulse murders white gays only now want guns. They will never vote for guns. That would mean voting for white Christians, that will never happen. Homosexuals are socialist progressive in their political orientation, guns for the government only.

        When Justin Raimondo, progun and an open gay man ran against Nancy Pelosi he lost. It seems gays want “free stuff” from the democrats instead of liberty and guns.

        You can complain all you want about the place you live in, as you sit on your ass and do nothing.

  7. Sentiment and nostalgia are nice in a comfy 1st world but if you really feel you’re behind enemy lines you’re best served by leaving them behind. Where you “grew up” is gone.

  8. Yeah I get tired of the constant anti-Illinois barrage from the gunTARDS. It’s quite a bit better than even 7 years ago when I first got into guns…real shall issue,no mag limits and no neutered guns.
    I didn’t vote for the democrat scum and in Illinois most republicans are barely better. I live a scant mile from Indiana where I buy ALL gun and gun related crap since 2012. We ain’t California,NYC or Maryland. There’s a hoard of politically active gun owners,hunters and shooters here…

    • *shrugs*
      Eh. I get the feeling that the writers here have moderated their ire to specifically single out Chicago instead of the entire state… but yes, some of the commenters do still throw all of Illinois under the wheels occasionally. Must be y’alls FOID card that offends us.
      🤠

      • IL has the best blue state CCW law, but only for the past couple years and only after a court made them do it. FOID is very distasteful, but could be far worse.

        New CCW:
        -shall issue
        -qualify with any pistol, not the intended carry gun
        -forced upon Chicago and other localities

        • “seemingly intentionally”?
          No, my friend. That was completely intentional. Remember, these are bigots that oppose us – in every sense of the word.
          🤠

          • They’re racist and hate black people. This proves it. The negative effects of high standards/costs to obtain CHLs have been proven to disproportionately affect black people (long before Chicago enacted its law). It was enough to strike down voter ID laws as racist. It’s enough for me to call all Democrats racist with a perfectly clean conscious.

    • Illinois is a perfect example of people “behind enemy lines” that actually fought back and got the system changed. Also just as a FYI, most of Chicago is not the Chicago you see in the news:

      http://heyjackass.com/

    • Having been from Illinois until my uncle sam relocated me and I stayed abroad, I have a different perspective. I realize that outside Crooked County Illinois is very conservative and generally red or at least purple. There are a lot of Libs outside of CHI in the university and college towns. Even some in the rural areas, as demonstrated by the derpy comments that pop-up in my newsfeed on fake book from old acquaintances who never learned critical thinking.

      I also have to say that Illinois has an extremely potent pro gun lobby and establishment in Guns Save life, and just in the general grassroots people willing to mobilize. Hell, call in campaigns in Illinois killed several bills that congressmen tried to sneak into bills and overnight votes, and you don’t see that in NY, CA, or MA.

  9. Living in slave state NJ, I can attest to the fact that we are badly outnumbered both by blue snowflakes and vicious semi feral savages. We are denied our rights and threatened with jail for mere possession of a firearm outside the home. We have ammo restrictions, magazine restrictions an “Assault Weapons Ban” and more is coming with throwback liberal governor Murphy “Corzine 2.0” coming into office.

  10. Read the comments above mine and see how many supporters kapo bloomberg and hillary have trying to pass themselves off as gun owning Americans. They accept the argument that your rights are based on your zip code and that the tyranny of the majority is right.

    • Your rights* are based on your zip code. It’s a fucking shame, but it’s true.

      *At least the protected exercise of your rights.

  11. We have to keep the Senate for at least two more years. If we can manage that we might win a justice or two. If we don’t we need another four years of Trump and a slim majority of Senators. I hope I’m wrong, but we aren’t getting anything useful through the Senate in the foreseeable future.

  12. “That’s what it’s like to be in occupied territory.”

    That’s an interesting choice of words. Especially now, when Democrats have cynically opened up the floodgates of illegal immigration for the obvious purpose of creating an occupying force and suppressing the local population.

    Call it “occupation by immigration.”

    • Nicely said. As long as the flood gates remain open and unchecked, the foundations and freedoms this country was founded on will perish. It’s a mathematical certainty.

  13. While correct descriptors of such a world view, I don’t think delusional or optimistic is narrow enough. I’m still voting normative.

  14. If you guys are going to publish random quotes from random gun owners, PLEASE at least choose those which use proper punctuation and word useage. I swear that this site does more harm than good sometimes… What the help was this guy attempting to get across, and why devote time, money, and data into repeating it? This is pathetic. I was trying to avoid TFB after the Honor Defense cover-up, but I’m willing to compromise my values just to avoid the headache inducing stupidity TTAG puts out.
    …
    …
    I now await being called a libtard snowflake.

    • what hell does the Navy do to you seamen to keep turning out lib tard vets. The Army, Marines are seemingly dead set red all the way until you start getting up to higher staff and flag officers. Even the Air Force is generally red in the enlisted and mid level officer corp. What the shit Navy?

      • Touche on my “Naby” typo. I’m an independent, for the record. Anyway, I really wish more of you could see just how simple minded and toxic much of the discourse has become, on both sides on the isle. Not gonna lie- many of the people commenting on this site just come across as simple minded, immigrant/Arab hating, Trump loving good ol’ boys. The undercurrent of racism coursing through this site is extremely tangible, and everyone here knows or should know the role they play. Anyway, if you guys really want to blow off some steam, head over to stormfront.com
        No one wants to be my friend over there, but something tells me they’ll welcome most of you guys with open arms. AND they love guns and hate immigrants, minorities, and Jews. Go forth and complain, yee oppressed white men.

  15. I only say (if you live in a blue state) you MAY be part of the problem. Either way, we both agree it’s a PROBLEM.

    I didn’t make the problem, I don’t know if you did.

    If YOU could solve the problem, GREAT. If I gotta solve the problem, you better not be there because I don’t know how much compunction I’ll feel to try to sort you all out before I fix the problem.

    If you are a POS liberal, progressive, socialist, communist, globalist, global-warming-ist MF and still say “it’s not me, it’s “THEM” “, you are full of crap and you can refer to my previous remarks.

    If any of you all haven’t read it yet:

    If you live in a Blue state you MAY be part of the PROBLEM.
    If you are a POS liberal, progressive, socialist, communist, globalist, global-warming-ist, (D), or “deep state” rino . . .
    THE PROBLEM IS

    PART
    OF
    YOU

    YOU ARE PERMANENTLY BROKEN, AND YOUR MOM OWES US AN ABORTION.

  16. A prison guard talking about freedom defines irony. I bet he still treats people locked up for gun crimes (like having a semi auto and a 30rd magazine in his state) the same way he treats killers and rapist.

    • pro tip, you have to. Try treating one class or individual inmate differently and see how long you keep your job or how long till the inmates go ape shit about it

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