…I believed that I wouldn’t be able to understand where I lived unless I wrapped my head around the guns themselves. No other state is so closely associated with the mythology of the gun, and, by raw numbers, Texas has more of them than anywhere else in the U.S. (Per capita, our rates of firearm ownership are closer to the national average.) No matter where I go, when I tell people where I live, they grin and point gun fingers at me. Bang, bang—the universally understood symbol for Texas. …
In 2020, amid the upheavals of the pandemic, the Presidential election, and the George Floyd protests, the United States, a country that already had more guns than people, accumulated millions more of them, many purchased by first-time gun owners. A large share of the 22.8 million firearms sold that year were bought by white men, who make up the vast majority of gun owners. But some of the fastest-growing segments of gun owners are from backgrounds the industry considers “non-traditional”: women, Asian Americans, liberals.
That year and into the next, I continued with my gun research. I got a concealed-carry permit, for journalism, and spent some time at a gun store in Austin, also for journalism. Or at least that was the excuse I gave my friends. The store had flyers for a gun-themed comedy show called “Guns and Giggles,” which I did not attend. I was at the shop so frequently that I developed a crush on one of its employees, a lanky bicycle mechanic whose name was Freedom. The natural next step would be to get a gun, for journalism. Freedom recommended a Glock 19: compact, with minimal kickback. A year earlier, the idea would have struck me as absurd, but now it had the aura of possibility.
Friends and acquaintances kept telling me about the guns they had bought, or almost bought. My mother, who had never displayed any interest in firearms, mentioned that she’d taken a women’s-only handgun class. On Instagram, I followed a collective of trans alpaca farmers living in rural Colorado whose pictures of their baby animals were interspersed with pictures of their self-defense arsenal. A couple of my most politically active friends went to the woods for mysterious tactical training that they were pointedly close-lipped about.
In November, I travelled to Arizona to take a defensive pistol class at Gunsite, a bucket-list destination for a certain kind of dad. For five days, a sinewy, joyless ex-special-ops soldier watched over us as we practiced drawing, aiming, firing, and reloading as quickly and as accurately as possible. The point of all the repetition was to build muscle memory, to make the actions automatic, movement that preceded thought. Before holstering your weapon, you were supposed to ask yourself: Is my world safe? If not, you stayed drawn.
I loaded enough bullets that week that my thumb cramped, so I bought a speed loader. It was pink, the preferred color for gun accessories for women. (You can get pink thigh holsters, pink-camo gun safes, and enough pink parts to build an almost entirely pink AR-15.) I was one of two women in the class, and our instructors kept praising us for our presence. All week long, they had been presenting scenarios to justify our imaginary use of force. They were usually laced with sexual menace: the biker gang, the meth heads, and the “unspeakable things” they wanted to do to women and children. Being armed was not just a means of self-defense but a responsibility, according to this way of thinking. Men were armed in order to protect women; empowerment, in gun world, was women protecting themselves.
I wouldn’t say I had a good time at Gunsite, exactly, but I did feel a growing pride in my competence. I wasn’t the worst shooter in the class, as I’d feared. I wore my loaner pistol in a hip holster, and its presence, initially unnerving, soon faded into the background of my day. One evening, back at my hotel, I had the sudden sense that I had forgotten something important. I looked around the room for a minute before I figured it out: it was the weight of the gun that I missed.
The sociologist Jennifer Carlson writes about the figure of the “citizen-protector”: “Gun carriers use firearms to actively assert their authority and relevance by embracing the duty to protect themselves and police others.” For Carlson, this new model of citizenship emerges from a context of American decline, economic precarity, and social alienation. In a world of decaying institutions, the citizen-protector takes matters into his own hands. The implicit assumption that he is not just a guy with a gun but a good guy with a gun is fundamental, a conviction so automatic that it precedes thought. During my lunch break at Gunsite, I indulged in my own citizen-protector daydreams. In them, I was in the midst of some future calamity, a mass-shooting incident, say. It never ended with me coolly bringing down the bad guy with a single shot—in my fantasies, I was unarmed—but with me using my new knowledge to seize his gun and confidently eject the bullet from the chamber.
The grand finale of the week was a tour of the home of Gunsite’s late founder, an imperious and erudite racist named Jeff Cooper. The house was built like a fortress, with walls that could withstand small-arms fire, steel gates to shield the bedrooms, and window slits near the front door so that Cooper could target any unwelcome visitors. As Cooper’s granddaughter served us cookies and juice, my classmates asked, again, if I was going to get a gun. They wanted to recruit another person to their side, I’m sure. But I think they also thought that I should own a gun for my own good.
“A gun is status—that’s why they call it an equalizer,” Richard Hofstadter quotes “a young Chicago black” as saying, in a 1970 article in American Heritage on American gun culture. “What’s happening today is that everybody’s getting more and more equal, because everybody’s got one.” But convictions for gun crimes still disproportionately impact Black and Latino populations. A police officer killed Philando Castile when he was reaching for his gun license; Marissa Alexander was sentenced to twenty years for firing a warning shot in the air to scare off her abusive husband. As an equalizing instrument, guns are no match for an unequal society; if anything, they merely make existing inequalities more volatile.
— Rachel Monroe in The Last Gun I Shot
Hey, Rachel!
It is not journalism when your research is rife with bigotry.
Once rachel monroe went austin and took firearm advice from her guy interest “freedom” everything went downhill to rachel just taking up valuable space at Gunsite. And before rachel goes calling Jeff Cooper a Racist again she needs to climb down form her journalism high horse and take a look at the History of Gun Control inherent with the democRat Party.
Bottom line rachel monroe…Gun Control and its History is what set the standard for using the word, “Racist.”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZFEz3Bt9hCw&feature=shared
I thought she was just trying to be sarcastically humorous. But yea, other wise, she kinda of failed to understand what she was doing or why she, and the others, were at Gunsite.
Most likely she was (in)virtue signalling to her undoubtable very liberal friends. She’s on the path, she’ll get there. She’s making the right steps, just needs to finally get some water and swallow that red pill.
I was at Gunsite 6 years ago for the 250 pistol class. Best week of my retirement. 25% women. One attendee was with her grandfather as a graduation gift.
Jeff Cooper was a racist???? I read a lot about him and never saw any evidence that he was a racist.
He didn’t like 9mm.
🙂 .45ACP or go home.
No 380s need apply.
“No 380s need apply.”
That goes without saying.
Caliberist.
Cue the T-shirts…
He had steel walls and a fortress so he must be a racist. Probably her logic?
He had rocks out on the property designating range in 100 yard increments and a strong shooting position on top of the house that could not be breached by invaders. If you have taken a class there his elderly wife invited you into their home. Very interesting.
Didn’t you know, all white men of a certain age are racist by default. Considering the number of seniors we have is it any wonder a segregationist who calls people “boy” sits in the oval office in 2023.
Not to mention “lying, dog-faced pony soldier”…
That’s because climate change has rotted your mind! You are probably dismissive of Trans-rights too. You monster.
FWIW (from back in the 1990s):
–Cooper regularly refers to Japanese as “Nips,” and has suggested calling black South Africans from the Gauteng province “Orang-gautengs.” In 1994 he wrote, “Los Angeles and Ho Chi Min City have declared themselves sister cities. It makes sense�they are both Third World metropolises formerly occupied by Americans.”–
https://vpc.org/press/press-release-archive/washington-post-report-of-racist-views-of-national-rifle-association-researcher-not-surprising-according-to-recent-vpc-study/
Nip is simply short for Nipponese, but the rest…LOL
And if someone thinks they get to play the moral high ground, they don’t. One doesn’t get to play the moral high ground when they attack another.
Nip = Jap = Yank = etc. So what, we are going to cry in our Wheaties because someone called us Yanks?
Nip = Nipponese
Jap = Japanese
Yank = Yankees
Do we cry and whine about it like sissies?
If someone calls me a Yank, I’ll say d*mn right!
“Nip” and “Jap” are racial pejoratives.
@Man with no name They are? How is Jap a pejorative? Are they not Japanese? Actually, what are Japanese? The Japanese are not a single race (however they want you to believe it, just like the Chinese are not all Han, even though they are trying to force it so). They are Chinese, Korean, and Mongolian, best scientists can tell. So Japanese is *not* even a race, hence it cannot be a racial pejorative. Asian, yes. And even then it is not a pejorative anymore than Yank is.
In America we take pride in Yankee. Perhaps the Japanese have reason not to take pride in Nipponese or Japanese. Perhaps they are ashamed of their actions in WWII, or their obsequious obedience to not having a military (which gained them billions of dollars), or their culture where parents have to hire women to date their sons. Yeah, their leader is not a god and we will kill you if you attack us. If you don’t like it, don’t attack us.
I always wondered why it’s politically correct to call the country by its anglicized colonizer label “Japan” and not by the native name “Nipon.”
Everytime I hear “Japan” I can hear the colonizers raping my great, great, great grandmother.
@ Nissan…That would be your Japanese colonizing ancestors. That raped and murdered 10s of thousands of Chinese, Korean and Asian women during their occupation of China, Korea and the rest of Indochina.
@Darkman you can’t bring that up because it’s derogatory! Even though Japan was horrific! One of the worst and most brutal in history. (Only the Māori was worse). Japan murdered people for fun for no reason. Brutally, and made a game of it. They had daily reports in their newspapers. But you can’t say “Jap” because that will hurt their feelings, even though it is just short for Japanese. They are willing to murder women and children, but you can’t hurt their feelings!
Danny — yes, they are racial pejoratives. Once considered neutral, the terms were used derogatorily during and after WWII and have become slurs. No one who uses the terms today can deny that they are epithets. If you disagree, please make a similar case that “the n-word” is an acceptable term as it is only a variation on Negro.
“Nipponese” is a proper term for “Japanese.” The Japanese word for Japan is “Nihon,” or infrequently “Nippon,” and the language “nihon no.”
“Yank” and “Yankee” were first used derogatorily by the British (and sometimes still are); now they are prideful terms to Americans. Language changes.
‘Nippon’ means ‘Japan’ or more literally “rising-sun place” which comes from ‘ni(chi)’ meaning “the sun” + ‘pon, hon’ meaning “source” – and it originates from Chinese usage in relation to Japan and a person from Japan or the Japanese language was called ‘Nipponese’ and the ‘native’ Japanese name for Japan became ‘Nippon’. And today the word ‘Japan’ in Japanese is ‘日本’ and the word ‘Nippon’ in Japanese is also ‘日本’ – as both are synonymous although in relation to the people or language or country name of Japan the use of ‘Nippon’ is somewhat dated and ‘Japan’ or ‘Japanese’ are the preferred and more proper terms.
@Man with no name I see that you have ignored my remarks. Do you see people using the word Nip today everyday? When was the last time you personally heard it? Never? Then STFU.
Nip is short for Nipponese. Yank is short for Yankee, which in itself was supposed to be a pejorative, but we don’t care because we hold the moral high ground on most everything. The Revolutionary War, WWI, and WWII. Why don’t you and them grow a pair of balls?
Do you know why the Japanese can’t hold the moral high ground? Because they enslaved Korean and Chinese women to be sex slaves to Japanese soldiers. They were called “comfort women.”
Do you know why the Japanese can’t hold the moral high ground? Because they murdered Chinese people for sport and publicized it in their newspapers as a contest to see who could murder the most.
Do you know why the Japanese can’t hold the moral high ground? Because they attacked Pearl Harbor.
Want me to go on? And you are telling me their “feelings” are hurt? Oh, I’d hate to hurt someone’s “feelings” who murdered and raped people for fun.
This entire line is meaningless. Everyone is an “-ist” (Racists, Sexist etc) when actions taken during a time are reapplied to a different time. And when I say everyone, I do mean everyone. I’m sure when the Romans annihilated Carthage, they were not ill thought off. Washington treated his slaves well and was a president. Cooper was a great man of his time. He should be remembered for his virtues not his failings.
@Kyle so you are saying that even back then Japan having Korean sex slaves was okay? And that Japan murdering Chinese women and children for sport and posting the numbers in their daily newspaper was okay? And that attacking Pearl Harbor was okay? Because that was the way it was back then?
For your consideration:
“I’m sorry that your wife has had to go through the awfulness of being called {n-word} because she is black. That must be unbearable. I don’t know how she manages, that people she doesn’t even know call her {n-word}. Which she is.
“But oh dear, someone of Negro ancestry is called {n-word} for short. The horror!
“Your wife is an adult, I think she can handle it if someone refers to her as a {n-word} instead of black (maybe you hang around those type of people who would say “n-word” in a derogatory way).”
“Frozen Jap” by Paul McCartney
https://youtu.be/ikM24hjTbx8?si=vSgLJOZvT0QILZze
Oh no. A frozen jap.
Nah, she was pretty hot if you ask me.
Come together.
Sigh gone
No, Damnang…
I wonder what was said about the japanese who regularly bayonetted entire families of men, women, and children in South Korea. During their occupation of that country for over forty years???
I wonder what was said about the japanese and their 731 unit. Who conducted medical experiments on live patients just like the germans. And the Japanese conducted those medical experiments on American and UK prisoners of war.
The japanese who conducted live human dissections while the patients were still alive. The japanese who considered other asians to be racially inferior to them.
And who worked tens of thousands of them to death, building railroads all over asia, and particularly in Burma.
I wonder what the Japanese were called when they forcibly were used, “Comfort Women” as sex slaves, all over the Japanese Empire. From Asia to the far Pacific islands, to sexually satisfy their soldiers in far away places.
Yes, I wonder what the Japanese were called. When they ran the “Hell Ships”???
When they conducted the Batan Death March. While they used filipino children as bayonet targets.
So yes I do wonder what the japanese were called who did all these things???
The white libertarians, the white liberals and the white left. Have always ignored or made excuses for the atrocities and war crimes committed by the Japanese.
To me, they seem to have a racist focus, on only the crimes committed by the Germans.
And as president Bush said, these people have the soft bigotry of low expectations for black american citizens.
sources.
“Factories of death”, japanese biological warfare 1932 to 1945
by sheldon h harris
“Prisoners of the Japanese” by Gavan Daws.
“The rape of Nanking” , Books, movies, and documentaries. You can google them.
I attended Gunsite in 1989, Ltc. Cooper spent much time with our class and I spent was fortunate to spend time with him one one. I don’t recall him mentioning anything about race the whole week. The gentleman was a professional in every sense.
Yeah, Cooper was a racist. He was a WWII Pacific and Korean War vet that was fine using the racist epithets of the day (you were in a minority if you were a vet from either war that didn’t use such slurs) well into the 21st century, and was more than happy to refer to minority criminals as various kinds of chimp or primate in his monthly column in National Rifleman magazine, especially in the 80’s and 90’s. Just because he left a long lasting institution and philosophy that survives to the present day doesn’t make the man any less flawed a human being.
And apparently it’s still alive and well when one poster is jumping through hoops trying to justify using 1940’s era racist terms as “just referring to someone’s ethnicity” while then trying to argue Japanese people aren’t even Japanese, therefore they shouldn’t be offended. By that logic nobody is an American unless they are Native American by birth because we haven’t spent our entire ethnic history in North America. At least “Yankee” hasn’t had a couple wars worth of propaganda dehumanizing them as barbarous, savage primates since at least the 1860’s, unlike the Japanese and various other Asian ethnic groups that had ended up in conflict with the United States in more recent wars.
It’s utterly hypocritical that it’s understood to be unacceptable to use the N-word towards African Americans or the R-word towards Native Americans, but somehow it’s fine to refer to Japanese and other Asian groups by three quarters of a century old racial slurs.
LOL! When was the last time you personally heard anyone refer to a Japanese person as a Nip or Jap? Is that even a thing? Or are you trying to bring up things 60 years old just to fight about something?
If I were to refer to Democrats as racists based upon their history I would be told that that was 175 years ago (or 75 years ago, or 25 years ago), not now!
“When was the last time you personally heard anyone refer to a Japanese person as a Nip or Jap? Is that even a thing?”
Unfortunately, yes it’s still a “thing” — sadly, I’ve personally witnessed it numerous times. I’m married to a Japanese-American woman; a native Japanese immigrant, she’s now an American citizen.
Too often; growing up in Southern California in the 90’s and 2000’s as a half-Japanese made it a little too noticeable that a great many people (notably white and hispanic folks of the Baby Boomer and Gen X generation) were more than happy to refer to Japanese people as “J*ps” and “N*ps”, unsurprisingly because they heard it from their parents or grandparents. Compared to the Hispanics and African-Americans, at least neither of those groups had to deal with what seemed like the regular question of “What race of Asian are you? A Ch*nk, a G*ok, or a J*p?”.
About the only Asians that got lucky enough to not have some racist shorthand addressed to them were the Filipino’s.
@Man with no name I’m sorry that your wife has had to go through the awfulness of being called Jap because she is Japanese. That must be unbearable. I don’t know how she manages, that people she doesn’t even know call her Japanese. Which she is. I feel her pain since all of my relatives call me a Yankee. Yes, they are from the South and repeatedly talk to me about Shiloh. Oh, poor me!
Do you know what else is unbearable? Kids in school who are ridiculed and made fun of. They are young! They are ugly, or slow, or nerds, or somehow just don’t fit in. Sometimes they commit suicide. But oh dear, someone of Japanese ancestry is called Jap for short. The horror!
Your wife is an adult, I think she can handle it if someone refers to her as a Jap instead of a Japanese (which I’m not entirely sure I even believe you since I’m 67 and have never ever, once in my life have heard that, but maybe you hang around those type of people who would say “Jap” in a derogatory way).
“@Man with no name I see that you have ignored my remarks.”
Danny boy, I see no reason to engage a cultural and historical illiterate such as yourself, in a cultural and historical discussion.
Thank you; no.
Last time I heard “Jap” or “Nip” it was on McHale’s Navy; and I’m only 64…
“…but somehow it’s fine to refer to Japanese and other Asian groups by three quarters of a century old racial slurs.”
All this rasisisis crapola is just a stupid waste of time. I am not a rasisisis; I treat everyone as if they were/are Texas Aggies. (Who else slaps a 3inX3in sticker on their car declaring they hav an ATM card?)
“All this rasisisis crapola is just a stupid waste of time.”
I am an equal opportunity offender. If perchance, I do not offend you, I will strive to work hard to treat you the same as all the others.
(You lousy, good-for-nothing Aggie!) 🙂
“…while then trying to argue Japanese people aren’t even Japanese, therefore they shouldn’t be offended.”
Last I heard, years back, was that the Japanese people have no right to defend their societal norms of blatant racism towards the Korean people, (claiming they are ethnically-‘purer’ than the Koreans), because the Japanese *themselves* are proven to be an ethnic off-shoot of the Korean people. Easy to think that way being on an island nation, however.
Then, we have the extensive documentation of the notorious WW2 Unit 731 ‘medical experiments’ that really puts the kibosh on Japan’s claims of being ‘kind and gentle’ world citizens :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
Pretty much every society in human history has examples of utter horrid disregard of other societies.
We do enjoy being tribal, as I am doing right now, towards that despicable ‘Rachel’ creature… 🙁
My girlfiend is Cherokee, she doesn’t care what ethnic slur you call her.
However shes had a gunm pointed at me more then once and certainly likes her knives. Why they drink liquor when all it does is gettem all pissed off I’ve no idea. All you’ve gotta do is brag on the slop she calls food, dont get in her way and it all works out. I ask one of her injun friends what I was doing wrong and he said your a possum, its lucky your not in the stew pot. Half possum I said, with much disdain, however I’m sure she would fck up Spocks day if he to complained that slop is not really fine cuisine. I suppose it’s an injun thing, one thing I’ve noticed is if your not using it and they need its use it now belongs to them.
Hopefully you’ve got a Wendy’s, a Hardee’s or at least a (cough choke) Pizza Hut close by…
“The house was built like a fortress, with walls that could withstand small-arms fire, steel gates to shield the bedrooms, and window slits near the front door so that Cooper could target any unwelcome visitors.”
I wish we had that where we used to live. it was badly needed.
our newer home now has such, well, not that dramatically obvious, ‘features’ because we learned our lesson the hard way where we used to live that prep is better than not being prepared which is something this person seems to not understand all through her missive and misses the point. its that wilful ‘anti gun’ void in their perception.
Quite frankly, my next house I’m planning on surrounding with an 8-foot cinder block wall filled with concrete, (and maybe jagged shards of plate glass buried in the concrete on top), as a defense against errant small-arms fire and folks climbing over it…
For a while there it seems ms Monroe had “got it” and understood why guns exist in America and it’s history. Then in the last paragraph she reverted to her whining leftist agenda as I was almost ready to give her credit for taking the opportunity to educate herself. Rachel is somebody who should never own a firearm, has one, and is unlikely to remember her training in its deployment. Unfortunate she let her agenda overrule logic.
“Then in the last paragraph she reverted to her whining leftist agenda”
two modes only for anti-gun…pretend like they want to understand then revert to their already pre-conceived basis… or just flat out say it.
it’s what makes them so obvious.
notice how she begins to bias a little at a time in her missive feigning an ‘innocence open mind’ to lend an appearance of ‘objectivity’, for example…
“I got a concealed-carry permit, for journalism, and spent some time at a gun store in Austin, also for journalism.”
then brings up the false anti-gun created myth of…
“was in the midst of some future calamity, a mass-shooting incident, say. It never ended with me coolly bringing down the bad guy with a single shot—in my fantasies, I was unarmed—but with me using my new knowledge to seize his gun and confidently eject the bullet from the chamber.”
and the ‘secret mysterious knowledge’ anti-gun created myth of ‘fear’ with…
“A couple of my most politically active friends went to the woods for mysterious tactical training that they were pointedly close-lipped about.”
I believe the last part. I’m thinking Antifa or BLM. I give the nod to Antifa. BLM are more honest. LOL.
A 17 year-old named Kyle showed 3 Antifa ‘soldiers’ what they are made of.
Oh, and Mr. Antifa bad-ass, Gaige Grosskreutz (AKA, ‘Gimpy’) was recentlt run over by an SUV, suffering multiple broken bones and a lacerated liver :
https://kenoshacountyeye.com/blog/2023/09/21/kyle-rittenhouse-attacker-gaige-grosskreutz-hit-by-car-in-milwaukee-new-name-revealed-video/
He’s so proud to be Antifa, he changed his name to ‘Paul Prediger’.
(Video of him getting run over at the above link)
100,% correct. Never trust a leftist.
The “for journalism” parts may also help to establish any related expenses as being tax deductible. She apparently wasn’t doing it for real.
Ha! I hadn’t even thought of that!
I suspect she mostly does “get it,” but she’s writing for The New Yorker, so she had to throw some anti-gun “woke” language into her last paragraph, or else her editor wouldn’t publish it. If she’d ended the article by saying, “I’m converted! Guns are good, and everyone should go out and buy one,” The New Yorker would have thrown her article in the trash instead of printing it.
I do wish she’d stop calling cartridges “bullets.” Her talk about “loading bullets” made me cringe, and when you click on the complete article, she makes this mistake many more times, e.g. “Finally, he walked me out to the range with my rental pistol and a box of bullets.”
Cartridges can be bullets and bullets can be cartridges and when you get a lot of either or both you have emu
She couldn’t see the forest for the trees. One of these she just may wish that the gun she left behind was in her hand.
A gun is NOT status. It is not referred to as an equalizer for it being status. Some might use it as such but that’s like anything else in life. There are those that spend huge dollar amounts on exotic cars. But generally people just need transportation. Guns are equalizers because they can turn the physically weak into formidable forces to be dealt with. Most people are not governators. Trying to convince someone that your $300 pistol is a symbol of some sort of status is likely to get you laughed at.
People that carry firearms are NOT policing others. They are citizen protectors but only by default. If something were to happen in a place where no one has a gun then there is not generally any sufficient means to fight back. Especially if there are multiple aggressors.
I would advise getting your gun FIRST and practicing BEFORE getting the license. But this may vary a bit depending on state and laws.
I’m perhaps thinking she should leave Texas alone and move to California.
“No matter where I go, when I tell people where I live, they grin and point gun fingers at me. Bang, bang—the universally understood symbol for Texas. …”
WTF?
This Texan has had this happen to me zero times in my life. It’s one thing for people outside of Texas to have a cartoon perception of the state, it’s another for outsider idiots like this writer who move here and keep it.
“As Cooper’s granddaughter served us cookies and juice, my classmates asked, again, if I was going to get a gun. They wanted to recruit another person to their side, I’m sure. But I think they also thought that I should own a gun for my own good.”
Huh? Maybe they were just normal people who were curious? Here’s a weird thought: why didn’t you just ask them? I already know the answer: you prefer remaining in your cartoon world.
I think it’s all a lie, too, but even supposedly “gun people” misunderstand Texas. For example, I’m involved with open carry. In Michigan some CPL (concealed pistol license) instructors, when asked about open carry, would poo-poo it here but cite that in places like Texas it is normal. Um, no, in Texas it was illegal! I’ve been doing this for 15 years and it has only recently become legal in Texas (it has always been legal in Michigan), but people across the USA think otherwise. They don’t have any idea of gun laws. Zero!
“but even supposedly “gun people” misunderstand Texas”
Yep. It is AMAZING the crap ideas people have about what their local rules are.
Learn the law that you are living by!
THEN buy a gun.
The cop should have been imprisoned for 20 years. (Actually he should have been imprisoned for life but we don’t do that for the type of “mistake” he made). As I recall he wasn’t charged. We investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong.
Stupid, everyone knows you can’t fire off warning shots, if you have to shoot you shoot the person, but the sentence (if accurate) is equally stupid.
Edit: quotes are now in Superman type and in all caps. Interesting. Something happened in the last 24 hours to WordPress.
Blockquotes tend to be super-large; I use italics instead.
This is a recent change. First they changed to “center alignment,” which is bad enough, now this. Why do they keep making these formatting changes for no reason to something people use and have in their personal WordPress blogs? Idiots.
24-48 hours ago blockquotes did NOT do this!
I quit using blockquotes months ago when this exact thing happened.
I’ve seen this in posts now and then, but not yet to any of mine, and I quote from other posts all the time. I seldom use html, but simply copy/paste and add quote marks. Maybe that’s the difference?
test:
“24-48 hours ago blockquotes did NOT do this!”
But if you use HTML:
Wait a second here…Sleepy Joe said you can fire off your double-barrel to scare bad people away. Seems to be this would be a valid defense in court.
Touché.
There’s a difference between owning guns and being a shooter. Most people in Texas are gun owners, but most gun owners in Texas buy a box or two of ammo when they get the gun and 20 years later they still have most of the ammo they bought that day. They aren’t shooters. If they were shooters, you’d need to book an appointment for a time slot at a shooting range about 9 weeks in advance.
With all the public land available Texans have to shoot at private ranges? Remind me to never move to Texas.
Everyone from Texas sees that question and asks, “What public land?”
Obviously I need to be educated. I drive to Texas about once a year to go 4WD. Seeing all the empty land I just assumed…
Even in some state parks here in MI one can shoot in the woods. Not to mention DNR ranges and more. There’s so much DNR property in MI, you don’t have similar Department of Natural Resources (state) property in Texas? State owned open land is open land. There is no state owned open land in Texas?
Not much. Almost everything in TX is privately owned.
@Danny Griffin
Empty land does not mean public land.
Texas has very little public land…… Government shouldn’t own property and we like it that way here!
I grew up in a suburb of San Antonio with houses on about quarter acre lots. It would have cause no end of problems if we had shot in the backyard…
Shooting pellet and BB gun guns into a well made target trap under direct adult supervision caused some issues with the neighbors.
Even here in Pennsylvania you can’t target shoot on public land, unless it is at a State Game Lands range. They have been slowly closing those for years, and have a ton of BS regulations; no more than 6 rounds in a mag, with a $100 per round fine over that, no rapid fire, no drawing and shooting, no shooting from in front of the firing line, etc. A few years ago they started requiring you have to have a hunting license or permit to use the few of those ranges that remain. So even having public lands won’t mean you can just go out and shoot wherever.
“Empty land”. Just because ya own it don’t mean ya gotta build stuff on it. Empty is the way it should be.
Oklahoma used to know that now it’s the home of the 5 acre dream and overcrowded
Yup , Oklahoma is getting crowded. I was watching the storms the other night and wanted to find a secluded place on top a hill to watch. Just about every hill top had a house on it.
Figured I’d get lawed for parking and sitting so I just kept rolling.
Throw that “Racist” term around without offering ANY proof. I have read Jeff Cooper’s writings since the 1960’s, and NEVER read anything racist, or seen him described as racist by any credible measure. Maybe this writer makes assumptions about people, based on the color of their skin, Col. Cooper was white, but then, that would mak the writer, um, RACIST!
“Journalism”
There are two classes of people I don’t talk to, the poo poo and propaganda hacks calling themselves “Journalists.” Nothing good can come of talking to either of them.
A pastor friend of mine no longer gives interviews because the press continually misrepresented what he said and left out most of it. This happened in the 1970’s! In Georgia (the Bible belt). He’s still going strong.
Good policy. They have their agenda and will twist anything you say to further it They have no soul or respect or anyone else and will lie and misrepresent any “facts” they can get to do that while destroying anyone or anything in their path in order to get to their goals.
Man this gal is effed up! What a maroon🙄🐰.
“….unless I wrapped my head around the guns themselves.”
You terms are acceptable, madam.
Yeah, but what self respecting space alien would wear her as a suit?
Also a “collective of trans alpaca farmers living in rural Colorado whose pictures of their baby animals were interspersed with pictures of their self-defense arsenal” oh come on! Not even the idiots who still read what that rag has devolved into would believe that kind of nonsense!
LOL
I was wondering, are they “trans” people who raise alpacas, or are they raising “trans alpacas?” Or is it one of those “and” things?
@Cloudbuster don’t confuse me more than I already am! My intersectional Venn diagram is getting too hard to follow.
But convictions for gun crimes still disproportionately impact Black and Latino populations.
Blacks and Hispanics commit “gun crimes” far more often than whites per capita. Phrasing this in the passive voice (“convictions disproportionately impact black people”) is dishonest and evasive.
I realize I’m ONLY 74 years old and I’ve ONLY been in 49 states (somehow missed ND the seventeen times I’ve done Sturgis SD bike week), Canada, Mexico, most of Asia, Australia, NZ and three South American countries but I have NEVER heard Texas referred to as the fucking “Bang-Bang State”… And yes, I’ve been all over Texas from North to South and East to West… What a condescending bitch, “PINK is the PREFFERED color for women’s accessories”? Don’t tell my wife, she must have missed that memo… Sounds like Gen “Mildred” Milley bullshit “I want understand white rage and I’m white and I wanna understand it”… Funny the height of her “story” is a quote from a Chiraq gangbanger? Six minutes I’ll never get back, thanks Grace… Oh yeah, “from backgrounds the industry considers “non-traditional”: women, Asian Americans, liberals.” Seems she conveniently forgot black women…
She can write whatever she wants because her readership won’t know any difference. They’ll eat it up.
What I want to know is why you’ve done Sturgis 17 times! I’ve owned four bikes (been riding since I was 16) and never once felt the need to attend that! Haha. I just sold my second Gold Wing.
Same reason I’ve been to Laconia New Hampshire) Bike Week 25 times (I still haven’t seen all there is to see in either place), If you’ve never been you wouldn’t understand… I guess I just really like riding and history and South Dakota played a pretty big role in OUR history… I’ve been riding for over 60 years; it would get pretty boring if I spent all that time just riding around my own neighborhood… You’ve owned four bikes and I have three times that many in my collection… You do you mmmkay…
“somehow missed ND”
Did you miss anything?
“Did you miss anything?”
You mean like -50 in Jan, and +105 in Aug?
And mosquito clouds forming about 4ft above the ground?
I visited Bismarck about 30 years ago to meet my wife’s great-grandmother and great aunt. It was a very pleasant town.
You don’t want to miss tooling along about 80 mph out in the middle of nowhere, when a pair of headlights appears far behind you – literally miles behind you. And, a minute later, that cop car goes past you so fast, he takes part of your paint with him. That cop whipped past me so fast, the only thing that made me more than half sure it WAS a cop, was the light bar on top. No, the light bar wasn’t being used, he was flying incognito.
“Did you miss anything?”
Don’t know since I’ve never been…
“Freedom recommended a Glock 19: compact, with minimal kickback. A year earlier, the idea would have struck me as absurd”
Im the opposite. Years ago I would have agreed. Now it strikes me as absurd. Get a G48 and the Shield arms mags and mag catch. Same capacity, reliability, and manual of arms. A lot less bulky and lighter. I think someone else may have released a flush fit polymer 15 round mag now, but I am already far enough into Shield Arms products that it doesn’t make sense to start over.
“I looked around the room for a minute before I figured it out: it was the weight of the gun that I missed.”
Yeah, it happens to all of us on those rare occasions when we aren’t wearing a gun. After awhile there is no pause between the feeling and knowing what it is.
“an imperious and erudite racist named Jeff Cooper.”
You misspelled great philosopher and saint.
“police officer killed Philando Castile when he was reaching for his gun license”
No! A police officer killed Castile when he did not stop moving while repeatedly and loudly being commanded to.
I am not familiar with the other case mentioned, but warning shots are generally illegal. Presenting a gun is threat of deadly force and I would imagine discharging it is also. If you have cause to shoot someone, shoot them. If you don’t, then leave the gun in it’s holster or at low ready.
“No! A police officer killed Castile when he did not stop moving while repeatedly and loudly being commanded to.”
Sorry, that’s horse shit. Neither you, nor I, nor a cop is justified in using lethal force just because someone is moving. Philandro is dead right, and the cop is criminally culpable. Dead right is just as dead as any other dead, but Philandro had no reason to comply with any stupid orders to not move. Worse, the cop didn’t issue any orders to “don’t move” or whatever you’re conjuring out of thin air.
The situation with Philandro was, “NIGGA WID A GUN! BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG”.
You are correct. The cop that shot Castile should be in prison for 20 years (if not longer).
“The house was built like a fortress, with walls that could withstand small-arms fire, steel gates to shield the bedrooms, and window slits near the front door so that Cooper could target any unwelcome visitors.”
That could be any house in Chicago, Baltimore, Philly, St. Louis etc.
SHOULD be every house in Chicago, Baltimore, Philly, St. Louis, etc.
“The sociologist Jennifer Carlson writes about the figure of the “citizen-protector”: “Gun carriers use firearms to actively assert their authority and relevance by embracing the duty to protect themselves and police others.”
Dont know about yall, but I am not asserting any authority on anyone other than myself, and my relevance has nothing with owning a gun. Not my place to police others.
Sounds a lot like projection.
Agree. I don’t carry a firearm to protect you, I carry a firearm to protect me. This person has zero idea what she is talking about. Repeal the 14th Amendment now!
Maybe she was confusing guns w/ the worthless COVID masks. Like “Your gun protects me, my gun protects you.” LOL
if it saves one life it is worth it )
“As an equalizing instrument, guns are no match for an unequal society; if anything, they merely make existing inequalities more volatile.”
Well, yes.
When you have city leadership who pass laws that favor criminals, no cash bail, soft on crime DAs, it is the law abiding citizens that are in a unequal society.
That last part, she is right but not in the way she thinks she is.
“— Rachel Monroe in ‘The Last Gun I Shot’ ”
Maybe that is best, all around.
It’d be great if “the last gun I shot” was her doing an imitating R. Budd Dwyer then I could believe it was the last gun she shot.
“It’d be great if “the last gun I shot” was her doing an imitating R. Budd Dwyer then I could believe it was the last gun she shot.”
Well, since I don’t believe anything about her article, not holding my breath at the listed title.
Only a spoiled rotten and propagandized warped millennial would make such an asinine remark; “an imperious and erudite racist named Jeff Cooper … “. I have admiration for Jeff Cooper. And as for me being a “racist” … DAMN RIGHT I AM JUST LIKE MOST EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD. and I have zero toleration for whitetrashsluts.
Only racist in this is the author who accuses those who can’t defend themselves any longer.
Being called out for your actions doesn’t make the caller racist. It makes them outspoken and truthful
Who TF is Rachel Monroe and why do I GAF what she thinks??
The sociologist Jennifer Carlson writes about the figure of the “citizen-protector”: “Gun carriers use firearms to actively assert their authority and relevance by embracing the duty to protect themselves and police others.”
I am a sociologist that owns a gun. J. Carlson doesn’t know what she’s talking about. A real sociologist does research, qualitative in this case. She calls Jeff Cooper a racist without evidence.
I know a hundred people who own guns. Not one of them seek to “police” others.
We have guns for self protection from predators, two legged or four legged, those who seek to enslave us, such as Marxist governments that seek to disarm us so they can “police” us. There isn’t one Marxist government that has not disarmed people and then annihilated them.
@JRB “I am a sociologist” I wouldn’t admit that in polite company. Just sayin’.
actually … utah is the gun capital of the U.S.
not texas.
utah 30.43 per 1000 residence.
texas 28.63 per 1000 residence.
go utah !
Yeah. I wouldn’t believe those numbers. LOL.
Ever been in Utah? I live in the southern part of the state and seems truthful to me. I drive 3 miles south of town to an embankment for pistol practice and 8 miles north to the county shooting range (free) for rifle practice. You, my friend, are missing out. Only downside to Utah is having to go to the state liquor store…
Whoever is collating those numbers might be surprised at the real numbers.
True!
1000 domiciles, only 30 guns? Hahaha! That’s nuts.
those are the real numbers.
collated by “world population review” – updated june 2023.
a simple google search shows this.
utah also has a minimum of eight state sponsored gun shows per year.
and utah’s concealed weapons permit is honored in 36 other states.
you wouldn’t “believe” those numbers ?
pfft … the comment of an ignoramus … “belief” has nothing to do with it.
those are facts.
and facts are facts.
before making ridiculous comments, just do a simple google search.
utah happens to be the number one state in the u.s. for guns per capita.
period
“…before making ridiculous comments, just do a simple google search.”
Fact is, no one knows the per capita number of guns/ gun owners, or where. All claims as to that statistic are swags, at the very best. Swags are not evidence, or fact. (other than that swags exist)
No, gun carriers do *NOT* assert their authority and relevance by thinking they have a duty to protect others. In fact, it is just the opposite. We wear guns not to protect you, but to protect ourselves.
No, gun carriers do *NOT* assert their authority and relevance by thinking they have a duty to protect or police others. In fact, it is just the opposite. We wear guns not to protect you, but to protect ourselves. If that means defending ourselves against attack, then yes. Please explain the phrase “authority and relevance by embracing the duty to police others.” Does defending myself mean policing others?
Sorry, there was an error or two in one of my recent posts where parts of it got duplicated. The error was on my part on my computer (or the website) getting hung up. I would go back and delete the incorrect stuff but this website will not let me.
Seat Belts Saves Lives.
sometimes
And sometimes a seatbelt will trap a person in a burning car or one that is rapidly sinking in a river or lake because they panicked and forgot how to release it, or they did not have a knife handy to cut their way out…
At least she didn’t soil herself and break down in tears from the noise and the recoil.
“Trans alpacas”? How do they know?
Rachel wrote, in part:
“No other state is so closely associated with the mythology of the gun,”
which shows the foundation of her problem. She’s trying to understand a mythology, the myths, not the reality.
Another TransAlpaca trying to pawn herself off as a fair and honest bulwark of reality.
Why am I not surprised that her work is the sneak attack methodology of a Leftist Bigoted Control Freak?
Time lost reading her fluff piece that I can never get back.
@Cloudbuster
“I visited Bismarck about 30 years ago to meet my wife’s great-grandmother and great aunt. It was a very pleasant town.”
Spent 4 winters in Minot, ND. Arrived in Aug; it was over 100 for almost the entire month. Left for training in Sep; returned in Jan the next year; temps were below -30f. Stopped in Bismark, and when ordering lunch at a small restaurant, was told that they didn’t sell iced tea in winter. I asked for hot tea, and a glass full of ice. The server never saw the irony.
During my stay in Minot, I was quite happy, and impressed, at the ultra low crime rate.
@Sam:
Criminals suck, AND they are really lazy.
Ponder three words that call to them:
CALIFORNIA BEACH CITIES.
Rachel is more than welcome to move to an anti-gun state like California, if she cannot wrap her poor, pea-brained mind around the fact that Texans like their guns. Or, better yet, she can move to the UK, where no one has any guns rights whatsoever. She will feel so much safer and comfortable knowing everyone is unarmed and defenseless.
She should definitely move to the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, or better yet Germany, I hear the 3rd World invaders are quite amorous so amorous in fact that they invite their pals to participate in non-consensual “group sessions” with unpigmented females, surviving an encounter such as that might, and it’s a slim chance, change her attitude.
@Geoff “I’m getting too old for this shit” PR
“I am an equal opportunity offender. If perchance, I do not offend you, I will strive to work hard to treat you the same as all the others. (You lousy, good-for-nothing Aggie!) 🙂”
If you decide to shoot at the only certified, universally recognized, self-appointed Master of the Universe, you better not miss.
Shouldn’t she be more worried about shock absorbers?
I was looking for a bio on this broad but this was the closest I found, written by one of her “fellow travellers”:
https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/rachel-monroe-profile-vanlife.php
Excerpts:
“When she was in fourth grade, she wore a Clinton/Gore shirt to school, which led Monroe’s art teacher to whisper “Right on” under her breath.”
“Monroe lived in a (Baltimore) warehouse that was later shut down following the December 2016 Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. Surrounded by friends and a rotating cast of 20-year-old anarchists”
That tells me all I need to know.
Monroe a native of the Richmond VA-area states:
“… A couple of my most politically active friends went to the woods for mysterious tactical training that they were pointedly close-lipped about.” Hmmm?
Sounds awfully “militia-ie” to me, are these her “Anarchist” (AntiFa) “friends”? Has she notified the FBLie? No of course not had she stumbled across some armed guys in the woods during hunting season one of whom was wearing a “MAGA” hat she’d get a front page piece in the New York Times and be lauded for exposing “insurrection”/”revolution” training exercises taking place on state owned land.
WTF is “Rachel Monroe”? Only in reading the first few paragraphs of this piece of crap I conclude she is a moron.
Rachel, if you think I carry a gunm to protect you, that’s about a 25%er, drop Johnny Law and it would be 100%.
Your people, your people, get more laws passed that compromises your own safety then you realize.
I am just me, nothing. without your chains [We] could be your protector. ever if you, your people would cut “our chains” your world would be a safer place. Ks. went constitutional carry awhile back, and being the asshole that I worked for(together we were) he yanks out a magic( as in where did that come from?) .357 S&W and declares. ” This is the safest gas station in the world!!” The cashiers were aghast, at that split second I decided to present ,ironically at best, a tt33 and proclaim (in the voice us guys used when Cap’s gots your back) ‘YES, It IS.’
Had to be tool cool because the px store had video/audio and we all knew each other. MB had to be saying” Them fcking assholes .”
Rachel, your fucked, cause you just ain’t got no idea what real friends and friendship is.
As Southern Cross stated to an article about SmLE’s to another commenter, and he said,”Where Do I Begin”—
Where do I begin, when ‘My” boarders are flooded with refugees. When my government uses monopoly money, yet poverty and the crime associated with it run rampant. When our future is choosing to ” get high” or fck a goat, or a 3 year old. Where do I begin. To simplify things let’s start with Freedom. If I grow an abundance of cucumbers, and Can them as pickles, make profit, and .giv doesn’t get his cut( I use ‘his’ as in the English used him instead of her, Him being dominant.) referring to .Giv is dominant. And .Giv doesn’t get his cut, well I’m thrown in DOC. Rachel Shockabsober. You have no idea what freedom is or what is involved with your utopia.
People like this I’d kinda like to put in a calatrite tunnel and the hit it with an arc light.
Okay, I’m on as rant.
Us American’s need a good ass whoopin.
Oh btw if this post without mod,,,,, whatd you guys want,—- chug a fifth of Barton Vodka or eat a live channel cat? A scraggly channel, with worn off fins, and them white leaches crawling on it. Oh the hell with your vote, I’m hungry.
✌❤ my friends, u2 DebbieW
Oddly enough, that actually made sense in a possum kind of way… Good job…
Oh Rachel, gunms and females. Well my girlfiend will never get kidnapped and raped again.
Fck you. AND. Like I said before, I’d like you in a tunnel when Arc Light hits, better yet a Rome Plow.
America needs its ass whooped.——– Tooo many rainbows toooo many Unicorns
Quote:
““Yank” and “Yankee” were first used derogatorily by the British (and sometimes still are); now they are prideful terms to Americans. Language changes.”
A significant portion of America get angry if you call them a “Yankee”. Those are the peoples of NE America, most of whom are democrats (communist party USA).
Ain’t no Yankee….
I think most people in New England resent being called “Yankee” because they’re Red Sox fans.
XZX
True!
“1000 domiciles, only 30 guns? Hahaha! That’s nuts.”
no … that’s statistics.
for every 1000 households, there are 30 guns.
more than any other state.
period.
She was doing pretty well, until it became obvious she had still missed the point of owning and carrying a gun for self defense. Hopefully, she’ll figure it out before she becomes just another statistic but I won’t hold my breath.
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