The Smallest Minority

The Smallest Minority
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand "I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing." KdT
Wahabism Delenda Est Hey, FEC! BITE ME! I'm a Member of the McCain-Feingold INSURRECTION! "Jeez, Kevin... calling you an asshole would be a huge understatement, wouldn't it?" -Jack Cluth, The People's Republic of Seabrook (Coming from you, Jack, it's an honor.) email: gunrightsAT comcastDOTnet INVITATION: If you have never shot a firearm, regardless of your position on the right to arms, and if you live near or visit the Tucson, AZ metropolitan area, I invite you to go shooting for a day. I will provide the arms, ammunition, targets, safety equipment, range fees and instruction. All you have to do is show up. 4 Takers To Date DO YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE and want to try shooting? Click HERE Proud Gun-blogging member of the Pajamahadeen since May, 2003! An Invitation to My Readers Debates: "The Commentary" A OLD discussion on gun control between me and an Irishman living in London Start here. UPDATED! Now with archive! Post #1 by Alex, a Guest A multi-post discussion hosted here at TSM My short exchange with Professor Saul Cornell of the Second Amendment Research Center Best Posts: The "Rights" Discussion: What is a "Right?" What is a "Right"? Revisited, Part I Part II Rights, Morality, Idealism & Pragmatism, Part I Part II Part III Part IV The United Federation of Planets Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? Part I & Part II 1975 in Washington, D.C. vs. 2004 in Canton, Ohio Go Ahead, Rely on the Government for Your Protection The Other Side Liberal vs. Conservative: Both are Necessary The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie Updated and restated as: Of Laws and Sausages Militias A Mistake a Free People Get to Make Only Once This is NOT What I Wanted to Read TRUST The Lying "News" Media, Pt. II Say WHAT? Bias? What Bias? Agenda? What Agenda? The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation Let's See if I Can "Germinate an Intelligent Thought" Here The ACLU Hasn't Changed its Tune They Never EVER Stop It is Not the Business of Government Five Reasons Why It ISN'T They Keep Making Better Fools Five Month Investigation, 10 Tracer Rounds, Two Felony Convictions That Sumbitch Ain't been BORN! On Guillotines and Gibbets England Slides Further Towards Bondage Pressing the "RESET" Button Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothin' Left To Lose A Terrible Resolve The Courts Will Not Save Us Trilogy: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions "Game Over, Man. Game Over." An Important Question And the denouement: Hudson Was Wrong The Dangerous Victims Trilogy: "(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can" Violence and the Social Contract Governments, Criminals, and Dangerous Victims In the same vein: Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them The True Believers Trilogy: True Believers March of the Lemmings Reasonable People Also in the same vein: Tough History Coming Technical Dissertations Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn't (And Won't) Work Spin, Spin, Spin Speaking of Teddy Kennedy... This is the Kind of Thing That REALLY IRRITATES ME Questions from the Audience? BLOGROLL: PROTESTWARRIOR Some people who are taking the fight to the Left. And some GREAT T-shirts, too. DAILY READS I need a longer day! Day by Day InstaPundit Lileks' The Bleat Kim du Toit Mostly Cajun View from the Porch Of Arms and the Law TFS Magnum Ravenwood's Universe Irons in the Fire Say Uncle TRUE EXCELLENCE American Digest The Belmont Club The Volokh Conspiracy Michael Yon Varifrank Eject!Eject!Eject! Eternity Road Oleg Volk Personal Effects ON INDEFINITE HIATUS USS Clueless The Safety Valve Ipse Dixit The Lopsided Poopdeck Acidman (RIP) Skywritings Publicola D.C. Thorton Smoke on the Water OTHER GUN/RIGHTS BLOGS Airborne Combat Engineer AlphaPatriot Alphecca American Dinosaur A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver The Anarchangel The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Argghhh! The Bitch Girls Boots and Sabers The Breda Fallacy Call Me Ahab Carnaby Fudge Clayton Cramer Cogito Ergo Geek Countertop Chronicles Cowboy Blob Critical Mastiff Cryptic Subterranean FreedomSight From the Heartland Fun Turns to Tragedy!!! The Geek with a .45 Gunwatch Heartless Libertarian Hell in a Handbasket Individ Justin Buist's Blog The LawDog Files Lead and Gold Les Jones Mad Ogre The Michael Bane Blog Moral Flexibility Mr. Completely Murdoc Online The Munchkin Wrangler Ninth Stage No Looking Backwards No Quarters Oscar Poppa Outrageous Malfunction Pass the ammo Posse Incitatus Random Nuclear Strikes Reasonablenut Resistance is Futile! Sandcastles and Cubicles SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse Snowflakes in Hell Surly Curmudgeon Texican Tattler The Ten Ring South Park Pundit Triggerfinger The View From North Central Idaho Vox The War on Guns Weck Up To Thees! Wince and Nod Xavier Thoughts .45 Caliber Justice BLOGGERS I'VE MET Cowboy Blob Kim du Toit Mrs. du Toit Serenity Smoke on the Water The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler On the Patio Fodder of Ride Fast & Shoot Straight Rivrdog Say Uncle JimmyB, The Conservative UAW Guy KeeWee Mr. Completely Og the Neanderpundit USCitizen of Traction Control World Examiner Joe Huffman Chris & Mel John and Beth Donovan Sebastian of Snowflakes in Hell DirtCrashr of Anthroblogogy Rob of The Kitchen Maj. Chuck Ziegenfuss of From My Position... On the Way! Matthew of Triggerfinger Sarah of Carnaby Fudge KevinP who maintains this excellent Wikipedia entry on the Joyce Foundation Dave Hardy Clayton Cramer Primeval Papa FURRINERS Kiwi Pundit The Policeman's Blog Free Market Fairy Tales Samizdata Musing The Second Version OTHER GOOD READS Baby Troll Blog The Winds of Change Sense of Events The Everlasting Phelps Knowledge is Power QandO Blog Radio Blogger THE PSYCHE BRIGADE Dr. Sanity Dr. Helen One Cosmos ShrinkWrapped Neo-Neocon Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred OTHER AZ BLOGS Useful Fools Zonitics Jackalope Pursuivant Primeval Papa DEPT. OF OUR COLLAPSING SCHOOLS Joanne Jacobs EducatioNation Teacher, Teacher The Irascible Professor OTHERS KIND ENOUGH TO BLOGROLL ME Adding to the Noise America's North Shore Journal Anthroblogogy Atomic Nerds Baboon Pirates Bad Dogs and Such The Bastidge Blognomicon Charming, Just Charming Chublogga! Classical Values Common Sense and Wonder Combs Spouts Off Conservative Scalawag The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns damnum absque injuria David Drake Digital Retrograde The Dougout The Emigre with a Digital Cluebat Empire of Dirt Ether Mind The Fabulous Mint 400 The Freeholder Heinleinblog Impearls Interested-Participant Isaac Schrödinger Josh's Weblog Keith Devens Kill Righty Libertopia The Liberty Zone The Liberty Papers Living in the Surreal World Mike's Eyes Miss O'Hara The Mind of Mog The Ministry of Minor Perfidy MonkeyWatch Adam Lawson NashvilleFiles Near the Salty City PervasiveLight Pierre Legrand's Pink Flamingo Bar Practical Penumbra The Passing Parade Right As Usual Rough Diamond Rules for Rulers Sharp as a Marble She Who Will Be Obeyed! The Speculist Sperari Striderweb A Trainwreck in Maxwell Upbeat Cynicism (Ian Hamet) The Warren Warthog's Rants Wasted Electrons Wheels within Wheels Wicked Thoughts	Thursday, November 18, 2004 How do you Convert a Gun-Phobe? Put One in Her Hands! Zendo Deb of .357 Magnum points to this OUTSTANDING Slate piece on a woman who takes up shooting as part of her job of, as she describes it, "human guinea pig." Emily Yoffe takes up challenges, and then reports on the results. As the invitation at the bottom of her column puts it, Is there something you've always wanted to do but were too scared or embarrassed to try? Ask the Human Guinea Pig to do it for you. This time it was shooting. Her piece is subtitled "How I Learned to Love Guns." It begins thus: I pressed the Beretta AL391 Urika deep into my shoulder and against my cheek, as if gripping a shotgun stock were as natural as holding the strap of my purse. I said, "Pull," in a firm yet casual way, to convey that, sure I drove here in a Volvo, and the radio in the Volvo is tuned to NPR, but I'm actually the kind of woman who loves the smell of cordite in my hair. Two weeks ago I was so ignorant about firearms that I thought shotguns discharged bullets and I didn't know the difference between a revolver and a semiautomatic. But here I was shooting trap, in which clay disks, the moving target simulating a bird in flight, are released at unpredictable angles from a small trap house. As the "pigeon" flew on my command, I swung the shotgun to follow its arc and pulled the trigger. My instructor called out, "Oh, yeah!" "What happened?" I asked. "You hit it," he said. If you're going to get an introduction to shooting, clay pigeons is a damned fine way to do it. Instant gratification when you hit! I'm not going to reproduce the whole piece, but I do want to hit some of the more interesting highlights. Like this one: So anathema are guns among my friends that when one learned I was doing this piece, he opened his wallet, silently pulled out an NRA membership card, then (after I recovered from the sight) asked me not to spread it around lest his son be kicked out of nursery school. Want to know what it's like to be a second-class citizen? Own a gun in an extremely Blue state or area. Then there's this: Before I slinked back to my now-embarrassing Volvo, I stopped to watch two men shooting. They were fast and fluid and the targets shattered one after another. I am happily married, but I found myself thinking these two—whose faces I couldn't even make out—were awfully attractive. It brought to mind a newspaper article from a few years back. After the death of Hugh Culverhouse Sr., the owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, his various entanglements caused his widow to sue his estate. During the court proceedings, it was revealed that Culverhouse had an affair with the wife of a now-deceased television anchor. Culverhouse's son testified that the caretaker of his father's ranch told him that the caretaker would escort the anchor's wife and Culverhouse "into the woods and they would shoot guns and basically have sex." I thought the article was hilarious at the time. Now I understood. Yet gun-phobes tell us that we have guns to compensate for a deficiency in our cough equipment. Not hardly. How about this? After my trap-shooting triumph with the shotgun, Ricardo was going to teach me to shoot pistols. They terrified me. -- A few days later I met Ricardo at the pistol range at the bucolic Izaak Walton League in Damascus, Md. Along to record the event was Dianna Douglas, a producer from NPR. I had asked her if she had any experience with guns, thinking she might want to do some shooting. "No, no, no, no, no," she replied with a laugh. "I'm not going to want to shoot any guns. No, no, no, no, no." I stepped up to the line and looked at the target—a paper plate with a 3-inch black bull's-eye—Ricardo had stapled to a pole 21 feet away. A few days before I had taken a yoga class, and during the breathing I envisioned myself aligning the gun's front and back sights and slowly squeezing the trigger. Now I held the revolver, cocked the hammer, and shot. I hit the plate just southeast of dead center. Ricardo told me to keep going, and I start to punch a hole in the target. Maybe I could teach yoga at the NRA! I switched to a Beretta 92FS 9 mm Parabellum semiautomatic and again I punched a decent hole. Ricardo then let me try his Sig Sauer P226 9 mm with the crimson trace laser-grip. With this gun, when you put your finger on the trigger a red laser dot illuminates your target. Ricardo had me load the magazine with 15 bullets. (From watching movies, I had thought magazines came already loaded, which I realized was like thinking candles came already lit.) After a few shots around the center of the plate, Ricardo told me to get in a faster rhythm, and I found myself hitting with greater accuracy. "Go ahead, paper plate, make my day." After I emptied the semi, Dianna came up hesitantly. "Umm, how hard would it be for me to umm, shoot a few rounds?" she asked Ricardo. I said, "I told you so." "Well, you look like such a badass doing it, I want to try," she explained. Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES! Another convert! See? Do us all a favor, take someone shooting this weekend who's never tried it before. Be low-pressure. Make it safe and fun for them. Chances are, next thing you know they'll be out buying a gun for themselves. And maybe they'll join the NRA. UPDATE 11/19: HAH! I scooped Instapundit. Well, Zendo Deb did, actually, but Glenn picked one of the same excerpts I did. Still no Instalanche, though. Dammit. \| posted by Kevin at 7:50 PM PermaLink HOME