There’s something that bothers me about people who were involved in the gun rights movement–usually people who I didn’t really know of–who suddenly embrace gun control.
I don’t mean a single regulation, either. I can see someone thinking a red flag law or a background check is a good thing, while generally being still pro-gun to some degree.
No, I’m talking about those who suddenly throw the towel in on everything and then take the position that it’s the gun rights movement that’s wrong on pretty much everything.
Yes, I’m talking about people like Ryan Busse, but he’s not alone in this.
Take this op-ed in the Houston Chronicle by W. Scott Lewis, who used to be involved in pro-gun efforts and is now on the other side of the debate. He seems to think that the gun rights movement has “gone off the rails.”
Years ago, when I was spending 70 hours a week helping to lead a gun rights organization, I came to hate the phrase “I grew up around guns.”
Those five words typically indicated one of two things: Either somebody with no firearms training had broken one of the four basic rules of gun safety and was trying to explain to people with far more experience why it really wasn’t a big deal that he had, for example, pointed an unloaded gun at someone, or a gun control activist wanted everyone to know that his opinion was special because his father was a hunter.
That’s fascinating because it doesn’t reflect my experience at all.
Oh, sure, some say that and figure that’s sufficient training–they’re wrong–but I’ve rarely seen anyone say that to justify some breach of gun safety. In fact, quite the opposite.
I’ve also heard it from people who try to justify their gun control ambitions by using it to pretend they’re not anti-gun, but that’s a different matter.
Decades later, after undergoing hundreds of hours of tactical training, learning to do most of my own gunsmithing (including building a half-dozen AR-15s), maintaining a website dedicated to opposing bans on “assault weapons” and spending a decade of my life and approximately ten thousand hours helping to run the collegiate gun rights organization Students for Concealed Carry (SCC), I like to think I now have a little more credibility than the average person who “grew up around guns.”
And I’m telling you as an unabashed gun guy that it’s okay for gun owners, hunters, competitive shooters, self-defense enthusiasts and even long-time gun rights activists like me to admit that certain facets of the gun rights movement have gone off the rails.
Saying that you’re not okay with allowing licensed high school students to carry guns at school or with allowing some gun owners to carry their guns past the metal detectors and onto the rides at the state fair or with allowing 18-year-olds with no training or vetting to carry handguns into restaurants, grocery stores and libraries doesn’t mean you’ve switched sides. It means you’re capable of thinking for yourself and haven’t abdicated your capacity for reason.
Actually, it means you actually have abdicated your capacity for reason.
What’s more, it means that you’re buying into the idea that guns are the problem when, in fact, they’re nothing of the sort.
First, let’s keep in mind that people with concealed carry licenses are less likely to commit a crime than any other group of people, including police, judges, and politicians–though, admittedly, considering politicians for a second, that’s not saying all that much.
As for “allowing 18-year-olds with no training or vetting to carry handguns” into various places, it seems that for all of Lewis’s talk of his pro-gun past, he’s forgotten that the issue isn’t the good 18-year-olds with guns, but the bad ones. He was once a board member for Students for Concealed Carry, which was created to fight for campus carry, but now he’s suddenly against the idea of legal adults carrying firearms in certain places?
The dangerous predators who walk among us don’t get permits. They don’t obey gun laws. They’ll carry guns into all of these places without a care in the world that they’re breaking the law.
And they get around metal detectors all the time.
But what gets me here is the idea that the gun rights community has somehow changed over the years, as illustrated here:
It would take a lot more column inches than I have here to explain how we got to this place, but the reality is that this is not the gun rights movement we grew up with. It’s certainly not the gun rights movement I signed on to in 2007, when I joined the original board of directors for Students for Concealed Carry. The unsettling shift that has occurred over the past 15 years or so is why I’m now focused on balancing the scales and moving the pendulum back toward the middle.
…Ironically, Texas Gun Sense was founded as Students for Gun Free Schools in Texas — and tried to directly counter my organization, Students for Concealed Carry. But they, like me, have adapted to a debate that has gone so far off the rails that discussions about concealed carry by licensed adults over the age of 21 now seem like a relic of a more civilized time.
The issue here is that gun control advocates haven’t changed their priorities. They’ve simply had to adapt as they’ve lost ground over the years. They know that the days of being able to ban handguns entirely are behind them. Sure, they might get them back, but taking that position in this day and age isn’t a good political move, so they don’t talk about that.
Lewis, like anyone else who jumps sides into the anti-gun camp, seems to ignore the fact that they haven’t changed their end goals.
But taking the position of a formerly pro-gun voice entering the anti-gun side does give one a certain gravitas. It makes you much more important to the movement than some regular person who decides to join the debate. It can translate into bigger paydays and more prestige among your new comrades.
So I always take these people with a grain of salt, but especially when they’re ignoring the truth.
Read the full article here
