Posted on 05/01/2012 6:06:09 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I was invited via an email from Cabela’s to trick out my AR. It took a minute to figure that they were talking about an automatic rifle. The picture looked like the M-16 I carried 40 years ago in military service, but more upscale. I don't own an AR. I don't even have a gun. It is usually nice shirts and camping equipment I get from them. So it was a little surprising.
I like Cabela’s. When we lived in Michigan I'd take my kids to see their beautiful four-story displays of bears, coyotes, foxes in hinterland settings. It seemed a representative part of glorious northern Michigan known as the UP. I tend to like guns as well. But the AR is not a hunting gun. It is a war weapon and a lot of people are buying them. In fact, guns today are said to be the only bright spot on the economy and Cabela’s stock is booming.
But why are so many Americans buying guns? It has been like this for several years now. Since Obama was elected president. The question should be asked in the same way Thomas Mann once asked, "Why are they disinfecting the streets of Venice?” Is something dark and unknown rising within us? Is it already here?
We enter seasons ahead unlike any we had seen in the passing century. New trends, ideas and people — the Tea Party, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, for beginners — tend to bring shock, even apoplexy to the institutionalized and sanctioned establishment. But the institutionalized norms are rapidly passing. Even the movie “The Hunger Games” brings the predictable scorn and ironic responses on the neurasthenic left and by establishment trend-setters like Vanity Fair and The New York Times. The rising times will not be like the receding times and these new trends mark the rising times. And so does this phenomenon of rapidly rising gun sales.
In the early part of the last century, the Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung developed "psychological types" — which Myers-Briggs and other personality tests today are based on — because the German national character was rapidly changing and he wanted to know why and what it meant. The great poets and visionaries, Maude Gunn, Yeats and Mann, sensed it as well and dreamed of blood flowing in rivers. Our institutionalized entertainment, educational and information networks today lacks these canaries in the coal mine. Liberals outnumber conservatives 88 to three in college humanities classrooms and the pillars of public information, the three networks and the two major newspapers are overwhelmingly liberal, yet the population actually breaks about even, liberal and conservative. This is, to say the least, unresponsive; a dream of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World come true which might even be called, to paraphrase Susan Sontag, “totalitarianism with a human face” — a face so accurately caricatured today in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games. So system shock will be greater, with greater difficulty to adapt when new realities arise.
Mann wrote Death in Venice a hundred years ago this year. And our American world this year appears today to be sending signs of subtle and unconscious change — a veiled elephant is entering the room — some of them transfiguring, some of them foreboding. Our world changes. The question is, to what?
The author has never been in the military and has never seen an AR-15.
I’ve never been to Cabela’s but I used to go to Jay’s Sporting goods when I lived up north.
Tell it to the pig parts in my freezer. And my little sister's first deer, some 25 years ago.
/johnny
By that does he mean the century of Adolf Hitler, Musselini, Stalin, Pol Pot, Ho-Chi-Min, Edi Amin, and other dictators? Or the millions killed by their governments? That century?
/johnny
We bought a lot of guns when Clinton was president too. And we formed militias. There’s something about a Marxist in the White House that makes us think about opposing tyranny. Its just a part of the American DNA, I guess.
Wolverines!!
The question is a no brainer. Bring it
Yep. I caught that. He's another clueless eater.
/johnny
Dude.
Seriously.
At least check out a Cabela’s. They’re more than just a big-box retail store.
I’m not being a fanboi when I tell you that they’re quite the operation and while you can often find many items cheaper, you can’t find them in many other places all under one roof in such abundance. Don’t drive across country just for going to Cabela’s, but if you’re only a half hour away when you’re on a road trip... I’d make a couple hours to go check it out if you’re at all interested in fishing and hunting.
If you have any interest in fine(r) firearms, check out the larger Cabela’s “gun rooms” which are patterned after a Holland&Holland pattern room of sorts. The one in Kearny, Nebraska is quite impressive, all things considered.
Actually, it's more of a "sports utility rifle" - one that can fill many different roles.
/johnny
Dec 27, 2011
This was a banner year for guns -- 2011 is set to smash the record for gun sales.
The record for a single year was set just last year, when the FBI reported that 14,409,616 background checks were requested. In 2011 that figure will top 16 million. FBI spokesman Steve Fischer said just 1.3% of background checks result in denial of a weapon.
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/guns/2011-smashes-sales-record-guns
Lefties are buying huge numbers of firearms, too. It’s all the rage. TV/movie fantasies, maybe...zombies and all of that? Who knows? One weird part of it all, is that most of the buyers of semi-auto rifles are in the cities. Go figure. You’d think they’d want more shotguns, pistols and the like.
IMO, it has to do with entertainment, style, fantasies of fictitious adventures and all of that. Most of the newbies interested in semi-auto rifles are burning bores up (see silly Youtube videos) without any seriousness toward getting educated in ballistics. Mostly posers.
“Why guns?” you ask.
Because “It is about the redistribution of wealth.”
“Why guns?” you ask.
Because “It is about the redistribution of wealth.”
I had all the hunting guns that I needed by the time I was 16 years old ( .22, 12ga, .25-06).
Every weapon I’ve bought since has been for personal protection, militia obligations, or community organizing.
I bought a lot of gear from Cabela’s when I was in the Army. They sold good stuff.
the comments are cool. i couldn’t get past the 1st paragraph of the article.
The .223 works just fine on feral pigs from all reports. Would love to go hunting them, but youtube vids will have to do for now.
When the writer said our populace outside academaniaca is evenly divided between liberal & conservative, that proved in an instant he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
It’s coming to Civil War II but I predict it will be far shorter and far bloodier than the original. And the good guys will win.
Yeah. Who cut off Bernie's nuts?
“...Comments?”
Yeah. Who cut off Bernie’s nuts?
I don’t know who this guy is, never heard of him. But after reading the last three paragraphs, I know exactly who he is:
A pompous bag of hot air who likes listening to himself speak.
I am not anti-intellectual. But when the description “Intellectual” is applied as pejorative, it could be applied to this guy.
Well, when the occupant in the White House likes gun control, and the presumptuous, er, presumptive nominee is somebody that signed an assault weapons ban himself, then its time to buy lots of guns and ammo.
anybody that has to ask that question, will NEVER understand the answer...
Why is it that no one is talking about the proposed United Nations firearms treaty? If enacted, and ratified by our DemonRAT controlled Senate, it would:
1. Enact tougher licensing requirements, creating additional bureaucratic red tape for legal firearms ownership.
2. Confiscate and destroy all “unauthorized” civilian firearms (exempting those owned by our government of course).
3. Ban the trade, sale and private ownership of all semi-automatic weapons (any that have magazines even though they still operate in the same one trigger pull – one single “bang” manner as revolvers, a simple fact the ant-gun media never seem to grasp).
4. Create an international gun registry, clearly setting the stage for full-scale gun confiscation.
5. Override our national sovereignty, and in the process, providing license for the federal government to assert preemptive powers over state regulatory powers guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment in addition to our Second Amendment rights.
To oppose this effort, U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kans.) has introduced legislation to prevent any arms treaty from infringing the right to keep and bear arms in this country. The Second Amendment Sovereignty Act, S. 2205, introduced March 19, 2012, would prohibit the administration from using “the voice, vote, and influence of the United States, in connection with negotiations for a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, to restrict in any way the rights of United States citizens under the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, or to otherwise regulate domestic manufacture, assembly, possession, use, transfer, or purchase of firearms, ammunition, or related items, including small arms, light weapons, or related materials.”
I encourage my fellow FRiends to voice their support of Senator Moran’s bill to their state senators.
yep
The four precious metals for this regime: gold, silver, brass and lead.
Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, One Three With Pride, Drill Sergeant!
Been there, shopped that in 2002 or 2004. They had a huge business coming in off the Interstate to run by their displays and counters. License plates from all over. Me, I was from Texas.
They noticed, because now there's a Cabela's in north Houston, and another I drive by over in Baton Rouge, on my way to my sister's place in New Orleans. Yup, they know how to fish for business!
Then why does the US military use M4's for close quarters combat?
The hell it would.
You can't abrogate whole sections of the Constitution by treaty. Every L1 student knows that.
And in case Obozo thinks he can make it stick, he has got a super-ugly education coming to him.
"Experience keeps a dear school, but a fool will learn in no other." -- Franklin
That includes Harvard-educated, or should I say "passed-through", hothouse babies like Obozo.
What Good Can a Handgun Do Against An Army?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/2312894/posts
Until you get to the 600-pounder. Or he gets to you. More gun, son.
It’s coming to Civil War II but I predict it will be far shorter and far bloodier than the original.
The participants thought the last one would be short, too.
What determines the length of the contest is how long it takes to get to the point that one side can't do it any more, period. True in WWI, true in the Civil War, true in WW II.
And the good guys will win.
Why do you think that? They didn't last time.
What a panty-wetting hoplophobe. And a perfect example of how the Left has convinced the public that "evil black gun" = machine gun. Nancy-pants doesn't even realize that the AR-15 platform is the most popular rifle in America, by far, and it is not select-fire.
Tell us. Compromise between a 10-gauge shotgun and a battle rifle?
Bought my first Colt Preban A2 in late 80’s, $440. We have several 556’s that never leave the vault. Bought a 6.8 Stag a few years back and the kids have killed a bunch of caribou and 3 bear with that gun. I got a AR-10 in 338 fed a year back and it has killed 3 moose, half dozen caribou and a couple bear; 210 Nosler Partitions. We luv hunting with AR’s with 4x32 & 3.5x35 Acog red dot/ghost rings off snowmachines & atvs; I’m a shooter, not an aimer. Two point slings are the ticket. I luv my Weatherbys for the long shots, but anything under 500 yards, you can’t beat an AR. Once you start hunting with them, no going back.
Lots of "fine shotgun" enthusiasts mutter against "black gun" fiends ...... Pew Associates detected a very pronounced weakness in support for RKBA for other people among the UMC and UC business-Republican types, who are the shotgunners and sporting-clays, dove-hunting guys among the business community. (Pew isolated and ID'd these guys back in the 1990's -- I'm citing them.)
Not so much when Dubya was in office, but when Bush 41 was in office, I kept waiting for the big RKBA sellout/backstab from the RiNO's. It was hinted at a couple of times, when Bush 41 let the ATF pull their fetid Ruby Ridge caper with that lone-wolf fringe-rightist Randy Weaver, and when Wayne LaPierre of the NRA made that "jackbooted thug" comment about some miscreant ATF raids on an honest gun collector in Arizona, and Bush ex officio, defending his thugs, resigned in protest from the NRA.
Pew likewise hinted that they thought that if the resistance to universal registration and "strong" gun control broke down, it would be because of some big break between the RiNO Establishment and the rest of the Right.
Remember, too, that Waco was authorized and planned under Bush 41. He may have intended Waco as the beginning of a "sensible gun control" campaign during his second term, when he would be -- as Obama told the Russians -- "more flexible".
Bush 41 was and still is, to some degree, NWO Central. Ross Perot may have done us all a huge favor by knocking that international-swelling patroon out of the White House .... only to give us a Manchurian candidate in his stead.
American’s are buying more guns because most of us are ready to fight the good fight and overthrow both corrupt parties.
I was a democrat for 32 years until they forced Clinton on us. I had had enough and joined the Republican party because I didn’t like how the libs were after my guns.
Now, the Repubs are giving us Obama white. I’m sick of their choices for who I should vote for. They gave us Dole, McCain and now Romney. Screw them. I’m sick of having no choice but a lesser of equal evils. If you think there is a difference between Romney and Obama then you have sold your soul to the devil and you’re an idiot.
Logically speaking the Constitution CANNOT give authority greater than itself; as the right to Life (and Liberty) are given by a greater authority (and recognized in the Declaration of Independence) the absolute *MOST* that a treaty can do is remove the [legal] guarantee of firearms; if this happens, how long do you think it will be before someone is killed over it?
Or, even more interestingly, how many states would issue warrants for the arrests of any of the signatories (or yea votes)?
How many states would declare that to be treason? (and perhaps hold trials for the people in absentia?)
If you want a civil war, that route’s almost guaranteed to bring it; and the funny thing is, when there’s civil war the opposing leadership can be killed. I think our ruling-class is too afraid to risk it, once there’s a breach in the pressure-chamber the whole structural integrity is compromised... no, what they want is everyone in a state of inaction. that is why they want us to feel like noting we do matters.
I like Moran’s bill, but it’s not necessary. All of this UN treaty talk sounds like fund-raising rhetoric to me.
The chances of such a treaty ever being ratified are slim to none, and slim left town.
Politicians want to get re-elected, and voting for gun control is political suicide.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.