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Posted on 01/28/2013 8:57:25 AM PST by Second Amendment First
I AM a New England liberal, born and bred. I have lived most of my life in the Northeast — Boston, New York and Philadelphia — and my politics are devoutly Democratic.
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I am also a Texas resident and a gun owner.
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My relationship to firearms might have ended there, if not for a coincidence of weather. Everybody remembers Hurricane Katrina; fewer recall Hurricane Rita, an even more intense storm that headed straight for Houston less than a month later. My wife and I arranged to stay at a friend’s house in Austin, packed up the kids and dog, and headed out of town — or tried to. As many as 3.7 million people had the same idea, making Rita one of the largest evacuations in history, with predictable results.
By 2 in the morning, after six hours on the road, we had made it all of 50 miles. The scene was like a snapshot from the Apocalypse: crowds milling restlessly, gas stations and mini-marts picked clean and heaped with trash, families sleeping by the side of the road. The situation had the hopped-up feel of barely bottled chaos. After Katrina, nobody had any illusions that help was on its way. It also occurred to me that there were probably a lot of guns out there — this was Texas, after all. Here I was with two tiny children, a couple of thousand dollars in cash, a late-model S.U.V. with half a tank of gas and not so much as a heavy book to throw.
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IT didn’t happen overnight, but before too long my Northeastern liberal sensibilities, while intact on other issues, had shifted on the question of gun ownership.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“heavy weaponry like the AR-15”
Huh? I call this another leftie piece of creative writing. Pretending to be a “reasonable” gun owner who is ready to compromise and trust to the altruistic government to do the right thing is just stupid.
>> “Let me be clear: my personal armory notwithstanding, I think guns are woefully under-regulated.”
Go back to New England where you belong, big government liberal. We don’t need your kind down here.
Still clueless as to the purpose of the 2nd Amendment. After all, tyranny only happens to the other guy, right? It could never happen here.
Every time I pick up a .223 and compare it to a 30.06 I just go "HUH?" I understand the military theory behind the smaller round, but boy, the weight and size of that .06 sure is comforting. The .223 bullets themselves remind me of large grains of rice.
>> I’ll take allies where ever they are
That weak-sister attitude will get us to “compromise” regulation.
i.e. “You can have a gun as long as it’s a 6-shot wheelgun or a 7 round automatic handgun or a 3-round pump shotgun but that’s the limit... and you have to register them”.
That’s what this piece of crap liberal wants.
Is that acceptable to you?
It’s not acceptable to me.
I am NOT this SOB’s “ally”, and he damn sure isn’t mine. He can go screw himself. Better yet he can go back to where he came from.
NO MORE GUN RESTRICTIONS! PERIOD!
I reject the overriding idea that one can be liberal, and pro 2nd amendment.
Furthermore, democratic is not a political ideology.
There is much that does not compute.
You want “heavy weaponry”? Get a main battle rifle (MBR) in a REAL caliber like .30-06 Springfield, 7.62 NATO, 7.62x54R, .303 British, 7.92x57 Mauser, or 7.5 Swiss. Then, move up to .50 caliber Browning.
But he's still an 0bamavoter. How he keeps his head from exploding due to cognitive dissonance, I cannot say.
Indeed.
We know their game. We need to stop pussyfootin’ around arguing with libs on their “surface” arguments.
You folks want confiscation, stop lying and saying you don’t. We say NO. End of discussion.
Another liberal who thinks the second amendment is to allow him to protect his family from the criminal elements of society. Guess what, buddy? The sole purpose of the second amendment is to allow you to protect your family from the biggest, badest thing on the planet. Namely, a central convinced to their core, they know what is best for you and will do whatever they have to do to make sure you SUBMIT to their dictates.
The second amendment allows the American people to ORDER the federal government to back down or else.
Well, not exactly.
He still lives in the fantasy world of the left, thinking that some guns are "good" and some guns are "bad".
He changed his mind about being armed when he found himself in a situation where law-enforcement were nowhere to be found.
To make the next step, he needs to experience the hurricane NOT missing his home, so that he appreciates that there may be mobs of unruly people that have to be kept away from HIS home, what's left of it, HIS supplies, and HIS family.
Only then will he realize that the appropriateness of any given firearm is situational. If he wants to pretend that he will never face half-a-dozen armed bad guys at one time, then he might eventually suffer for his lack of imagination.
If he actually "got it", he would be realizing that the Second Amendment means what it says and that NOBODY should have a say in which arms he keeps and bears.
The “Rita response” is what the dems were hoping for when they created all the hype with Katrina.
IIRC it was October 5, 2005 just a few weeks after Rita and Katrina when the idiot of a mayor of NYC, Bloomberg, called a press conference and announced there was a terrorist attack planned for NYC.
Because of the fear of another “Rita response” created by Katrina only this time in NYC, Bush had asked the idiot mayor not to release info which was classified info which had been leaked to him.
Idiot mayor did it anyway.
Lucky for the people of NYC they didn’t take the bait and fall into the trap set by the dems and go into the mass panic “Rita response” the dems were hoping for.
>> At least this liberal “got it”... It’s about protecting yourself from those hunting you, including out of control government.
Not really. He hints about the “protecting yourself” part, but it’s pretty clear he means criminals. He hasn’t wrapped his fuzzy little liberal head around the “out of control government” part.
It’s a religious thing.
If he admits that the government could possibly be malevolent, he is giving up on his own elitism (that he is superior to others).
The first step toward self defense is the biggest step away from government dependency. I hope in time he will gradually take a few more logical steps, along with his daughter.
As far as my being a weak-sister, LOL, those who know me would scoff at my compromising my position on second amendment issues.
The author says: calling gun owners “a bunch of inbred rednecks” doesn’t do much to advance rational discussion.
I say calling all liberals bed-wetting hoplophobes doesn’t help either.
>> At least this liberal “got it”... It’s about protecting yourself from those hunting you, including out of control government.
Not really. He hints about the “protecting yourself” part, but it’s pretty clear he means criminals. He hasn’t wrapped his fuzzy little liberal head around the “out of control government” part.
A liberal is someone who doesn’t realise there are two types of criminals, regular criminals and governemnt criminals.
>> I hope in time he will gradually take a few more logical steps, along with his daughter.
When you’re dealing with big-government liberals, “hoping” they’ll come down with a serious case of logic is a pretty stupid strategy.
How clearly does he have to lay out his real views before you get it? He thinks guns are “woefully underregulated”. HIS words — not mine.
How far do you intend to let him and his REAL allies get towards depriving us of our constitutional rights, while we wait patiently for him to dawdle on down his personal path of enlightenment?
I got the feel that somehow this article is fake - agitprop.
The man likes shooting, wants the right to protect himself, and wants to continuously buy whatever guns have whatever features he likes - but he “loathes the NRA” and declares that it would be best if no one owns guns.
He is holding extremely opposite positions. It simply feels like this all is somehow a lie.
It would be nice if hadn’t fallen for the bogus Kellerman study and alluded to it. That utter piece of garbage research gets way too much press considering it’s been outed as crap for ages now.
I guess I’m stupid then. When a liberal gets mugged, some convert faster than others.
It can be difficult emerging from a cult, especially one as pervasive as liberalism.
must be a LINO
A displaced metrosexual weighs in...
(yawn)
Do you like what happened in New York State?
Do you think that New York’s gun control law is an acceptable model for the US?
Hey Texans, do you still want to invite gun owning immigrants from the NE to come to your state to escape harsh gun laws?
Now you’re losing me. I don’t know where those questions come from. But then I’m stupid.
>> I don’t know where those questions come from.
They’re simple questions; at least, I think they are.
If you *answer* them you will see where they come from. :-)
Take your pick of appropriate substitutions...
This writer seems a bit hypocritical. Sort of a ‘Guns for me, but not for thee’ uppityness.
Why don't those LIBERALS stay in the BLUE STATES instead of spreading their TRASH (LIBERALISM) into RED STATES??
To the native New Englander from a native Texan. Get your azz back to from whence you came.
The author loathes the NRA and then talks about taking classes and sending his daughter to a class. Who does he think trained and certified the instructors? The NRA, that’s who. He mentions getting a carry permit but doesn’t recognize that it was the NRA that did the work of getting carry laws passed across the U.S.
The writer is a semi-wuss and too apologetic but...... As good as it gets in the NY Times and might change a few liberal minds better than I can
So thumbs up for this article
There are Yankees and then there are Damn Yankees like this POS imposter. Just another gun grabber type.
Thanks, lib. Now we know to take you from ambush when the SHTF, instead of just walking in and taking your stuff like we can with most libs.
These hacks that are “born and bred” up in New York and New England I guess have a built in wuss factor.
I myself am not confident enough in my masculinity to ever express any wussiness like these wusses.
Worthless metrosexual oxygen wasters.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2977507/posts
Same kind of drivel from a New York metrosexual.
These guys are probably on Bloomburg’s and Soros’ payrolls.
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