Posted on 06/15/2024 5:31:16 AM PDT by Twotone
This winter I turned on the light on the nightstand and stared at the 45-70 rifle propped up in the corner of my bedroom. After thinking for a moment, I got up and put it in the living room. This was the first time I had a gun under my own roof, and I couldn’t get to sleep knowing it was there. I’ve been prone to depression all my life, and it just seemed to be tempting fate. Mind, I’m not suicidal, but I gave myself one night to be a big baby about it.
The gun is on loan from my handyman and friend, Paul. “We’re gonna redneck you right up,” he'd grinned months earlier, while we we worked together to slop out and rebuild the flood-ravaged downstairs of my rental property, on a dirt road in rural Vermont.
The summer 2023 deluge couldn't have come at a worse time. I had bought the house in foreclosure years ago, originally to give family members an affordable place to stay. Now I was about to move in. I was in the process of selling my primary residence near Burlington, and I had to make this place habitable fast. Burlington blight
Paul is right about needing to redneck me up. I’ve been a city boy my whole life, but the deranged progressive politics of urban New England drove me out. It started with the blue-haired set; an influx of lumbering 6'5" men tottering around in heels and eye shadow soon followed.
Then there was the crime, a relative novelty in our land of quaint bed-and-breakfasts and fall foliage tours. Burlington transformed into a miniature version of San Francisco, complete with boarded-up businesses shuttered by the lockdowns and covered in graffiti, human feces on the sidewalks, and hypodermic needles littering what used to be manicured lawns in nice neighborhoods.
When my curbside trash bins got “tagged” for the first time after living in the city for 15 years, that was the final straw. Now I’m learning about life with septic systems, well pumps, propane heating, backyard trash burning, and bears. Having a gun and knowing how to use it is just good sense when you live out here. In fact, I'd say it's good sense no matter where you live. Confessions of a former gun-grabber
This is a recent development. See, I’m a former leftist. I drank the Kool-Aid of progressivism (and served a lot of it too) from the time I was a teenager. There wasn’t a welfare program I didn’t want expanded nor an “oppressed minority” I didn’t think needed special support from the state. My views were the typical politics of resentment. Like millions of other leftists, my orientation to the world was simple: “The government should take care of that for me."
Of course I wanted gun control. Everyone knows that guns kill people, right? It sounds stupid to me now, but as someone who spent his life exclusively around other leftists until the age of 41, I believed a lot of very stupid things for a very long time.
Most leftists won’t even listen to a conservative point of view. Or more accurately, perhaps, they can't. Confrontation with anything they perceive as “right-wing” provokes an almost involuntary emotional reaction, a kind of contamination-disgust reflex. I know it well because I often reacted the same way.
Until I didn't. A crisis that unmasked the mental and moral illness in my family was the first event that started to open my eyes to the real world. What I’d been taught at home — men are inherently dangerous and toxic, the government should regulate and tax everything so that single mothers can get bigger benefits checks — had disturbed my moral compass until middle age. Cured by the CDC
And then came COVID. I had already begun to let go of my leftist beliefs and turn to the right, but nothing pushed me farther or faster than watching the government trample the constitutional rights of citizens. It was unbelievable how many people obeyed extra-legal orders to stay home, wear masks, take jabs, and tell on their families and neighbors who didn’t obey Big Sister (it’s definitely “sister” in the 21st century).
The extraordinary nationalization of rental properties by the Centers for Disease Control infuriated me. As a landlord, I could not believe that some “health”-based federal agency thought it had the right to tell my tenants they could just stop paying rent and that I had to suck it up. I count this turn of events as a blessing, as it cured me of the remnants of my allegiance to, well, communist views. Because that’s what leftism is today.
Back to guns. I can’t explain why I believed what I did. Over the years, more sensible people patiently explained to me that criminals don’t obey gun control laws. They pointed out that when you have bad guys with guns that good guys can’t get, you end up with bad guys in charge and good guys in coffins. This is so glaringly obvious that a 4-year-old could understand it, and yet I didn’t. Never underestimate the average leftist's capacity for self-delusion.
Actually, I can explain why I believed what I did and why millions of leftists believe the same. No actual thinking is taking place, only feeling. I had emotions about guns, but no thoughts. To be a leftist is to be ruled by fear, disgust, and the projection of one’s own negative motivations onto other people. Taking responsibility
I can’t live that way any more. Not after the real world slapped me in the face — and slapped some sense into me. Being a small business owner educated me about the plain thievery of our taxation system. Being excommunicated from my job, my friends, and my social circle over my refusal to take a dangerous vaccine — and worse, my persistence in talking about it loudly and publicly — taught me the difference between friends and “friends.”
Frankly, it was a small step to rethink guns after it became clear that the government recognized no natural or legal check on its actions. We’re all responsible for defending and protecting our lives, our property, and our families.
So this summer Paul is going to train me more on the rifle. I fired it a few times at a target in the back yard (an old microwave oven, and yes, the explosion was as satisfying as you think), but now it’s time to get proficient. I’ll learn how to operate, store, and carry guns safely and sensibly. If a bear or — God forbid — an intruder threatens my safety, I’m my own line of defense, as it should be.
After that first night of putting the rifle outside my bedroom, I put it right back. It’s not good coddling yourself; confronting reality is the cure for fear. Ever since, I’ve slept like a baby.
If the jugheads re-elect the Demented One, EVERY AMERICAN BETTER OWN A GUN. They’re going to need it.
Re “ To be a leftist is to be ruled by fear, disgust, and the projection of one’s own negative motivations onto other people. ..”
Kinda says it all right there.
no sane person is looking forward to shooting someone BUT in a “them or me” situation the old saying “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it” applies. the simplest of truths is our Founding Patriot saw where the future was leading LONG before they even knew where it was going. they instinctively knew that government would eventually become overbearing and that the ONLY hope of preserving our freedoms in the future would be for the People to be better armed that the government. Generations of Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that government is the end all, be all of America freedoms but the truth is and always will be this simple...the government will eventually be the “end all” of our American freedoms. IF we collectively allow it. my tagline line is not just a saying. the choice is yours.
As he noted, the cure for leftism was when it adversely affected him personally
”At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.”
~ P.J. O’Rourke
Too many of them don’t have the guts to take an honest good hard look at the world and see it as it is, rather than as they wish it were.
eg. in the real world there are bad guys who don’t obey laws. Ergo disarming the good guys is doing active harm since the bad guys aren’t going to obey gun laws anyway. In their fantasy world, they’re always just one ban away from utopia.
If the person wants to learn to love guns, embrace them, they should Take a walk through downtown Chicago unarmed, flash8ng hand signals, wearing colors ÷wh8ch may or may not be gang colors. If they make it home with o ly minor wounds, their opinion about owning guns will change dramatically.
They can be really smart but still don't see it
Btw the .45-70 is plenty gun for bear. good choice!
Great read. Thanks for posting it.
Dare we hope that you have started an epidemic? YES.
Great writing. Thanks.
Before the Illegal Alien invasion from the South, I heard that there are enough firearms in private ownership in the US were more than enough to supply everyone.
Some homes don’t have them, some have “many”.
In Texas several years ago the it was estimated that there were 2-1/2 firearms per every man, woman, and child privately owned. We’ve had a lot of people moving into Texas, I suspect a lot of them brought their weapons with them. Many of those who did not own a gun, found it a lot easier to buy one here. There are pockets of gun grabbers in places like Austin. Those are the Freaks.
No one really knows how many there are.
I reload, like a lot of people who grew up hunting. I own a few.
“I can have a gun because I would kill myself with it” seems to be a common sentiment among the anti-gun left.
Pardon me - I thought you were the writer. It pays to READ!!! Still great.
I know you are a Texan
“I fired it a few times at a target in the back yard “
To me that details the problem with a lot of new gun owners. They seem to feel that they have an innate ability to use it if needed. Much to their dismay they will probably find out in an emergency their aim is anything but accurate. Signing up for instructions on a gun’s characteristics and maybe monthly using it at a gun range may insure you don’t shoot yourself in the foot or one of your family in case of the need to defend your self or family.
I have to unlock the article for $1?
Oh, I see you posted the entire article, not an excerpt. Thank you, it is a great article.
Converts are hard won. Note that there was a RED NECK who said something. That along with the other things.
Folks, Now is the time to use our outdoor voice and often.
“I can have a gun because I would kill myself with it”
As has been said in the past, and this proves it, guns don’t kill people, people do. If the gun sat in the corner all night, untouched, who is it stalking? The leftist is stalking himself.
wy69
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