Letters to the Editor
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Mechanics
If the fascination is really with the mechanical aspects of a gun, then you don't need to buy a gun. Buy a car and tinker with it.
I think the LW is not being honest with himself about this romantic relationship with guns. There seems to be something deeper which has nothing to do with the beauty of a how a tool is constructed. Otherwise, he would just be into the beauty of mechanisms - like clocks or cars or trains or whatever.
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Beware the red herring your birthday represents
You like guns.That's cool. I've shot skeet and target practice and once, at a fox that was raiding my grandmother's poultry house (I missed). Most of my childhood friends own guns, being rural people. No one's ever had a problem - no kids playing and getting accidentally shot, no hunting accidents. I've never personally known a gun owner who wasn't careful, responsible, and utterly accident free. So obviously it's possible to live safely with guns. Guns aren't inherently unsafe. So far, so good.
But there's this one story I can't get out of my head. I have a friend with a gun loving (ex) husband who 'cleaned' his guns just after a very angry, verbally violent fight. Nothing happened. He put the gun away. No one was hurt. But the story still has the power to send a chill down my spine all these years later. I mean, holy shit. No matter how much the ex pretended that he didn't know he was threatening her life because he was mad, that's exactly what he was doing. And he's a really nice guy, white collar job, Mr. Mild Mannered 99.9% of the time. There was just that one time when he decided to clean the gun at 10p after a fight, while my friend watched from the bed, wondering what her options were going to be.
I can't stop thinking about that story, and how smart Cary is to advise you to to consider how you are when you're angry. That's good advice. And at 21, I don't think you know your angry self quite well enough. Your age has limited your experiences to some degree. So maybe you should wait for a while. Defer the decison for 4 years. Wait 'til you're 25. Say to yourself, you may own guns someday, but you won't own them for 5 years, no matter what. After all there isn't anything magic about being 21 - it's just a legal limbo bar you can now pass under. It doesn't mean you should. You can just stare at it for a while, decide for yourself how much you have to contort yourself to get under that bar.
So spend the next 4 years years thinking about it and talking to people about it. Talk to parents whose kids have gotten hold of guns and had accidents. Talk to guys who shot their girlfriends. Talk to enthusiasts who've never fired their guns. Talk to guys who only shoot skeet, or people who hunt. Talk to people who don't own guns but have no problem with them. Talk to cops who've been shot at. Keep a notebook. Keep an open mind.
And most of all, talk to a therapist. Yeah, yeah, it's a bunch of navel gazing and can be kind of embarrassing to admit that you don't totally know your own mind and that someone else you don't even know is supposed to help you figure it out. But you know what - a good one really *can* probably help you figure out the answers to the key questions, and even what some of the key questions are, for example: Why do I really like guns? I mean, really? What do they mean to me, what are the positive associations they have? What are the negative associations? How would I be different if I owned a gun vs. if I didn't? Because you obviously DO think you'll be different, in some way, just not a way you can predict.
What if you bought guns and then went and stored them in a storage place 25 miles away. Now you're a gun owner. Is that good enough - or do you need to have them near by? If you need to have them near, why? And how near is near enough? What is different about having it 25 miles away vs. 2.5 miles away, vs. 25 feet away? What changes then - in your head, and in your life, as the gun gets closer? What does the power of a gun mean to me?
If you're going to own guns, you need to be honest and fully conscious about the reasons for owning them. You don't want to find yourself on the wrong end of a smoking one - and the wrong end is just a matter of perspective, isn't it?
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I don't think you need guns.
Speaking as a gun owner, maybe this is a club you don't need to join.
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Guns are evil?
Yehudi is, pardon my language, an idiot, and not just because he posted twice. Guns have many uses, and killing people is far down the list. My own experience has been that people like guns for two reasons: as machinery, the mechanics and design -- and the skills needed to shoot accurately.
There are shooters who spends many thousands of dollars on very specialized guns which are useless for anything except long distance target shooting. These shooters would make lousy snipers. They do it for the intense skill required. It takes patience and almost zen-like calm to shoot accurately. Even Sunday plinkers like myself enjoy the skills required, we just don't aspire to national championships.
There are collectors who admire the incredible variety, the ingenuity required to overcome manufacturing limitations, to find ways around patents, to make better guns. I am one of them too, and enjoy modern weapons and old black powder muzzle loaders.
Most of the shooters I know who claim to be worried about Katrina situations, known in the biz as SHTF, are only rationalizing because they think it somewhat silly to admit they like guns for other reason. But if you listen to them talk about guns, it is the mechanical and historical aspects which brightens their eyes and quickens their pulses. I have no doubt that breaking into their house would be a bad idea, and more power to them. But the prospect of killing an intruder is not something they look forward to.
To anyone who has never shot a gun, I suggest you might be surprised at what it means. You ought to consider going shooting some day with a shooter friend, or talk to a collector friend about the differences among guns. It won't contaminate you, any more than taking an airplane ride will bankrupt from buying your own airplane. I have never been interested in skydiving or rock climbing or scuba diving, but I understand why it interests people. There are other activities whose appeal I don't understand, but that doesn't make them worthless.
Yehudi, guns are no more intended to kill than cars are intended to smuggle. You need to broaden your horizons.