re: #308 Targetpractice

Thing I’ve observed about the people in this country that are most confident and vocal about carrying firearms is that they ultimately decide they don’t have to follow the basics rule of safe handling.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that they’ve become so deeply engaged with the symbolism of guns, and thus the “meaning” of carrying that they’ve almost completely disengaged from the fact its a tool…with necessary precautions for safe use…and specifically a tool for killing…which you might think would merit pause and deeper consideration of safety.

But it doesn’t because it’s all about the ego trip. Hence the posturing and posing; hence the number of variations on “Hypothetically I’m protecting you, you better show deference” statements but also “I’m prepared to kill, aren’t you intimidated?” statements. For a bunch of these folks, negligence can’t happen because “gun person” is their cultivated identity—a fixed trait—independent of the actual daily grind of safely handling a firearm and the completely separate task of training how to use it properly in embedded circumstances.

_{(and all that’s separate from the fucked up way that “right to bear arms” has becomes a euphemism for “entitlement to kill, in keeping with reactionary hierarchy” that also makes these people dangerous)}