3 Reasons I Went From Being A Gun Nut To Supporting Gun Control

[SecularMotion]

I have a confession to make.

Once upon a time, I was a gun nut. I wasn't planning for the coming apocalypse or anything like that, but I owned a lot of weapons and ammunition for a guy living in a comfy house in central Houston. People could've easily mistaken me for a character from an episode of "Doomsday Preppers," except I didn't own a bunker. Yet.

I could field strip Glocks, 1911s, Kalashnikov style rifles, and AR15s almost with my eyes closed, and went shooting at various Houston area ranges weekly. I'd grown up around guns, and felt comfortable with them. I considered them a normal part of my life.

Then at some point I just lost interest in having a bedroom that looked like an armory, and I started to question why I owned so many weapons. Mind you, this change in attitude was not something that happened overnight, but eventually I started liquidating my large collection of firearms.

http://www.houstonpress.com/news/3-reasons-i-went-from-being-a-gun-nut-to-supporting-gun-control-7709731

[ileus]

1. That's the same way I feel.

[Duckhunter935]

2. So what are your thoughts?

[mikehiggins]

3. From my early youth, maybe 10 or 11 I wanted a 9mm German Luger.

At various times I came close (once had a chance at buying one valued at about 100k but just didn't know it so I let it slip by) but if you were to pin me down I could not say why it was such an obsession. Never bought a handgun, or a rifle or an AR-15, etc., etc. All I wanted was a Luger.

So then a bunch of little kids were gunned down by a man with a gun. I, like all of us, had already lost the Kennedy's, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and hundreds and hundreds more. It was the image of a little kid, maybe less than 50 pounds, getting shot with a round that literally tears the limbs off soldiers in Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan that turned my head.

I think we should take the position that no one should have guns in this society. Screw the NRA and all the others who are happy to see the mangled bodies of our children if it helps sell more weaponry. Okay, they don't give a shit about the kids, I don't give a shit about their phony arguments pushed on people who listen to slogans rather than facts.

Should we disarm this nation. Absolutely. How hard is it to figure that out.

[DonP]

4. Good for you ... no.

How about we start screening out stupid, ill informed voters too with a basic IQ test?

They can do a lot of damage at the polls as well. Hey, they gave us Bush/Cheney and 2 wars that killed a lot of people. Why run that risk again?

We can stop drunk driving by prohibiting alcohol sales completely ... again. Sure it didn't work too well last time, but this time Capone is dead and "it's for the children" so it will be better.

Sorry, but disarming the 99.9% of law abiding gun owners (even if you could), because of less than .1% who are mentally unstable or criminals doesn't work for me and wouldn't work for this country either.

You want to deal with that .1%? Work on revising the HIPAA laws and allow access to mental health records for the NICS background checks. But you have to deal with the ACLU on that not the NRA, the ACLU folks are pretty serious about the whole medical privacy thing.

Anyone running for office and proposing it seriously would doom their party to minority status for at least a decade.

[Eleanors38]

5. Not much here.

[SecularMotion]

6. Kick

[Kang Colby]

7. Did anyone else quit reading when he said...

I could field strip Glocks, 1911s, Kalashnikov style rifles, and AR15s almost with my eyes closed

Yeah, some "gun nut". That's like saying I can recite the alphabet or breathe in my sleep. In real life, he never owned a gun or was a very casual owner.

I'm a "car guy" because I know how to pump gas.

[ileus]

8. I thought the same thing...

he/she looked up all the most popular styles/types and run with it.


I read enough to figure out the writer was FOS for the most part. You can put lipstick on a pig, but you'll only trick fools.

[Kang Colby]

9. He should have done more research...

I could field strip a Ruger Mark III with my toes, bend AK flats, and rebore barrels with the best of 'em. Saying something like that might have got me. I'm still chuckling at that attempt to build his bona fides with the reader, yet falling flat immediately.

[beevul]

10. The first thing, and I mean the VERY first thing...

The first thing, and I mean the VERY first thing that entered my mind when I read that was:

Can he do it under water?

And that was followed shortly by:

What are his thoughts on cans of beans and bicycle tires?