Learning about gun culture changed how I think about guns
Gun culture has surprised me. But it shouldn’t have.
Other than religion and politics, is there a topic that elicits more heated debates than guns? Gun rights advocates are well-organized, hyper-protective and unnecessarily paranoid—nobody is coming for their guns. Advocates for gun restrictions are equally rabid but are fractured rather than singularly organized.
With all this in mind, I dove into gun culture for a month. How did it go? The term “culture shock” comes to mind. But it was a positive experience. Putting myself around guns, shooting guns, and having conversations with gun owners actually changed some my opinions about guns.
This graph on culture shock in other countries is a fair representation of my experience (although the graph goes out one year and I’ve only spent five weeks around guns.
Here’s the surprising part: I’ll admit, after about five weeks spending time with firearms, reading websites to firearms, talking to gun owners, and watching NRA TV (no kidding), I better appreciate most gun owners’ rationale. I’m not in full agreement, but I can be more easily swayed about some things. Actually, this shouldn’t have surprised me.
Let’s put this into a business context; I often think about how something like diversity translates to the business world. There’s a clear value in exposing oneself to a different culture: diversity makes us smarter. In building teams or organizations, diversity makes people more creative and better at problem solving. “Even simply being exposed to diversity can change the way you think,” explains an article at Scientific American. It’s not just thinking that changes; diversity also improves outcomes. Here’s a description of a racial diversity experiment carried out by the article’s author, Katherine W. Phillips of Columbia Business School:
“We put together three-person groups — some consisting of all white members, others with two whites and one nonwhite member — and had them perform a murder mystery exercise. We made sure that all group members shared a common set of information, but we also gave each member important clues that only he or she knew. To find out who committed the murder, the group members would have to share all the information they collectively possessed during discussion. The groups with racial diversity significantly outperformed the groups with no racial diversity. Being with similar others leads us to think we all hold the same information and share the same perspective. This perspective, which stopped the all-white groups from effectively processing the information, is what hinders creativity and innovation.”
So, reach out to people different than yourself, challenge your beliefs, learn how others think, understand why they believe what they do.
As I’ve been shooting various pistols, a rifle, and a shotgun, I’ve spent an incredibly amount of mental bandwidth thinking about gun ownership. Not gun ownership as a political narrative or a social abstract. No matter the starting point, my mind comes back to the same question: what scenarios merit owning a deadly weapon with no training and, often, no background check?
However, no amount of gun culture is going to soften my stance on gun restrictions. A great divide separates me from 2nd Amendment purists who believe a restriction is equivalent to Constitutional infringement.
As a refresher, here’s the 2nd amendment:
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Yes, guns can be owned at home for self defense. So said the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller. Beyond that opinions vary. Garrett Epps, a constitutional law professor at the University of Baltimore, says the wording of the amendment “supports something like where we are now” because the wording, and events at the time the Bill of Rights was being drafted and ratified, suggests Congress was concerned with states’ rights, not personal rights.
“The text and context, however, don’t point us to an unlimited individual right to bear any kind and number of weapons by anyone, whether a minor or a felon or domestic abuser. That would be a right that, if recognized by the courts, has the potential to disrupt our society at a profound level; a right that, as Fallows’s correspondent blithely asserts, renders the damage of gun violence ‘utterly irrelevant.’ There’s no other such right anywhere in the Constitution. To prove that the Second Amendment transcends all others, the proof would have to be damned strong. I haven’t seen it yet.”
Yes, people should have the right to carry a concealed firearm. I’m more flexible on this than I was a couple months ago. But I’m
Yes, firearms can be used for legal hunting. (I’d prefer to see guns used for population control rather than purely for sport, but I’m guessing the two often go hand on hand.) That’s always been my opinion.
No, guns should not be owned simply because they’re fun. Let’s be honest. Some guns are owned because they provide a visceral reaction that a person probably wouldn’t experience otherwise. I get it; a big gun, jarringly loud and with a powerful kick, it pretty incredible.
No, some accessories should not be legal. A silencer? They’re practical—guns are loud—but I’m glad they’re restricted and wouldn’t oppose more. A bump stock? Make them illegal and enforce the law as best possible. Automatic weapons? Smartly prohibited except for law enforcement and military.
Self-defense is my best explanation for target practice. Because accuracy is necessary for successful self-defense, owners will need to keep their skills sharp by visiting a shooting range.
Although I can’t find a source for this particular self-defense stat, people often say most incidents of self-defense with a gun occur within 21 feet of the target. OK, I’ll go with that until I find an authoritative source online. 21 feet isn’t far. My arm—I have long arms—is 34 inches fingertip to chest. That’s almost three feet. Multiply three feet by seven and you get 21 feet. So, most crimes involving guns occur within seven of my arm lengths.
Much of the shooting I’ve been doing has been seven yards from the target. 21 feet seems like a shockingly close distance from the other person. Also, 21 feet is close enough for me to hit center mass in spite of my terrible marksmanship.
And think about movement. Are two people going to stand idle 21 feet apart as if it were an 1800s pistol duel governed by etiquette and rules? If the attacker is dangerous, he might be moving toward you. Walking at a quick speed will rapidly decrease distance—it would take me just a few seconds to cover 21 feet. Miss an home intruder from within close range and you might need a plan B.
The 3/3/3 rule is frequently mentioned online (although I have not yet found a definitive source). “It’s been said by many FBI investigators,” starts one entry at an online forum, that most self-defense incidents start and end with 3 shots within 3 seconds at 3 yards distance.
Three yards is an uncomfortably close distance. With the nose of the gun about one yard from my chest, a home intruder, for example, would be two yards away. That’s close enough to spit a watermelon seed and hit the attacker.
But the hard part of 3/3/3 is getting three good shots off in three seconds. That takes practice.
Me? I take way more than three seconds between shots, and I’m gently squeezing the trigger so I don’t move the gun and put an errant shot off the target. Hardly a real-life situation.
So, if owning a gun for self-protection, you should practice frequently and until you get good accuracy in a real-life situation. If you’re not prepared for a real-life situation, what’s the point of owning a gun? For fun?
Backtrack a few weeks. Since starting Firearms Month I’ve watched a number of YouTube videos about gun safety and tips. One 25-minute video by decorated competitive shooter Jerry Miculek was especially fascinating.
One problem I’ve had shooting is my stance. The first trip the the armory, my stance was all over the place. After watching Miculek’s video, I took his suggestion to use a basic isosceles stance. Miculek advises shooters to face square to the target with arms extended in front. From above, the arms and chest create a triangle; the two arms are of equal length, thus the term isosceles stance. This stance allows the shooter to move left or right without moving his feet, and see as much as possible from right to left. Miculek summed up the isosceles stance this way:
“Keep things simple. If you get caught with your pants down in a self-defense situation, this is how you’ll want to stand.”
Dear reader, I’ll let you decide if tips from a competitive shooter are truly intended for a typical gun owner’s self-defense situation.
Applicable advice, sure, but did people watch the video for self-defense tips? It’s possible but I’m not sold. The other night I was perusing the Guns & Ammo news site and ran across the isosceles stance in an article about shooting technique. Indeed, the isosceles stance was recommended for tactical shooting by, for example, real scenarios for police officers shooting real suspects.
Firearms are also used for hunting. My attention hasn’t been on hunting; I have limited experience with a shotgun and no intention on going hunting. Plus, although hunting is a widespread sport, only 374 of the 10,818 (3.5 percent) homicides by firearm in 2016 involved rifles (and I don’t know how many of those were accidental). Given there are 1.5 million hunters in the U.S. (that’s a legit stat from the U.S. Department of the Interior) my attention should be with handguns.
Fast forward a couple weeks. The shooting lanes were almost empty except for of a group of six twenty-something women. Nashville is a popular destination for bachelorette parties; on most any weekend evening downtown is covered with countless groups of girls, often in matching T-shirts or tank tops, the soon-to-be bride often wearing a tiara. It’s no wonder they visit: Nashville is a fun city.
But Nashville is also in a state with relatively lax gun laws. When Tennessee conservatives use the word freedom, they’re probably talking about guns about 90 percent of the time. The other ten percent is freedom of religion. Something between an immaterial number and zero refers to freedom of the press.
For example, the Tennessee state assembly spends an inordinate amount of its energy trying to place guns into as many square foot of the state as possible. With violence inside state parks almost non-existent, Tennessee lawmakers passed—and the governor signed—a law that legalized concealed carry in state parks. A concealed firearm can be taken into bars and restaurants, as long as the permit holder is not drinking alcohol (so only designated drivers get to pack heat?)
What’s more, if a driver is pulled over by a law enforcement officer in Tennessee, a person with a concealed carry permit is not required to disclose there’s a gun in the car (but it can’t be on his person). This is the kind of environment where visitors from Illinois or New York can satisfy their curiosities and shoot a lethal weapon. Sign a waiver, rent a gun, and off you go.
A bachelorette party at a shooting range is neither self-protection or hunting. Not this one. The women were obviously done purely for fun. I get it. Shooting a gun is powerful experience. But shooting for fun, for the thrill of creating an explosion that rattles your body, is not practice for self-protection or hunting.
Should a deadly weapon be legal, and legally carried, just because it’s fun? If the shooting is not for self-protection, why make shooting a handgun be so easy? Lest readers interpret this as an anti-gun treatise that paints gun owners in a negative light, allow me to offer a familiar refrain: hate the sin, not the sinner.
Back to my original point: exposure to a different culture has been beneficial.
