Looking For Gun Enthusiasts

[waksupi]

Referring to my heritage as "gun culture" is an insult. It is a term coined by Marxist liberals, and parroted by the mainstream media. In an effort to further isolate and divide us, first, they have to categorize and label a segment of society before they can begin to give it a negative image. I read the term "gun culture" in your opening sentence, and that is where you lost me. We as american gun owners have been under attack for 50 years, and are almost never represented in a positive light in any print or film media. Not only in this country, but world wide. When was the last time you seen the positive use of a firearm depicted in print or film? I certainly can't recall one example.
So with this life time of experience to draw from, explain why anyone here should give you, or any other documentary film maker the time of day?
Here is a good reference source you may be interested in;
https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017...hip-with-guns/

John Ross in "Unintended Consequences" repeatedly showed examples of the gun culture, and I never felt insulted by it. This book is also a very recommended read on the American gun culture.

[justashooter]

as an American who lived overseas for ten years, including five years in back country china. i can say that USA is the only place in the world in which people have liberty, and the means to defend it. in china people have no civil rights, and work six days a week, twelve hours a day, fifty-two weeks a year, are paid three to five percent of what Americans in the same profession are paid, and live comparatively impoverished lives. corrupt government employees and managers steal the lion's share. the only things holding that future back in USA are the right to free speech and the right to keep and bear, both of which are under constant assault in America by leftist statists.

trouble is, the statists all think that they are going to be the one pig which is more equal than the others. in human history most of the pigs in statist countries end up bacon.

in America it will be interesting to see how this plays out, as this is the first attempt by leftists to take over an armed population. it's just a matter of time till the 17 year old girls screaming at men in quicky marts, demanding that customers wear a mask, end up being shot in the face. it's not that bad yet, but the time is coming, as the useful idiots try to take their new-found "power" out of the quicky mart and into other parts of people's lives. they will find people not so tolerant, and those who are not shot in the face will eventually be rounded up by their masters and "re-educated" to death in camps just like mao's "red guard" was after they tried to bite the hand that fed them, and authorised their terrorism of the populace. this is what hitler did to his brownshirts, and what stalin did to his mob.

as a well traveled and educated American i know that my grandson's future is dependent upon America maintaining a "gun culture".

i also know that the only thing keeping those currently burning, looting, murdering (BLM), are the very same police they are demanding to eliminate. if all of the police went home tomorrow and stopped protecting those anarchists, all of this "protesting" would be over by next week, and the result would be a job for backhoes and bulldozers.

[country gent]

I too have had a bad experience with "reporters", For many years we put on a beginners match at Camp Perry for newbies starting out in High Power service rifle. The program was 4 hours class room instruction then a practice match in the afternoon on Saturday. Sunday was a match shoot all from 200 yds. Always a few reporters and camera men. Then when Oklahoma city happened the militia footage shown on news was our firing line if the beginners matches. Once the release is sighed the footage can be used for anything. Its a blind release. This match the new shooters had to only supply personal gear, rifles ( M1 Garands for most and M16s from national gaurd for smaller shooters) ammo and a coach for every 5 firing points was supplied both on the line and in the pits. A lot of boy scout dens, girl scouts, father and son and some mother daughters teams along with individuals took part in this match every year.

[kevin c]

Try reading "American Rifle: A Biography" by Alexander Rose.

[Battis]

I get what you're doing. I'm sure we're a very interesting group of people to those that haven't been exposed to our history in any subjective context, and who might not enjoy the liberties that we do.
You might also interview a carpenter and ask him about his tools. Or, talk to a motorhead about his favorite vehicle, or ask a boater about the draw of the high seas. Fisherman, card collector, etc. We is what we is and we like what we like, and we live in a country that allows us to pursue our happiness (for now, at least.)

[farmbif]

I don't know about "culture" I used to go fishing a lot every week at least one day on my day off work always had a pole in the vehicle and if I had spare time while working and was near the water I was fishing, I've probably got enough mercury in me from all the fish I ate to light up a parking lot. I've been target shooting and such since I was about 9 years old. Its been a hobby except for the years when we were farming and had to get rid of predators eating our livelihood. I don't know about others on here but for me casting bullets, reloading my own ammo and shooting is just a hobby its not a culture, my neighbor lady hand weaves rugs, its a hobby not a culture.

[Shawlerbrook]

Google the TV show Midways Gun Stories and check out the NRA American Rifleman.

[toallmy]

Just out of curiosity , How does a family in your country defend themselves if a person or group of people break down the door in the middle of the night intending on doing your family harm , real harm not just taking money, or objects but life itself ?
Are you completely dependent on a police force , & do you completely trust the police force to be able to provide adequate protection for your family all of the time ?
I'm not trying to start or imply anything one way or another / just curious of the mind set in your nation .

[Big Tom]

I'd suggest starting with a long read on American history including how and why the constitution was written and what the (pretty clear) meaning of the amendments are. That will also clarify that this is not about a "culture", but a given right. After that, maybe some talks with people that execute their rights in regards to 2nd amendment and maybe even others would make more sense. Some people that don't make use of their 2nd amendment rights may give you some additional insights into their reasons. Bottom line, there is no point in making just another documentary about "why do they need firearms", "why do they want to have firearms", "we don't have firearms, why would they need them" - there are plenty of these in the market, most of them missing the point or not even attempting to explain the differences in our constitution and that in other - less free - countries.

Why do people own firearms? The sole response needed is "because they can".

[fcvan]

I was raised around firearms and learned to respect them as tools. I did not receive a BB gun until the year after I received my first shotgun. The shotgun was a tool, the BB gun was a toy, both needed the treatment of respect for what they can do. My daughters all learned to shoot responsibly, and to respect the positive uses of firearms such as competition and hunting. They also learned the utility as a tool of law enforcement as I was a peace officer for over 30 years.

If you count that as a 'gun culture' then I won't be offended. However, the MSM portrays anyone who owns a gun for lawful purposes as a mentally deranged person who will snap. Funny how they don't actually condemn criminals who commit crimes with guns, but prefer to refer to such acts as 'gun violence.'

Guns don't cause violence, people do, and sometimes they use guns . . . and fire . . . and bricks . . . and clubs . . . etc. Yet the clubs and fire and bricks, like a firearm, did not cause violence, they were used as instruments of violence. In my work, and that of any security or military personnel, use firearms to establish and maintain peace. If you want a perspective of what responsible fiream owners and ownership means, do not source you opinions from the main-stream-media.

[Geezer in NH]

All I see is an aspiring Michael Moore. I don't help that kind nor do I feed the trolls that are out there.

[justashooter]

I'd suggest starting with a long read on American history including how and why the constitution was written and what the (pretty clear) meaning of the amendments are. That will also clarify that this is not about a "culture", but a given right.

Why do people own firearms? The sole response needed is "because they can".

The Federalist Papers are the record of public debate at the Constitutional founding. Scalia clarified in Heller Vs DC that the right was pre-existing at the foundation of this country, and is fundamental.

why do people in America own firearms? because the people who think we shouldn't have them aren't willing to die for that idea.

[cwtebay]

The Federalist Papers are the record of public debate at the Constitutional founding. Scalia clarified in Heller Vs DC that the right was pre-existing at the foundation of this country, and is fundamental.

why do people in America own firearms? because the people who think we shouldn't have them aren't willing to die for that idea.

Well said.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

[Outpost75]

The dirty little secret gun which todays gun control advocates avoid mentioning is that most US gun laws have racist origins. In southern states, they date to reconstruction and ensuing decades of racial unrest as whites passed “Jim Crow” laws to segregate and limit the ability of blacks to vote and hold elected office. Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics show that in states with strict control, Blacks are hindered from defending their lives, whereas Whites are not. Extracting civilian justifiable homicide data from the FBI Supplement Homicide reports there are clear inequities between Blacks and Whites in states which restrict the right of self-defense by not granting concealed carry permits to law-abiding citizens. Conversely, in right-to-carry (RTC) states – where law-abiding civilians carry concealed handguns in public – Blacks experienced above-average rates of justifiable homicide.

Guns have historically protected African Americans from white supremacists, just as gun control has historically protected white Americans from criminals and tyrants. One month after the Confederate surrender in 1865, Frederick Douglass urged federal action to stop state and local infringement of the right to arms. Until this was accomplished, Douglass argued, “the work of the abolitionists is not finished.” ...Because of the 14th Amendment, gun control laws now had to be racially neutral. But states quickly learned to draft neutrally-worded laws for discriminatory application. Tennessee and Arkansas prohibited handguns that freedmen could afford, while allowing expensive “Army & Navy” handguns, which ex-Confederate officers already owned...

Firearms made possible the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Charles Cobb’s excellent book, "This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible" describes how pacifist community organizers from the North learned to accept the armed protection of their black, rural communities... Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinion in the 2010 McDonald v. Chicago explicated the history of gun control as race control. Historically, people of color in the United States have often had to depend on themselves for protection. Sometimes the reason is not overt hostility by the government, but instead the incapability of government to secure public safety, as in Chicago today. Self-defense is an inherent human right. The 14th Amendment is America’s promise that no law-abiding person will be deprived of that right, regardless of color. http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blo...n-control-laws

Condoleeza Rice told the largely liberal panel and audience of “The View” on ABC that had it not been for guns, her family and her neighbors would’ve suffered even more during the segregated society that was in place in her youth in the South. Bam. That’s it in a nutshell – this is why founders saw fit to put in place a Second Amendment. It wasn’t a right to hunt they were defending; it was a God-given right to protect one’s self and one’s family from harm. And specifically: from harm from the government. “Let me tell you why I’m a defender of the Second Amendment,” Rice said, the Blaze reported. “I grew up in Alabama in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s. There was no way that Bull Connor and the Birmingham police were going to protect you. When knight riders would come through our neighborhood, my father and friends would take their guns and fire in the air if anybody came through. I don’t think they actually hit anybody. But they protected the neighborhood.” And on that whole leftist idea of registering gun owners and collecting their names and personal information to put into some sort of Big Database in the Sky? “I’m sure if Bull Connor had known where [the guns and gun owners] were, he would have rounded them up,” Rice said. “I don’t favor some things like gun registration.” ...Rice’s story couldn’t be more stark an example of why America has a Second Amendment. It also couldn’t be more American in terms of demonstrating how a government bent on wickedness can be put in its place and reminded of the power of the people. And surely, even the very liberal women of “The View” can agree with that notion. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...-defense-guns/

Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull was one of the “Founding Sons” who transformed the nation and the Constitution before, during, and after the Civil War. He wrote the Thirteenth Amendment, the first Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, and the Civil Rights Act. He sponsored the first federal statutes which actually freed slaves. As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and later as a civil rights attorney, he did more to protect Second Amendment rights – including taking a test case to the U.S. Supreme Court (Presser v. Illinois) – than did any other lawyer or legislator in the century after Jefferson and Madison... during his public career of 1840-96 he was always an ardent champion of the working man. In congressional statutes and in court cases, he defended Second Amendment rights because those rights were necessary for the working man to resist oppression by the wealthy – for the freedmen in the Reconstructed South to protect themselves from de facto re-enslavement, and for the immigrant laborers of the industrial North to defend their rights to organize and protest... (Presser [second link] affirmed the power of Illinois to regulate “...military bodies and associations except those which are authorized by the militia laws of the United States.”) http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/v...or-and-lawyer/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presser_v._Illinois

More on the Racist Roots of “Gun Control”: ...To get around this – especially after the adoption of the 14th Amendment in 1867 – the gun control advocates created carry permits and fees. Virginia's Law Review championed a "prohibitive tax" on handgun sales to blacks because the: "...cowardly practice of 'toting' guns has been one of the most fruitful sources of crime ... .Let a negro board a railroad train with a quart of mean whiskey and a pistol in his grip and the chances are that there will be a murder, or at least a row, before he alights."

[Comment, Carrying Concealed Weapons, 15 Va L. Reg. 391, 391-92 (1909); George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, "Gun Control and Racism," Stefan Tahmassebi, 1991, p. 75]

The American experiment with gun control has been conducted, and it has largely failed. But if all guns were banned, then even the criminals would not have guns, right? ...The point is, weapons can be obtained when desired. The slave uprising in Haiti that kicked off the successful Haitian revolution against France was won in no small part because of firearms despite a heavy prohibition against slaves possessing such weapons. The IRA always had a dandy store of them despite the best legal efforts of the British. Historically what will start as a "reasonable restriction" will always lead to guns in the hands of criminals and an authoritarian government, which will lead to the citizenry giving ever more power to legislators who will draft ever more restrictive laws restricting the rights of the people. Eventually laws will be made against disseminating information to make firearms, and the government will get into the business of censoring such information.

What is the endgame? Anything that could potentially be used as a weapon will be strictly controlled – and that means just about everything. Where will that lead? A cashless society? A bar code laser-tattooed on your hand or forehead? Human beings are what we are because our ancestors took a bone and whacked another guy with it; the impulse to do bodily harm is not going to go away because weapons are restricted... http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/...xperiment.html

In the Heller decision, referring to the disarming of blacks during the post-Reconstruction era, Justice Thomas wrote: "It was the 'duty' of white citizen 'patrols to search negro houses and other suspected places for firearms.' If they found any firearms, the patrols were to take the offending slave or free black 'to the nearest justice of the peace' whereupon he would be 'severely punished.' "

Never again, Thomas goes on to say, "Militias such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces and the '76 Association spread terror among blacks. . . . The use of firearms for self-defense was often the only way black citizens could protect themselves from mob violence." This was no muttering Uncle Tom, as many black people have accused him of being. Justice Thomas’s advocacy for black self-defense is straight from the heart of Malcolm X. He cited slave revolts led by Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner - implying that white America has long wanted to take guns away from black people out of fear that they would seek revenge for centuries of racial oppression. Of course, Thomas's references to historic threats posed by white militias could be dismissed if not for a resurgence of such groups after Barack Obama's re-election as our nation's first black president…

The right to own weapons for personal defense was one of the liberties frequently cited by the 14th Amendment's backers, since disarmed blacks were defenseless against attacks by Klansmen and local officials. As reflected in post–Civil War legislation that the amendment was intended to reinforce, its supporters also were concerned about economic liberty: the right to own and exchange property, make and enforce contracts, and work in the occupation of one's choice - all freedoms the Southern states tried to deny former slaves… Those privileges or immunities, the dissenters said, include "the right to pursue a lawful employment in a lawful manner, without other restraint than such as equally affects all persons." That view reflects the original understanding of the 14th Amendment, which holds great promise as a bulwark against arbitrary interference with economic freedom. The Supreme Court should seize this opportunity to revive it.

The great abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass, who famously urged President Abraham Lincoln to arm the liberated slaves against their former masters, was an outspoken champion of gun rights in the decades after the Civil War. American liberty depends upon “the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box,” Douglass wrote in his third and final autobiography, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). Without these privileges and immunities of citizenship, “no class of people could live and flourish in this country.” Blacks therefore required all three… It is altogether fitting, therefore, that the lead plaintiff in the landmark decision restoring gun rights to their proper place in our constitutional system is a 76-year-old African American grandfather and Army veteran who simply wants “a handgun in my house for my protection,” while the most constitutionally sound opinion in the case cites Frederick Douglass and was written by the Court’s one African-American justice. To put that another way, McDonald v. Chicago was a resounding victory for both the Constitution and the civil rights struggle. The defeat of the Illinois gun law also took a long time coming.

Negroes and the Gun, The Black Tradition of Arms, Prof. Nicholas Johnson (Fordham University School of Law)….summary from the publisher: “...Johnson points out that this story has been submerged because it is hard to reconcile with the dominant narrative of nonviolence during the civil rights era. His book, however, resolves that tension by showing how the black tradition of arms maintained and demanded a critical distinction between private self-defense and political violence...” the jacket blurb, from UCLA Law School reviewer Adam Winkler: “America’s gun culture is often thought to be lily white. In this groundbreaking book, Nicholas Johnson shows how African Americans, from the abolitionists to the Deacons for Defense and Justice, have taken up arms time and again to fight for their rights and their lives. You’ll never look at guns and the Second Amendment in the same way again.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/v...ition-of-arms/

Advocates of gun rights argue that the best way to prevent such atrocities is for would-be victims to arm themselves; killers will break gun laws without hesitation, so legal obstacles to gun ownership only impede the innocent. Relying on the police for defense is futile – or worse. This argument persuades few who are committed to "gun control." But those who demand it while grieving over the racist massacre at Emanuel AME church in Charleston, S.C., ought to understand that "time and again, guns have proven pivotal to the African American quest for freedom." That sentence is found in Charles E. Cobb Jr.’s important book That Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible...

Martin Luther King’s home in the 1950s was "an arsenal" and was always guarded by armed men. King in 1956 applied for a concealed-carry permit (and was turned down). Daisy Bates, who advised the Little Rock Nine, carried a .32-caliber handgun in her purse. Medgar Evers always was armed. (Evers of course was murdered; guns are no panacea.) Cobb understands that "America’s first gun control laws … were designed to prevent the possession of weapons by black people," and he writes that “it can easily be argued that today’s controversial Stand Your Ground right of self-defense first took root in black communities."

(Whites expected blacks to "back down or submit – never to stand up for themselves.") He concludes, "There was a time when people on both sides of America’s racial divide embraced their right to self-protection, and when rights were won because of it. We would do well to remember that fact today.” http://reason.com/archives/2015/06/2...and-gun-rights

Is the text of the Second Amendment contrary to slavery? So argued the great abolitionist Lysander Spooner in his 1845 book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery. When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1866-68, the Amendment's supporters agreed with Spooner that if the Second Amendment were enforced, slavery would be impossible... For example, Spooner's natural justice interpretation of the Second Amendment was straightforward: “This right 'to keep and bear arms,' implies the right to use them–as much as a provision securing to the people the right to buy and keep food, would imply their right also to eat it. But this implied right to use arms, is only a right to use them in a manner consistent with natural rights–as, for example, in defence of life, liberty, chastity, &c. . . . If the courts could go beyond the innocent and necessary meaning of the words, and imply or infer from them an authority for anything contrary to natural right, they could imply a constitutional authority in the people to use arms, not merely for the just and innocent purposes of defence, but also . . . robbery, or any other acts of wrong to which arms are capable of being applied.

The mere verbal implication would as much authorize the people to use arms for unjust, as for just, purposes. But the legal implication gives only an authority for their innocent use. (Unconstitutionality of Slavery, p. 66)... Under this provision any man has a right either to give or sell arms to those persons whom the States call slaves; and there is no constitutional power, in either the national or State governments, that can punish him for so doing; or that can take those arms from the slaves; or that can make it criminal for the slaves to use them, if, from the inefficiency of the laws, it should become necessary for them to do so, in defence of their own lives or liberties; for this constitutional right to keep arms implies the constitutional right to use them, if need be, for the defence of one's liberty or life. (Id. At 97-98.)” ...As Spooner recognized, the Constitution never expressly used the words "slave" or "slavery." James Madison explained that he kept those words out of the document because it would be "wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men." Timothy Sandefur, The Anti-Slavery Constitution, National Review, Sept. 30, 2019. So the word "slavery" did not appear in the Constitution until 1865, with the 13th Amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…." ...Whether Spooner's 1845 approach to constitutional interpretation is the best one can be debated. It can be said that parts of his constitutional vision were so compelling–and so much in accord with natural justice–that they became the law of the land. As the Fourteenth Amendment recognizes, slavery and the constitutional right to arms are opposites. (I link this esoteric and fairly lengthy article primarily because it has become fashionable in Progressive circles to argue that Amendment II was created to enforce slavery.)https://reason.com/2020/06/19/does-t...hibit-slavery/

[PerpetualStudent]

A lot of the issue you'll run into, as has been said, is that gun enthusiasts have learned the hard way since the 90s that we will be edited into idiots if filmmakers are unable to find idiots to interview. How can we be expected to believe this won't simply be a hatchet job? You may think this sounds paranoid and it fits nicely with a larger caricature of gun owners in the US. Gun enthusiasts on the other hand see a pattern of behavior played out over the last few decades. Is this fair to you? No, not really. Is there a solution to it? Not that I know of.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

SNIP>>>

I am an Australian filmmaker living in Los Angeles -- while we do have guns in Australia, there is nowhere near the same amount as there is in America, nor is there a sense of pride and heritage in owning them (generally speaking - from what I've seen).

L Turner,
It'd help if you told us a little about your personal history with firearms.
Any Military experience?
Ever shoot a handgun?
Ever shoot a Rifle?
Ever shoot a shotgun?
If you have never shot a gun, then are you afraid of guns?
If so, has the Media influenced that fear?
Did you grow up in a big city?
Have you been a victim of violence at the hands of a perpetrator who was armed?

If none of those questions pertain to your history with firearms, fill us in with whatever experience you might have with them.
...

OK, Now that I got that out of the way, let's start at the beginning, Right before the Founding of the USA, during the Revolution against England. Since those that ruled over the Colonists tried to disarm them, I figure that instilled the strong sense that they wouldn't let that happen again, especially since a lot of people died over that.

http://www.davekopel.org/2A/LawRev/a...n-control.html

[LTurnerFilm]

I'll check it out. Thanks.

[LTurnerFilm]

Yeah I get to Washington like once a year, I'll go up and check it out. Although I'm more trying to get to towns and talk to regular people about their guns rather then visit museums -- if you have any recs.

[LTurnerFilm]

Great! I'll check it out.

[Hick]

Not all gun ownership is about guns or the Second Amendment. Some people love to design and make quilts as a combination mental and craftsmanship challenge. Some collect and rebuild old automobiles. Some collect stamps. etc....... and for the same reason some collect guns. Guns are very historic - some of mine are over 100 years old and many demonstrate a tremendous degree of intelligence and design genius. They can be taken apart, repaired and improved indoors in the worst of weather (can't do that very easily if you collect cars). The design of cartridges is fascinating and very challenging. Casting your own bullets, developing your own loadings, and finding the exact combinations of bullet, case and gunpowder to turn an old gun into a precision firearm is a marvelous challenge for many people (especially a retired engineer such as myself).