Blog - “I Absolutely Loved It!” (Fall 2022 Student Range Visit Reflection #6)

1
This is the sixth of several student gun range field trip reflection essays from my fall 2022 Sociology of Guns seminar (see reflection #1 and reflection #2 and reflection #3 and reflection #4 and reflection #5). The assignment to which students are responding can be found here. I am grateful to these students for their willingness to have their thoughts shared publicly.
Image
Sociology of Guns student at range field trip, Fall 2022. Photo by Sandra Stroud Yamane By Liana Hutton Approximately half a year ago, when I signed the form to participate in this course, it discussed how we were required to go on a field trip to the gun range. My first thoughts were how interesting this would be because of my background. I grew up in Hilton Head, South Carolina – a place that loves guns – but in a family that grew up in New York and does not like guns. Growing up in a very socially liberal household in a socially conservative area gave me an interesting perspective. Not only did I develop my own beliefs about guns in general, but I also developed a sense of what others believed, and why. In high school, I was part of the Young Democrats club, which came together when mass shootings happened to hold an entire school activity to remember those lost in the Parkland shooting specifically. I remember that day, the members of the Young Republicans club passed around stickers to students that said, “I support the second amendment.” To sum it up, I lived in a place that loved the second amendment, where lots of teenagers went hunting with their parents growing up, and lived in households that had multiple kinds of guns. I grew up in a family that believed, and still does, that we need gun control, and that some types of guns should be banned. The gun range experience did not fit with my understanding of guns, but I very much enjoyed it. Because of my family’s view of guns, I would have never gone to a shooting range, let alone shot three different kinds of guns, on my own, with family, or with friends. When I first showed up at the range, my friend and I were a little anxious. We heard the loud shots of the previous group shooting and immediately went back to the car. Both of our families are very liberal, so it was in our nature to hear that and leave the source it was originating from. When we finally got inside the fence, I was very nervous and didn’t know if I wanted to through with shooting any of the guns. I just didn’t grow up in an environment that encouraged it. It was completely foreign to me! Skip to the end of the experience – I absolutely loved it! I was surprised by how loud the shots were, but I was also surprised that the jolt of it wasn’t as bad as people said/what it looked like when my classmates shot. I found appealing how easy it was. You just put your hands in the position, aim the gun, and boom! It wasn’t this complex process, and it was over very fast. I was especially nervous to shoot the semi-automatic rifle, just because of what I had read about them and heard on the news. It also looked like people jolted back a lot with this type of gun, but when I did it, it didn’t hurt and was easy to control.
Image
Sociology of Guns student at range field trip, Fall 2022. Photo by Sandra Stroud Yamane Guns were and still are a complete mystery to me. This experience slightly took some of the mysteriousness out of something highly debated in our country and move it to a more personal level. I don’t think guns themselves are evil things, I just think it does need to be regulated better who has access to them. My mom was very wary of the field trip, but my dad was looking forward to what I would think. After this experience, I definitely want to go to a shooting range again. I had no clue what to expect going into the field trip, but I came out of it energized and looking forward to what I would learn in this course. I feel like throughout my life I only heard either, “I support the second amendment,” or “We need to ban guns, or have a lot more gun control.” I never learned or looked into the middle ground of it or the history behind guns. I never de-mystified why guns are so contested in this country. This experience was a great start to getting my own subjective view of firearms and seeing that they aren’t inherently evil. In all, I don’t have much of a prior understanding of guns in the US. I mainly see all the school shoootings/police shootings/other mass shootings in the news and think that something needs to be done about this. I see the arguments that people kill people, guns don’t kill people. I also see arguments that 22 year olds shouldn’t have access to AR-15s. For guns themselves, I always thought they were bad, I didn’t want anything to do with them. This experience fought against this view, to my surprise, and now I want to learn more about them and go to another shooting range. This field trip helped my biases surrounding guns and the debate around them, and I can’t wait for my views to be challenged further throughout the year. This content originally appeared at text and was written by David Yamane This content is syndicated and does not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Liberal Gun Club

Source: https://guncurious.wordpress.com/2022/0 ... lection-6/

Re: Blog - “I Absolutely Loved It!” (Fall 2022 Student Range Visit Reflection #6)

2
Shooting stuff is fun! No doubt. I definitely think our county has a violence problem, but fixating on guns isn’t solution. It ignores every other form of violence and violent behavior that pervades our society. As to the age discussion, it leads to a very critical choice where we choose to declare people adults. I don’t believe in partial adulthood and certainly not sending non adults to fight wars. Whatever is decided on that issue needs to be consistent. Other rights should likewise follow any revisions. I doubt many 18 to 20 year olds would appreciate losing the vote or if the limit was 25 then up to 24 year olds. Before we limit rights we need to have an honest look at the numbers and critically look at the disproportionate way news media represents these violent events.
Image
Image

"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

Re: Blog - “I Absolutely Loved It!” (Fall 2022 Student Range Visit Reflection #6)

3
Hear, hear, SikaCZ!

This particular article sums up my own struggles with -not guns- but our liberal (left leaning) hypocrisy. It points at a deep yet human unconscious bias to be stuck in our Beliefs about something yet not having the courage or fortitude to go beyond them to reach at the truth of Human Experience. It’s like the prudishness of some conservative households who teach their young that homosexuality or masturbation will send you straight to Hell or whatever. This kind of emotional stranglehold is the worst -or greatest- challenge that we human being face in life. And especially for us Left leaning Progressives, it limits our imagination for what is possible especially in tackling the major challenges we collectively face for the environment and in self-governance. WE are the only ones who are doing this creative work! Conservatives have already ceded those challenges to “god’s will” and “strongmen” like children afraid of the dark while pursuing narrow, selfish ends like children or materialistic addicts who believe in a mythical “higher power/intelligence/parent”. But how can Progressives effectively move forward with freedom of imagination and profound grounding in and dedication to the Truth if they are also hobbled by childish beliefs? Because the world doesn’t care whether we sin or “miss the mark”... to err is simply how we learn. The World and its science and psychology (yes, we are part of this world) operates on its own timeline. It will simply steamroll over you if you don’t learn to change its trajectory, it’s speed, or simply recognize how to get out of its way! And that takes rootedness to Truth!
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: Blog - “I Absolutely Loved It!” (Fall 2022 Student Range Visit Reflection #6)

5
sikacz wrote: Mon Sep 26, 2022 12:29 pm I definitely think our county has a violence problem, but fixating on guns isn’t solution. It ignores every other form of violence and violent behavior that pervades our society.
Side note: A local friend sums up most of the "big news" shooting events (and a fair number of other big splashy violent events) as being in the "He Was Mad" file (HWM going forward in this comment).

HWM, to my friend and to me, reflects on how our society has done such a poor job of teaching folks--especially young males--how to deal with their emotions in constructive if not destructive ways.

Of course, this simplifies things a bit, and, also, this only addresses most of the big violence events we see on the news. But I haven't seen a good counter-argument to the concept.
Eventually I'll figure out this signature thing and decide what I want to put here.

Re: Blog - “I Absolutely Loved It!” (Fall 2022 Student Range Visit Reflection #6)

6
sikacz wrote: Mon Sep 26, 2022 12:29 pm Shooting stuff is fun! No doubt. I definitely think our county has a violence problem, but fixating on guns isn’t solution. It ignores every other form of violence and violent behavior that pervades our society. As to the age discussion, it leads to a very critical choice where we choose to declare people adults. I don’t believe in partial adulthood and certainly not sending non adults to fight wars. Whatever is decided on that issue needs to be consistent. Other rights should likewise follow any revisions. I doubt many 18 to 20 year olds would appreciate losing the vote or if the limit was 25 then up to 24 year olds. Before we limit rights we need to have an honest look at the numbers and critically look at the disproportionate way news media represents these violent events.

Well said ! The anti-gunners have tunnel vision when it comes to violence, they have only one solution which is ban or highly restrict firearms and the blue coasts and many (not all) Democrats have bought into it. The Bloomie funded groups don't have to spend a lot of money on their anti-gun campaigns, the Main Stream Media has already bought into it and peddle the Bloomie message free of charge.

I agree about aligning adulthood with the age for drinking and buying firearms, but politicians of both political parties don't have the guts to do it. They're afraid of doing anything that opens them to attacks by opponents. It's like legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana on a national basis, some Democrats and Republicans favor it but not the DNC and RNC. I'm for making 18 the age of adulthood making it legal for drinking, driving, buying firearms, sign a contract, enlist in the military or be drafted...
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests