I find it interesting the portion of our community who blindly refuse to acknowledge how things have change.
Is it safe to assume your parents taught you to shoot/safe gun handling? That you took hunter's ed? That you went hunting with adults until you got to an age were you could go solo? Safe to assume that those teaching you about guns drilled responsibility and safe handling into you?
I'm assuming in 89' neither you nor anyone in your family had an AR? Then for all of your 20s they were banned.
During that entire period there was 0 marketing about "tactical" gear/, guns were marketed as either hunting implements or handguns as personal defense correct?
We have a pile of threads about 3Rs in hunting and then about Depublicize, Deglority, Demonetize hunting? Essentially that over marketing has harmed the sport. I think everyone will admit that while Matt Rinella's critique is uncomfortable to read, that he makes some good points.
This has also happened with shooting sports, IMHO.
If you are a member of hunttalk you by default have a huge blind spot, because you hunt and therefore were legally required to do firearm safety. There isn't a member on here under what? 40? That didn't take a class. When we think of various classes of weapons we tend to think of them given that perspective.
You also own firearms for a specific purpose, hunting/target shooting/defense.
I have zero issues with anyone on the forum who owns ARs, I love seeing huntingwife's threads about coyote hunting. I definitely don't think we are safer buy restricting what she can buy or own.
That said, the reality we as responsible gun owners need to wrap our heads around, guns are being purchased by a crap ton of irresponsible people.
A huge share of gun purchases are down by < 25 year old dudes, who live in the burbs who don't hunt, who haven't and will not end up taking a safety class, and have no interest in competitive shooting, and obviously were never part of the armed services.
Why are they buying guns? Marketing.
Seems like maybe we need to Depublicize, Deglority, Demonetize "black guns".
You think this is BS, spend 20min on instagram.
How are we not putting 2 and 2 together
I am an avid public lands shooter and have written about how to do so in Outdoor Life and other mags. Seriously, though, I think the Gun Idiots are going to undermine this privilege. My wife and I were camped alongside the S. Fork of the Teton River before the July 4 holiday. We were dispersed...
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