or Why I took a NRA Basic Pistol Class
Today's diary is written by DavidMS but posted under the RKBA group diarist. Under statements made are the diarist's and his alone. The below article was not modified, edited, or changed in any way.
RKBA is a DKos group of second amendment supporters who also have progressive and liberal values. We don't think that being a liberal means one has to be anti-gun. Some of us are extreme in our second amendment views (no licensing, no restrictions on small arms) and some of us are more moderate (licensing, restrictions on small arms.) Moderate or extreme, we hold one common belief: more gun control equals lost elections. We don't want a repeat of 1994. We are an inclusive group: if you see the Second Amendment as safeguarding our right to keep and bear arms individually, then come join us in our conversation. If you are against the right to keep and bear arms, come join our conversation. We look forward to seeing you, as long as you engage in a civil discussion.
RKBA stands for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Guns and the Left
or why I took a NRA Basic Pistol Class
Since at least as early as 2001 I have though about gun ownership and its relationship to American Society.
When I was in college, my Grandfather, a retired JAG officer died after a long fight with cancer. His service spanned World War II, Korea and into the Vietnam era. Of his property, he owned two handguns. My mom asked me to move them and I could not bring myself to move the guns. She did without a word and I started shifting my views on firearms. Having grown up in a liberal Jewish household, guns were at best something that the other owned and obsessed over. I held the unexamined view that guns needed to be regulated tightly.
In college, as part of a few politics classes, I learned about symbolic politics. I quickly realized from reading the arguments put forth by supporters and opponents that gun control is not about guns at all. Its about symbolism of who has power in American society. Do guns represent black on black crime or a hunting traditions and fond memories of hours with dad waiting for that deer? Do they represent scary, young black men intent on rape or the Deacons of Defense and Justice keeping the Klan at bay? Are they used by a woman on her ex husband who does not comply with a restraining order or on an unintended young victim of a drive by shooting? Each of these narratives is loaded with symbolism exploited by proponents and opponents of gun control. Guns are not just objects in America they are symbols of who we are what we aspire to and how we got here. Symbolic reassurance is a done in by leaders in a society to provide their constituents with a cheap public good. Conservative gun control opponents use it to make us out to be elitists who are horrified to learn that hamburger comes from cows while leaving out that their elites desire economic policies that will reduce 4/5ths of the public to debit peonage. But the party’s base does not see rights as being universal but something gained as a perk of wealth and power. The party’s base has their religion to scare them into behaving decently, guns to give them the illusion of power and the racist and classist hatred of poor African Americans and Latin American immigrants to help them think they don’t have it so bad.
We stereotypically tend to view guns as inherently dangerous like a rabid dog. We want to be protected from the right wing idiots who own them and to protect poor Blacks from shooting each other seemingly at random. Gun control is also unlikely to benefit poor African Americans in big cities at least without first ending the war on (some) drugs. If a kid from a bad neighborhood can get to 21 without a disqualifying conviction, I cannot see why it should be illegal for them to own a handgun and have a Concealed Weapon Permit permit. Unlike the right and its reflexive glorification of violence as a cathartic cleaner of national character, the left varies between being downright queasy and outright opposed to inflicting violence both because humans are supposed to mediate or negotiate their disputes and that in a society of plenty no one needs to take from anyone else. Mediating a dispute while at gunpoint just does not work.
After college, I moved back to Maryland and back in with my parents. I continued following
issues around gun control and noticed a small but vocal group of Democrats who also do not think that that gun control was such a good idea for both strategic political reasons and based on the history and development of democracy. Democracy only developed in the modern world once the average peasant could shoot the average noble off his horse (Loaded. Garrett Keizer. Harper’s Magazine. December 2006). Democracy is also influenced from a demand for equal risk should yield equal reward.
Some of my friends are gun owners and with them I went to the NRA rifle range twice to shoot guns. The first time was a .40 cal single stack SIG and the second time was a gorgeous old S&W .357 magnum firing .38 spl cartridges. That day I also tried out a Remmington 870 loaded with slugs and concluded that I don’t really like shotguns despite the cartoon sized holes 12 gauge slugs make in the target paper. They are socially liberal and at least one of them reluctantly pulled the lever for Obama in VA during the election, he could not bring himself to vote for McCain.
I arrived that Friday night at the Izaak Walton League and quickly found the classroom. My classmates were mostly older, white or of Asian descent and predominantly male. I would not have been surprised if I was the only social democrat in the room.
We went over the 3 rules of gun safety 1.) Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. 2.) Always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot. 3.) Always kept the gun unloaded until ready for use. We learned about the parts of a revolver and automatic pistol and their ammunition. We did some weapon handling. We learned how to safely load, unload, cock and de-cock revolvers and pistols. From there we discussed ammunition and its use for target shooting and self defense. By that time it was late and the class broke until the next morning. On that cool late April morning, we did some gun handling drills with plastic training guns, practicing using the sights and holding then so they were pointed off towards the woods and not at humans or things we would not want to destroy. From there we split into two groups and went to the pistol range. We put on ear and eye protection and went through some gun handing drills with live ammunition shooting at targets 21 feet away. I was using a Ruger .357 magnum with adjustable sights. Under the watchful eye of my instructor, I loaded a single cartridge into the revolver’s cylinder and closed it, placing the shiny brass casing in line with the barrel and firing pin. I pulled the hammer back to full cock and picked an imaginary spot in center of the blank paper target since we were only shooting to get on target and slowly pulled the trigger until the hammer snapped forward detonating the primer igniting the powder and sending the copper jacketed bullet down the barrel, through the air, punching through the paper target and into the earthen berm beyond. I repeated the exercise four more times and we then moved to loading 5 cartridges into the cylinder and practicing decocking. I pulled the hammer back to the cocked position inserted my thumb between the hammer and the frame of the revolver, put my other thumb on the hammer spur and released it with the trigger and then lowered it with out detonating the primer. The range was silent. Because I didn’t do it quite perfectly and had left my index finger on the trigger, I did it a few more times when everyone moved onto individual fire drills to make sure that I have it right. If I get a revolver, I will be doing plenty of practice decocking the gun. From there we moved into other drills and in total I fired 25 rounds, getting them all on paper with most of them towards the center of the sheet with a raged line headed towards the lower right corner. It looked much like a scatter plot of data before performing a regression on it. We then ate lunch while the other half of the class took their turn.
Afterword we cleaned the revolvers. I brushed it out, and then ran patches soaked in gun cleaner down the bore and through the chambers until a dry patch came out clean. From there we were taught about gun laws in Maryland. They are not the most lax but are fairly easy to follow so long as on the way to or from the range the gun owner does not need to stop for a bathroom break.
Today there is such an increased threat of right wing terrorism that when last spring the Time Square bomber turned out to be bumbling Al Quada sympathiser there was an auditable sigh of relief that he was not a Christian. At least every time the right brings up terrorism, I can calmly mention that the rabid right is making Takfiris everywhere jealous because they are killing more Americans at home since the Obama era began. Social forces that have built up for 40 years are suddenly and visibly changing our republic. They say that they want their country back. That country never existed except on celluloid and in pulp novels. Some sections of the authoritarian right have the desire for power and a lack of a conscience to temper their desires view us leftists as an existential theat to returning to the good old days that never were. Its a psychological condition that poses a danger to the future of our Republic because their views are incomparable with maintaining the United States as a Federal Republic.
Before my great-grandparents immigrated they suffered from often violent religious persecution. My maternal great-grandparents immigrated from Poland, Russia and the Ukrane. I do know that Tobeh hid their daughters from the Cossacks in a cold oven and my Great Grandfather was conscripted into the Czar’s army and served in the Russo-Japanese War. After coming home, along with his younger brother he was to serve another term and they left for America instead. They eventually made their way to Iowa. Calman and his family eventually owned and ran a Chrysler agency and sent at least two of his nine children to college. My grandmother, Catherine, got her degree in social work and a few years latter married with my Grandfather, who was a lawyer and joined the Army as a JAG officer during the Second World War and served into the 1970s. My mom recalled that she never saw his service pistol except when Grandpa went for his pistol qualifications.
Guns don’t in and of themselves make people safer, training to protect yourself does. Social structures that build community and break down barriers between communities help protect us by eliminating the other. Much of the political right fails to understand that American Jews are left of center and don’t typical own guns not because we have anything against them, but coming from a faith where hunting is forbidden (it is viewed as likely to cause an animal unnecessary suffering and therefore render it treif or non-kosher), prior to Napoleon’s wars of liberation, few Jews served in the any European military (there were relatively few American Jews until the 1890s). Its because we recognize that a shotgun in the house won’t protect us from the anti-Semite ranting on AM radio. Social and Civic involvement, political involvement in the side of greater basic rights for all protect us. Historically, many Jews were attracted to socialist parties. I know that Social Democratic Parties were one of the few political movements, particularly in Germany that connected antisemitism to efforts to divide workers along religious, not class lines. Socialism is the only movement that I am aware of that that linked opposition to antisemitism to a broader struggle for social and economic rights.
The modern left is generally anti-imperialist and anti-authoritarian. However as oppression in western societies has become less visible, I wonder if this explains the shift towards anti-imperialism or if its a way to "do something" without changing the same domestic political forces that keep the developing world poor.
During the post-Second World War struggle to extend constitutionally guaranteed civil rights not only did Klansmen and other defenders of the legaly racist status quo use firearms but many of the civil rights activists did also. In Monroe, North Carolina, Robert F. Williams, a NAACP organizer and World War II veteran organized black citizens to resist Klan terrorism. In 1957 a Southern Baptist preacher and Klu Kluxer named James W. "Catfish" Cole who lead Klan rallies in Monroe, NC and whose followers drove in convoys through black neighborhoods shooting at houses to terrify the African American citizens ended only when they were shot back at. At this point, Catfish attempted to lead a campaign of Klan terror against the Lumbee Indians of Roebson county who he wanted to "remind them of their place." The Lumbee instead shot out the single light bulb at the Klan rally, routed the 50 to 100 assembled Klansman and burned their regalia, ending Klan activities in the county until 1984. Another armed group that opposed the Klan was the Deacons for Defense and Justice. The lesson here is community organizing certainly does work and unlike the Klansman of old, the modern racist cloaks their racism in the plea for the government to stop interfering in their "right" to oppress others. While the loonier elements of the right spend their time fantasizing about using their accumulated weapons on people darker skinned than themselves, we should be spending our time getting to know our neighbors and doing the sorts of organizing that creates a civil society and the organizational strength to press the Federal, State and Local Governments to protect our rights and the natural world that we are a part of.
Unlike the right that builds exploitative relationships via mega church, country club and John Birch Society Chapter their top down model works best when information is communicated from the top down. When left to their own devices conservatives stew in self pity that "undeserving" people are getting something. With the ongoing decline of traditional big newspapers and broadcast media the top down model of conservative messaging is less effective than it used to be. The left benefits from this because our public arguments help us formulate policy and influence debate in the public forum of the Internet though we may seem to be somewhat leaderless, we naturally get ourselves pointed in the right direction from the open exchange of ideas.
From here, I’m thinking about purchasing a pistol for target shooting. If I decide to, I will know how to safely and legally transport, store and shoot a pistol. I’m not making a decision now and I have spent way too much on car repairs in the last few weeks for me to even think of a major discretionary purchase.
But when social and civic protections fail, a safely stored shotgun is an excellent insurance policy.