Much talk has been made here on understanding Rural voters and how bridges can be made to help shore up the purple states to keep them from returning to their red color. One of the most divisive, and emotional, elements of this conversation is firearm ownership. Usually it is put as a basic urban "bugaboo" and a rural "golden calf". Let me make a different case, one that emphasizes how a progressive could own firearms and do it out of classic progressive motives...
I have lived in both urban and rural areas. My childhood was spent in a huge urban (blue) city in the middle of a very rural (red) state. My mother was the classic posts-hippie and even toy guns were banned from our house. My father was an ex-military Democrat who was more comfortable with firearms in a boy scout sort of way. My exposure to firearms growing up began in the boy scouts and later when my dad took up shooting at the range I went along.
I have spent time arguing both sides of the classic firearm debate: public safety vs. personal safety. I have been called everything from a gun nut to a liberal gun grabber. But in all that time, I have remained a progressive, and in part that is why I choose to own a gun.
That last line should read wrong. For most of my progressive friends, it is oxymoronic. Being progressive means loathing the existence of firearms. Being a liberal by definition means being unarmed, leaving my protection "to the professionals". I could not disagree more.
I was raised, by both parents, with many progressive core values: caring for others, fairness of play, responsibility of action, self-sufficiency, a belief that the state exists to help the good of individuals, being realistic while working for a better future, and a fervent belief that everyone should be listened to and understood even if I disagree with them (the whole walk in their shoes thing).
Yeah, so, how can I own a gun? If I can explain my own reasons, maybe people can understand how un-nutty most "gun nuts" are:
- I Care for Myself and Others - Having a firearm safely stored (yet ready to use) provides me with the means to be able to act out that caring if faced with an aggressor larger than I can handle otherwise (animal or human where I live). That may mean a handgun (in small houses), a shotgun (in larger homes), or an rifle/assault rifle (in large spaces). Once you decide to own a firearm, which you chose is less important than the fact that you have made the bigger choice of ownership.
- Fair Play - I know that illegal guns are a huge problem in large cities (I lived in one!) but that fact does not mean that law abiding folks need to be punished. Especially ones that do not live anywhere near the problem. Why punish those who recognize the problem of illegal weapons and own legal ones for protection? Is that fair? Not to mention, is that effective?
- Responsibility of Action - I was raised to believe that every person is capable of being a responsible one. I can "help" them, but I cannot "make" them. Taking people's choices for protection away is not the kind of progressive thought I was raised with. Who am I to tell a rape victim how they can or can not take care of themselves? Who am I to decide that they are a child, unable to be a responsible adult? A progressive approach is to provide as much help and training as possible, and to be ready to punish them if they are not responsible in the end.
- Self-Sufficiency - I grew up reading books on victory gardens, hydro-electrics, organic food, living off the grid, and yet I ate McDonalds, lived in the city, and got all of my resources from places I never saw. This is a common liberal life: talking about self-sufficiency while living in a 0 self-sufficient condition. While I do not like the idea of hunting for the desire to kill, every hunter I have ever actually met and spoken to does it out of a sense of self-sufficiency and honesty about their food source. I know one uber-liberal who is teaching herself bow hunting and making alliances with conservative farmers all out of a sense that we are too removed, to self-insufficient to be progressive anymore, "Just look at the liberals who buy tie-dye instead of making them!" (This is where the "Starbucks Liberals" jokes originate, I think...) Additionally, gun owners believe in being able to care for themselves. Why own an assault weapon or a high capacity pistol? Because shooting at a pack of feral dogs is too slow with a hunting rifle (a few years ago a pack killed a census worker not far from the town I currently live in). Am I a Rambo? No, and neither are the gun owners I know. We are happy to wait for the cops to deal with anything, we just want our options open if the cops are going to be too late.
- The State Exists to Help the Good of Individuals - This is key. The state should be helping the individual, not harming in the promise of the betterment of the "greater good". All forms of harm comes from the government when it takes something from me in the promise of the "greater good". The NSA taps, extra-judicial imprisonment, vague wars (but very lethal wars), and implanting tracking devices in people's private property are just a few recent examples. The state is a helpmate, not a nanny. I am a legal, responsible adult. I am not a child.
- Being realistic while working for a better future - I want a safe and better future, and I work for it. However, I also live in the now. That means two things: I prepare for disasters (be they Katrina type, or criminal), and I also prepare for winnable elections. I know several progressives who rethought their position on firearms in the wake of Katrina when the "professionals" we entrust our safety were absent, and when gun registration lists were used to collect the only means many people had to protect themselves. As one friend noted, "Katrina was expected, natural, and manageable and it got blown. How will we manage something bigger or more surprising?". And as far as elections are concerned, in my red part of southern Indiana two of the candidates who helped take the Senate back could not have done it if they had not been friendly to gun owners. Period.
- A Fervent Belief that Everyone Should be Listened To - This is where this diary ends. In my experience, the majority of gun owners I have spoken to are thinking, responsible people. Some are even very progressive. They key is to listen and dialogue, not preach. Sure, there are "Bubba's" and gun owners know it. Hell, they even make fun of it (to ruin a gun by cosmetically changing it with duct tape and a hack saw is know as "Bubba'ing" it). But when push comes to shove, most gun owners feels more akin to those Bubba's than liberals who speak out of a knee-jerk terror of an inanimate 4 to 9 pound piece metal. Call them names and they will vote to not give you the government, and frankly, why should they? Are you going to help them protect their family or livestock? Are you going to address their fears that their ways of being self-sufficient are being taken from them (hunting, raising live stock) and handed over to corporations so that we can be even further from "the earth"? Are you going to make laws that will distinguish between responsible adults and criminals, urbanites and rural folks?
Fellow progressives, get to know these people and I guaranty you will be surprised at what you can learn from them and what you can bring them around to. Hell, I get to laugh big every time I ask them about Bush and nation building. And they get to confide in me that they voted Dem "just this one time".
I want to make sure they will do it again.