I spoke to this man for a long time—we had both arrived early. I said “nice sign” and he told me this was his first protest. We conversed for a while—he was reasoned (and passionate) about all his thinking. He told me he didn’t think his high school teachers having guns would make a safer classroom. He told me how much he likes to shoot, and that he’s adamanet about gun safety. He said he likes his guns and he likes to shoot. He did say if he had kids he’d had to really think hard about weather he’d keep his hobby. Then he told me this story, and I asked him to repeat it for the video—he was happy to.
To me he is an example of the reasoning I’m seeing slowly seep into the culture. Reasonable people just aren’t buying the usual rhetoric so easily, and it seems to be causing an outbreak of intelligence. Maybe.
Transcription:
I purchased an AR-15 inside a store in Lincoln. I walked in there, it took about half hour, 45 minutes and I walked out of there with and AR-15 and 300 rounds of ammunition. I’ve been a shooter my whole life, I love guns. But I walked out of there feeling like “wow. Anybody can do this. Anybody can walk in here and buy a gun.” And there’s a lot of people who shouldn’t own guns who don’t necessarily have a criminal history. And I just feel that there’s a happy medium between taking everybody’s guns away and doing nothing.
There has to be something that can be done. And I think we can find a happy medium that will satisfy…and make people feel safer.
This is my first protest. I had to come out, I just had to.