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When I was young and stupid I was more conservative, and I was pro gun. Then I became very anti gun. Now, as the world gets shittier and more dangerous, I am drifting more towards pro gun.
It's a funny thing. It's made me realize that being a pacifist or being anti gun is, in a way, almost a privileged position to take. It's easy to say "I'm anti violence" when your existence isn't being threatened, it's a lot harder to stomach as the threats get more real.
When you have the gun, you're the one bringing a gun to the party.
I took a really similar arc as you did, and now carry on a regular basis. I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head: it's easy to be anti gun when there isn't an imminent threat.
For clarity, when you say "anti-gun", what is that position? Like, "average people should not have them, period"?
Not trying to knock on you - it's that there's so many positions which get lumped under "pro-" or "anti-", it helps to actually understand where someone is coming from.
"Average people should not have them and I don't want one either."
My opinions on that have shifted.
Same. ICE invaded my neighborhood and I promptly got my permit to carry and now I bought my first gun and am practicing at the range and carrying regularly
Not OP, but my position has always been the constitutional position of "a well regulated militia". Like imo you shouldn't be able to have guns in your home, but it would be fine if there was a single gun locker on literally every block where you could store an entire personally-owned arsenal, as long as the locker met strict security rules and the gun users met strict and recurring training requirements.
Pacifism is sometimes privilege and sometimes moral ideology taken to its noblest extreme. You have some who are safe no matter what and decry violence, but you also have folks like the victims of the Gnadenhutten massacre, who didn't fight back because they were pacifists. You also have nonviolent people who do so strategically.
Your existence was being threatened but now that you have a gun you're safe? Sounds like creative writing to me. What was the threat? How did you counter that threat with a gun? Was their a big confrontation? Did you have to put a motherfucker down?
When I was 19 working construction during the summers between college I had one of the experiences I referenced. There was a bully on my crew who relentlessly fucked with me every single day. For context I was 6'4 215 training kickboxing and jujitsu 4 days a week. He was 5'2 probably 200 lbs alcoholic in his early 50s. So finally, one day, I snapped. I told him very calmly that I'd see him back at the shop and I was going to beat the brakes off of him. I very well could have and there is literally NOTHING he could have done to stop me physically. He got a real serious look on his face and said "tell ya what, you try that and I'll show you how a pistol can make a big man small". I knew from that second it wasn't worth getting shot and realistically it would have been his only option to stop my gorilla ass from beating him into the dirt. It made me reflect a ton. Mostly about how a guy like me at that time could physically destroy an extremely large percentage of the general population. The thought there is next to nothing the individual could do to stop me. That is, unless they had a gun. Even a .22 would have turned me around running. That was one of the moments I realized it's pretty reasonable to want a gun for protection. I never fought the guy and he never really eased up on fucking with me. I earned my money, finished my degree and haven't seen him since. I learned a lot from him.
Damn, a lot of people wouldn't have learned a reasonable lesson from that interaction ...
From a young age my father taught me that you can learn as much if not more from shitty people compared to good people. We haven't spoken in years, I learned a lot from him too.