Liberals and guns? Yes, despite what the leftist media might have you believe, there is a large segment of American liberals who own firearms in America. I want to highlight just a few points that author David Yamane, a self-described San Francisco gun-owning liberal, has to say on this subject.
Mr. Yamane makes several historical observations in his short article published on May 1st in The Conversation. His points are surprisingly well thought-out and researched. He is pretty much on target, and in agreement with most of us in the 2A Community:
Gun Ownership is Normal
“About 86 million American adults – 1 in 3 – own at least one of the estimated 400 million firearms in the U.S. today.
Imagine if everyone who uses TikTok in the U.S. owned a gun – and then add the population of New York City. That is enough gun owners to fill over 1,000 NFL stadiums.
Humans have used projectile weapons like rocks and spears from the beginning. This unbroken history continues in every society, with firearms as the weapon of choice in all but the most isolated communities. People who could legally own guns in colonial America commonly did so. Even today, civilian firearms ownership remains exceptionally high in the U.S. compared with other industrialized nations.
The right of everyday Americans to own guns is a deep part of American culture, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and many state constitutions.”
Our past IFC Chairman and current BOD member, Michael Ware, makes the case that, in actuality, there are over 1.5 billion firearms in private hands in America. I agree with him.
Guns are Paradoxical
“Despite high rates of firearm suicide and homicide, most guns in the U.S. will not kill anyone, and most American gun owners will not commit violence against themselves or others. My calculations, based on the 2023 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, indicate that just one gun death occurred per 8,560 firearms and 1,840 gun owners – meaning at least 99.99% of guns and 99.95% of gun owners were not directly involved in fatalities that year.
These observations collectively point to a final insight: Guns resist simple categorization and embody multiple paradoxes.
To different people, they are fun and frightening, dangerous and protective, diffuse and concentrated, unifying and divisive, attractive and repulsive, interesting and controversial, useful and useless, good and bad, and neither good nor bad.
This is to say, guns are not inherently anything. They take on different meanings according to the various purposes to which people put them.
A realistic view requires maintaining a clear-eyed understanding of the lethal capabilities of firearms. But the tendency to focus exclusively on firearms-related harms, while understandable, becomes a problem, in my view, when it fails to acknowledge the normality of guns and the diversity of gun owners.”
To his last point, I would remind readers that guns, like cars and baseball bats, are inanimate objects. The simple labeling of any use of a firearm as “gun violence” is a ridiculous notion. We don’t call cars that hit and kill people “car violence”, or say that people who are killed with baseball bats are the victims of “bat violence”, do we? So we should all reject the automatic placing of the blame for the use of any inanimate object to injure or kill someone. Instead, human behavior needs to remain our first response.
IOWA LEGISLATIVE NEWS
With the Iowa Legislative session in overtime, it’s more important than ever that we get out the word to our elected representatives on the Gadsden Flag bill. Please go over to the IFC Action Alert system to send a message to your legislator today.
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Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
Dave Funk
Member, Board of Directors
Iowa Firearms Coalition
#2A4IA
I am an Iowa Hunter Education Instructor (33 years) an NRA Instructor certified both in handgun and rifle (34 years), and an NRA Range Safety Officer (5 years).
I was at a gun range last Sunday, and a member of the group called a firearm a “weapon”. I immediately told that person that it was in fact not a weapon until used as one, making my point as what do you call a baseball bat, a tire iron, a hammer, etc. I don’t know how how anyone else feels, but just about every item that is possible to pick up, drive, drop, throw poke, hit, kick, punch with, can be used as “weapons”, but not normally referred to as weapons, unless used as one!