People shoot firearms for a variety of reasons. Typically, those reasons are things like they wanted to learn to protect themselves or their father took them hunting or some similar type of story.
However, occasionally, you’ll come across a different reason for a person to shoot a gun. In the case of David Yamane, though, he may have the most unexpected reason for shooting his first gun. He writes,
Almost 8 years ago, I shot a gun for the first time, not because I was interested in guns, but because I was afraid of them.
Exactly 6 years ago, in November 2012, I took my first gun training course: Massad (Mas) Ayoob’s MAG-40.
He continues:
I’ve come a long way since then, both personally and professionally.
When I began my research on guns, I wanted to assuage the (legitimate) concerns of people in the gun culture about how they would be understood and portrayed by an outsider. Mas was good enough to write me a letter of introduction, which I sent to other gun trainers when I contacted them about observing their courses. I have never had anyone turn me down.
I know Mas’s endorsement helped me establish a reputation early on as someone who truly tries to live up to Spinoza’s ideal: “I have sedulously endeavored not to laugh at human actions, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.”
Frankly, anti-gunners could use to learn Yamane’s way of thinking. They would learn something both about themselves and also about self-defense and firearms.
Now, to be fair, Yamane said that he grew up with BB guns, so he knew that little bit about weapons, but, as he says it, there was a time when “any idea of shooting a real gun was out of the question. I was, quite frankly, afraid of guns. Even if I realized that ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people,’ I didn’t have any access to guns, I didn’t know how they worked, and I didn’t have any need for them.”
Fortunately, he listened to a friend talking about gun training, and he decided to do that. It changed his life.
Now, if anti-gunners would simply open their minds to hear the truth about guns just like Yamane did, the world would be both a better and safer place.
Well only ignorant people are afraid of something they know little to nothing about. Most anti gunners have the misconception that if a gun is left alone on a table it will get up and go out and kill a person therefore they fear guns and want to outlaw ownership of guns. They have no clue as to how a particular gun functions and are of the opinion if a rifle is semi automatic and black in color it must be a Military weapon of war. They have the misconception that a black semi automatic rifle is a quote ASSAULT WEAPON. In reality there is no such thing as an assault weapon by design. In the real world anything used by a person to assault another person can be classified an assault weapon be it a knife, a hammer, a ball bat, a pick handle, an axe handle, a two by four etc.!!
Well said, ice. As a kid, I was not allowed even a toy gun, so I joined the US Army and shot a 90 (expert) in boot camp. Attitude and education. I was 17 then. After service, I bought my very own Marlin Glenfield model 60 .22 Long Rifle and became ‘super-expert’. A wonderful and highly accurate tool. Now, I’m 63 and would love to have another!
Is this gun easy to shoot for a woman that weighs approximately 140 lbs?
right on! Ice, you’ve covered one faction of the anti-gun group, the other faction that is much more dangerous to all the freedoms typified by the U.S.A. are the ones who just want a DIS-armed public. A dis-armed public is inherent to a communist/Nazi/dictator/totalitarian/socialist/Stalinist-emperor/(name-your-badguy) takeover of our country!! Just a brief study of world history teaches ANYONE that if you wish to take over any country the first thing that needs to be done is to disarm the general public! FACT! End of story! NO accusations of hysteria–fear mongering–etc allowed!! It’s just a FACT!! Great Britain’s King George of 1776 first tried to disarm the colonists, Hitler got the Jews to first register their firearms {ala today’s Bloomberg registration schemes}, the USSR and China have NEVER allowed their people arms, and on it goes. An ARMED legal inhabitant of a country is a CITIZEN!! DIS-armed you become a SUBJECT!!
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