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07/30/2006 Archived Entry: "Gun nuts are all the same"

GUN NUTS REALLY ARE ALL THE SAME. Blogispondent Ian here, and of course I use the phrase "gun nut" in the best possible sense.

Have you ever really watched what happens when two gun nuts meet? One (let's call him A) will usually have some interesting firearm that the other (who we'll call B) hasn't handled, but has heard of or seen somewhere. So B will politely but enthusiastically ask A to have a look at the piece. And then A, being a gun nut, will say something along the lines of "Sure - in fact, would you like to shoot it? We can use my range down the street" or "You bet, and let's take it apart as well, so you can see how it works". There's no hesitation or anything, and A is as eager to explain the gun in question as B is to see it.

What I've noticed, though, is that this basic interaction happens exactly the same way regardless of any factors besides both A and B recognizing each other as fellow gun nuts.

It doesn't matter if the two nuts are of totally different ages, occupations, social or economic status, or anything. This enthusiastic sharing (sometimes to the extend of A thrusting guns into the hands of B) is just automatic once it's understood that both people are fellow gun nuts.

For example, consider my experiences in the hierarchy of gun-nut-ism. My tanker M1 is a rather unusual rifle, and I love it when a new shooter at the range asks me about it. They'll almost always end up shooting it themselves. Now, I have had the privilege of visiting a fellow who has a substantial collection of legal machine guns. More than once while looking at his collection, I made some comment along the lines of "hey, is that a PPSh-41?", and he would respond by pulling a $15,000 submachinegun off the wall and handing it to me, a kind of grungy-looking broke college kid. Well, I was talking to that guy not too long ago (we've become friends since that first meeting), and he was telling me about a trip he took that included visiting another fellow who has a multi-million dollar collection of antique flintlock and wheellock pistols made for royalty and aristocracy. And you know what my machine gun friend described? Exactly the same thing! He would look at something and ask to open it's case to take a photo, and the owner would hand him this $100,000 engraved gold pistol owned by the Grand Earl of Outer Moldova or somewhere, and tell him to go ahead and disassemble it to get detailed pictures of all the parts. The owner simply didn't think about the value of the gun, because hey - another gun nut was interested in it!

It just goes to show that gun nuts really are some of the coolest people around.

Posted by Ian @ 06:35 PM CST
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