Weekly Politics Thread

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[u/[deleted]]

Copied and pasted this because I feel like it's worth restating. Last week was great but our community needs to start pushing hard with this momentum and settling for scraps won't cut it.

1) Being happy with pre 2020 conditions, or preserving the status quo in all aspects needs to stop. Firearms needs to be seen as a right, or at least so prevalent in Canadian culture that it can't be used as a scapegoat. It's only a matter of time until C21 2.0 arrives.

2) Sports shooting, sporting rifle, etc is language that needs to be avoided. It creates a low ceiling and shaky ground for gun owners to argue in and around. Haybinger949 said it best:

"Yeah, imagine being actively targeted and vilified by almost every federal political party and media agency for the better part of 50 years and thinking your best defense is to willingly categorize yourself as no different than something as superfluous as someone who collects matchbox cars or plays frisbee golf".

Point is, it looks ridiculous when all we do is say "loog at us :DDD"

3) Overall, gun owners need to shift the culture from a hobby / casual past time to a lifestyle and everything else that comes with it.

E: I forgot to add but continuing down the sports shooting narrative will eventually paywall us and make gun culture here exclusive to rich old people similar to how it is in some euro countries. I think we're already seeing it with the NDP being pro-handgun ban except for "high level" sports shooting and ultimately pro-AR15 ban.

[u/Rook_Defence → u/[deleted]]

I don't look at it that way. Maybe you can clarify for me what you mean by "lifestyle and all that comes with it" but at present I really don't see the advantage to the culture shift you're describing.

Making gun culture exclusive to rich elites is obviously bad. Making gun culture exclusive to people who are committed to making it the central part of their lives is also bad. I would be over the moon for there to be an extra million new gun owners in Canada even if they only had a 10/22. That's a million new skeptics, a million more voices, and a million examples of how gun owners are trustworthy.

If gun ownership has to be less casual than it is now, then by definition, it will be less popular than it is now. The smaller the gun owning population gets, the easier it is to dismiss, ostracize, and demonize.

Hobbysit gun owners can still write letters, leave comments, introduce new people to shooting, and most importantly, demonstrate to their friends and family that it is totally boring and normal to own a gun. If someone says "man, those gun nuts are all a bunch of psychos. Only a sicko would ever want to own a gun" the people they're talking to think of the casual gun owner they know, not about the most recent deranged lunatic they heard about across the border.

In summary, I think you're underestimating the value of having casual, accessible elements of the gun community.

[u/[deleted] → u/Rook_Defence]

I can't quote properly on phone

1) the hobbyist / sports shooting aspect to gun ownership seems to be the ceiling for most of us. As in there can't and shouldn't be more to it than shooting recreationally. I'm arguing there needs to be greater significance to gun ownership that extends past paper punching and hunting otherwise

a) we see a threepeat of OIC, handgun freeze and C21 semi auto ban again

b) never gaining ground, only reclaiming

2) agreed. My entire point is there's more on the line than just sports shooting

3) depends on how you look at it. I've said it before but fluffing up numbers with a million people who bail at the slightest inconvenience... not worth a lot. Generalizing obviously but I hope you see my point

4) yep

There's nothing wrong with casual aspects of gun ownership. This entire thing ranging from bench shooting to hunting to larping with nods. all of it should be considered casual. My argument is that it feels as though we're stuck on bench shooting and hunting because people are either afraid of or look down on* the third and final part, which is what I don't understand.