Gun Culture Eccentricities

This was posted by the blog author on social media over the Holidays. 

The Gun Culture is a unique place.

It is one of very few cultures where the majority of the culture gladly announces their love for freedom, yet turns viciously on business within their culture for making a profit. Of course, the rallying cry is always “price gouging,” yet nobody is ever forced to pay one of these prices.

The gun culture joins the martial arts as two of the only cultures where you are not necessarily measured by your performance record. This indicates that the Dunning-Kruger effect is in full swing. So many in the gun culture proclaim proudly that “I know how to shoot!” And yet, they have no training. Worse yet, their only “training” may be a simple carry permit safety class. And even worse than that, their only “training” may have come directly or indirectly from Law Enforcement (shudder) or military (not terrible, but certainly nowhere near “all that”).

If something similar exists elsewhere, I simply haven’t seen it: people in the gun culture (just like in the martial arts) will make absurd claims about feats that are physically impossible. Shooting a 1-inch group at 100 yards with a pistol; shooting a 1-inch group at 500 yards with a military issue rifle and bulk ammo; etc.

Could you imagine a construction contractor claiming he can build a house by himself from scratch in an hour? Or a doctor making a claim that he performed 25 surgeries, each requiring 12 hours, in a single afternoon? Or a basketball player claiming to have scored over 500 points in a single game? Of course not.

Worse yet, could you imagine a person in any of these industries claiming expertise without having hundreds of hours of training, thousands more hours of practice, and without demonstrating just a bit of that skill? No, of course not. Surely there are a number of other eccentricities in the gun culture, but this is enough for now; and I need to stop calling you Shirley.