My own first gun was a 20-gauge Remington pump, somewhat like this. I think you had to be 14, maybe 16, before you could have a gun in my state in those days. I got it for Christmas. Until then I was allowed to carry my father’s .22 rifle, which had been handed down to him from his father. And, of course, as boys, we had BB guns, and I got a hunting knife one birthday. Our hunting was mostly for quail in situations of close brush out in western Oklahoma. Very challenging. We also went goose hunting around the Great Salt Plains Lake in the northwestern part of the state, but no luck. The first time I got a quail, it was with the .22. We had spotted one on the ground in the brush ahead, and the men decided I should take a shot at it to stir up the covey. I got him, centered just above the breasts. In those days, none of our guns had scopes. Normally, we did not know there were quail until the covey took off all of a sudden practically beneath your feet. We learned meticulous gun safety from the beginning, the right methods for crossing a fence, never let your barrel come in the direction of another human being, and always be sure there is no shell or cartridge in the chamber when the hunt is over. (Related good advice would be that if you clean a quail for the women to make supper, you be damn sure you find and dig out every little shot. If your jaw comes down on one at the dinner table, it’s going to be horrible.) We had a trap spring-device for hurling clay pigeons out at the farm of grandparents. One of our uncles had been in the Marines in Korea. When he said “pull” he did not even raise his shotgun to his shoulder, he just shot from the hip. He never missed. Eventually, Grandpa got fed up with all those pieces of clay pigeon out in the field, and that was the end of that. One uncle got a mechanical hand machine with which to load our own shotgun shells. We younger set would load shells (which was cheaper than buying them already loaded) upstairs in the farmhouse. There was nothing exact and no adult quality control, so now and then, we added a little extra powder for a little surprise.
My grandfather on my father’s side had always worn a sidearm pistol like in the Western movies, up until the '20’s I think, whenever he would go into town from the farm. It was a nice advance of civilization when you no longer needed to do that, for self-protection. I was speaking recently with a young man, an Objectivist, who lives at a ranch house in Mexico. In their vicinity there are shootings of people most every day. We are so much more fortunate here. He agrees.
Tad, sorry to hear you live under the puke-green skies of conspiracy theories. I do not. The sky is blue. The social conflicts are the on-and-on ignorance of many, the stupidities in collective-action situations, and incorrect values. And social conflicts, including wars, are not the greatest sources of human suffering and death anyway. Most everyone reading here today will die in bed and from a natural depletion of the body, not even from an accident.
On the spectacle mass-shootings (and other murder spectacles), I do not think they will stop in the lifetime of anyone here. More guns or less guns won’t make a significant difference. The evil in some human beings is there, reliably so, animosity towards humans by losers is there, as ever, the firearms are all around and will continue to be, and the example of such hateful, sick attention-getting begun so many years ago now from the tower at the University of Texas, Austin is refreshed and refreshed.
Necro, whether anyone actually buys it all the way, the selfishness of self-defense is a logical implication of a morality whose only standard of value is unselfishness. Then too, as Rand also noted, a purer unselfishness would be to defer to the convictions of others in all things, including what are the correct moral standards.