What Do Guns Mean to You?
Kevin Felts 10.17.17
What emotions do you attach to firearms? Your emotions help determine what an object means to you.
What brought this topic up? Someone decided to talk about firearms on a flashlight review I posted on YouTube: Flashlight Review: Wowtac A3.
The comment was,
I think that we can all agree that guns represent violence and death , and crime, hate, racism , guns oppress and plague our country and world.
My reply was,
Laura, I understand your viewpoints, honestly I do. It would be a wonderful if humanity could move past violence. But guns are just objects and represent nothing more than what a person thinks of them. Objects have different meanings, depending who you ask. While you think “guns represent violence and death, and crime, hate , racism,” I see guns as representing freedom and protection.
Even some minorities see firearms as a necessity for self-protection. There is an article on Vice about a subject leftist gun-grabbers ignore, which is gun ownership among minorities.
From Vice: The Leftist Argument Against Gun Control.
“As a black leftist male from and in the south who’s a gun owner, I find the conversations on gun control in liberal and left circles oftentimes deeply ill-informed,”
Jones explained. “I’ll be frank, I’m not comfortable with giving the state (the US proper)—which was founded on, by, and sustained through genocide, slavery, and theft—a total monopoly on violence.
I feel the statement from Vice reflects deeply upon the statements posted on my YouTube video.
On one hand, you have someone saying firearms “represent violence and death, and crime, hate, racism.”
On the other hand, you have groups of people who have historically been victims of racism and hate saying they want to keep their guns.
Opinion
Firearms do not represent crime, hate, nor racism. They represent individual liberties and freedom.
I live in a rural area where it could take the Sheriff department at least 20 to 30 minutes to respond to a call. What are my family and I supposed to do during that long wait?
What am I supposed to do when something is in the chicken house killing my chickens?
When a coyote is standing at the edge of my brother’s field looking at his goats, does he call animal control? No, he grabs his rifle and shoots the coyote.
So, the question is, what do firearms mean to you?
