Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns From: [m c clary] at [netcom.com] (Michael McClary) Subject: Re: anti-to-pro conversion Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1993 10:28:49 GMT In article <[1993 Aug 9 194822 24274] at [mdd.comm.mot.com]> [b--o--h] at [mdd.comm.mot.com] (Greg Booth) writes: >"If you used to be 'anti-gun' or didn't care, what happened >that made you become a 'pro-gun' person?" I don't know if I really qualify, having never been anti-gun, but I'll tell you how I got to be strongly pro-. I was on the leading edge of the Baby Boom, and thus was attending a university during the Vietnam Non-War. The particular university was the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. You may not hear much about it these days, but Ann Arbor was then known as "The Berkeley of the Midwest", and both the SDS and the Weathermen were founded at the UofM. (It is rumored that the reason ARPANet bypassed the Ann Arbor and its several pioneering timesharing services was fear that politicos would break in and sabotage it. The midwestern anti-war movement was NOT just flowers-down-the-gun-barrel.) I had grown up with enough exposure to firearms to be aware of their properties (including how much fun they were). I had discovered in Boy Scouts that I was a "natural" with projectile launchers (both rifle and Bow-and-Arrow). As an adolescent techie I was as interested in the workings of firearms as in other internal-combustion engines. I also had enough exposure to American History to understand the meaning of the Second Amendment, and considered being armed not merely a right, but a duty. My reading of history and the constitution also convinced me that the Vietnam action was a clearly unconstitutional usurpation of the Senate's warmaking power, and that the draft (as practiced in those days) had been unconstitutional at least since the passage of the 13th amendment. (The constitution does provide for compelling service-at-arms in some situations, but enslaving a generation to fight an undeclared foreign war didn't qualify. "If they have to fight the war with slaves, the fight for freedom isn't in Vietnam - it's back here at home.") In Michigan in those days, the age of majority was 21. I was looking forward to my first purchase of a pistol. I came of age in '68 (Just after the riots - the year of the infamous federal Gun Control Act and the the Chicago Democratic Convention.) At the time I held a "Secret" clearance and was working my way through college by doing classified research. I was also active in non-violent, law-abiding (though not pacifist) political movements opposing the draft and (to a somewhat lesser extent) the Vietnam action, and I wore my hair "long as I can grow it". This brought me to the attention of local law enforcement. I had a Browning .22 target/field pistol picked out. You can imagine my chagrin when I filled out the forms on my 21st birthday (for what was supposed to be an instant-action paperwork formality), and got a runaround lasting over a YEAR, including fingerprinting by the Washtenaw County Sheriff (only required for CCW) and a late-night visit from Ann Arbor's chief of detectives to my off-campus rented room! Or when, a couple years later, my application for an FFL was denied (allegedly because of local zoning laws - something that, in those days, wasn't normally within the BATF's sphere of interest). Things like that really made history come alive for me. I had had some ideas for improvements in gun design that I wanted to try out. After the Permit-To-Purchase and FFL debacles, I didn't even bother trying for the newly-necessary "manufacturer's" license. I dropped my remaining interest (and all but the required classes) in mechanical engineering, materials, and the like, concentrating on my other loves: electrical engineering, and the fledgling "computer science". Meanwhile, I finally got my little .22 target pistol. Some time later it was stolen by a landlord. After moving I got another one. Some time later it was stolen by a burglar (who I later discovered had been systematically working his way down the street for weeks - and the police had known it.) The burglar was so pleased with this windfall that he went right out, stuck up a convenience store, and got caught. The detective etched his initials and the date into the side of the gun, and it sat in an evidence locker (uncleaned - fortunately the inside of the barrel was chrome-lined) for over a year while the burglar's opportunity for appeal timed out. Well, a year is a long time to wait, so I decided to get serious about gun acquisition, starting with a basic working set: serious pistol, bolt-action rifle, semi-auto rifle, and shotgun - for personal protection, deer, bird, and small game hunting. (I'd hold off on target pistol until I got the Browning back, and skip target rifle for the time being.) I bought a Walther PPKS (the PPK I really wanted having been banned from import in '68), an Enfield, and a Savage Riot Pump 12 guage. A bit later I bought an FN semi-auto. The Walther was new, the rest used. Each was purchased when a good deal on a quality gun showed up. (This set, by the way, shows how ludicrous it is to try to categorize guns as personal/sporting vs. police/military. - The PP and PPK were designed for police open-carry and detective concealed-carry respectively. The PPK was acknowledged as one of the finest pocket-pistols ever made, and was standard police issue throughout much of Europe. The GCA '68 banned it as a "saturday-night special", and Walther came up with the PPKS (Pistol Police Small (Kline) "Special") by slightly lengthening the barrel and enlarging the grip, until it just passed the size tests. I used it for my home defense pistol, because the safety design made it about the safest slide-action pistol to leave loaded. - The Enfield was British Army issue at the start of WW II. A deadly "bolt-action assault rifle" with a 30-degree throw, it can be fired more rapidly than most full-autos, but has a small magazine capacity. Its reasonably light weight, decent accuracy (mine had been selected for sniper service), solid construction, and powerful round (.303 British) made it a fine deer rifle in the 2/3s of Michigan where a rifle can be used. - The Savage was designed as a squad-car and riot gun. 12-guage, no choke, 5-shot, about as short as you can get and be legal. When the voters realized that even small-town police departments had already bought riot tanks and stockpiled enough arms, gas, and Mace to fight a war, they stopped approving millage increases. The manufacturer dumped his surplus, and I got mine for half-list at a motorcycle dealer. The magazine could easily be plugged to a 3-shot limit. No choke made it a little short-range for birds but ideal for deer hunting in the lower third of the state where hunting with rifles wasn't allowed, while the short barrel kept it from hanging up on branches. (It was also ideal for an apartment-defense gun, when loaded with light birdshot that would lose most of its energy passing through two layers of drywall.) - The FN was surplus from the army of Argentina, dumped when they switched (along with NATO) to the B.A.R. Semi-auto, short (it would have been an "assault rifle" if it were full-auto), sturdy (though a bit heavy), fixed-magazine, chambered for 7mm Mauser (another powerful round comparable to .303 British - standard before NATO figured out that war works better if you wound rather than kill), it was an even better deer rifle, letting me retire the Enfield to target shooting. They'd all have been fine militia weapons as well, of course. (>I< would be prepared to do my patriotic duty even if the government had preferred to use its own standing and part-time armies for the last hundred and fifty years. B-) )) Well, in addition to being a long hair and engaging in political activity, my starving-student budget left me living in a cheap apartment one block from the red-light district and three from the police station, and driving a beat up (rust-colored with blue spots) V8-powered heap that went through mufflers like peanuts, while my preferences left me active mostly after dark, when the load on the computers was minimal. This meant that when I drove around town I got stopped by the cops a LOT. Until one day there was a knock on the door... It was Sargent (now Captain) Winter - the detective who had taken the report when my puny target pistol had been stolen, along with another detective and a couple uniformed officers. Seems the occupant of the apartment across-and-down the hall had been passing bad checks, and he wanted to use my entryway for a stakeout and ambush. (He ribbed me mightily for flushing the toilet before opening the door, describing how they intercepted the sewer lines when staging a pot raid. I grinned, imagining a cop in the sewer with a screen-bucket filling up with feces instead of controlled substances.) I invited him in, and I showed him my gun collection. Sniper rifle. Riot shotgun. Detective pistol (better quality than his). Handed it to him. "Be careful, it's loaded." (He almost dropped it on his foot. That was before I'd had any NRA training. B-) ) "Did you just get these?" "No, I've had them for about a year now." Had a nice talk. What each one was good for. The history and purpose of the second amendment. Jefferson, Paine, Franklin and all that. Reassured him I wasn't planning to hold a revolution right away, snipe at passing cops, commuters, or commies, or otherwise fire on anybody that wasn't breaking into my house without properly identifying himself first. Hinted that I might feel quite righteous if I happend to blow away somebody who neglected that detail. Talked about my job doing classified research and programming computers at all hours of the night. Talked about how working on weapons reasearch and protesting the draft were part of a consistent idea system, not some kind of schizophrenia. Did my flat-out damndest to sound like a good-old-boy. You know: "Support your Government and your Local Police, as long as they stay in line - but you gotta watch 'em. They might turn out to be revnooers or tyrants, after all..." B-) Basic idea is the same as Mutual Assured Destruction: You have to look like you JUST MIGHT be crazy enough to push the button, but only if molested - amiable otherwise and sane enough to make a LOT of trouble if they try the nuthouse route. (Kennedy, Goldwater, and Regan did this very well - though Goldwater did it a bit too soon. Johnson couldn't, which is one reason Vietnam was such a debacle. Nixon tried, but nobody believed him about ANYthing. B-) ) (Another now-notorious NetDenizen was there as well, and I won't attempt to describe what SHE was doing to make them feel uncomfortable.) Winter decided that my hallway didn't have a good enough view, and we parted with handshakes all around. Funny thing - the random police stops of my beat-up old car just quit right after that. Most of those guns are gone now. You can get burgled a lot in twenty years, even after you move out of the student ghetto, and the third crook after that (shortly before my move to California) got stupid and took the long guns. Turned out to be a blessing in disguise: The insurance adjuster understood gun values, and it saved me from having to find out-of-state storage for the FN when Roberti and Roos got their law through. The beat-up old car is gone as well. "Upwardly-mobile-professional" might have been coined to describe my career. These days I could afford to shoot full-auto with factory ammo. I paid for the "sporty car" from one of my checking accounts - and could have bought a few more. But, given this history, you can see why I won't be giving up my RKBA and trusting the nice guys in the government to serve and protect me. -- = = = = = = = = = = When guns are outlawed, Dianne Feinstein will still have guns. = = = = = = = = = = Michael McClary [m c clary] at [netcom.com] For faster response, address electronic mail to: [m--h--l] at [node.com]