Tom Matlack talks to Cam Edwards from NRA News on Sirius/XM Radio.
I really don’t want to like guns. I was raised in a pacifist household—we protested the Vietnam War and worshiped Ghandi. So why do I find war so gripping? My dad, who was a leader in the American Friends Service Committee for many years, is also a Civil War buff. He read us Michael Shaara’s Killer Angels (the fictional account of the battle of Gettysburg) out loud. When I was old enough I re-read it, studying the infantry maps of Little Round Top, where Colonel Chamberlain and the 20th Maine changed the course of American history.
As part of the Good Men Project I have become close to Michael Kamber, war photographer for The New York Times. We often exchange emails; while I’m sitting in my suburban Brookline home, he’s getting shot at in some god-awful war zone in Iraq or Afghanistan. He tells me that there is a time to use guns. The wars may be foolhardy and the press reports scripted by the military, but the men on the front lines have a job to do and no choice but to do it to the best of their ability.
And then there are my neighbors, who are wealthy and conservative. Several take a doomsday, riots-in-the-streets approach to the future. They are interested in stockpiling gold, having a secure food source, and making sure they have plenty of guns. (One neighbor emailed me a cartoon in which a guy is pounding a sign into his front lawn that reads, “I have a whole arsenal of guns but that guy has squat,” with an arrow pointing next door.)
I went with that same neighbor and a friend to a home in suburban Boston, where an old man led us into the basement of his townhouse, closed the door, and produced the largest array of handguns I have ever seen in my life. For a full day, he taught us everything we need to know about handling, cleaning, shooting, and buying every conceivable type of gun. Then he gave us the test that would allow us to carry a concealed weapon. I passed with flying colors.
The truth is that holding a handgun, I felt good. Damn good. I don’t like to admit it. But that’s the truth. And that’s how I ended up on the nationwide NRA talk show talking about manhood and guns.
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—Photo by mikejmartelli/Flickr
wellokaythen.
Probably broke a number of laws, too. Automatic weapons are strictly regulated. Tough to get a license for one. Never been a gun crime attributed to a legal automatic weapon owner.
I know they got a couple of legal carrying guys for DUI once, but no unjustified shootings.
Jeff. If you protect your family with, say, a knife, can you do it without being called for excessive attention to faux masculinity? Or is the idea of protecting the family in the first place that is the problem?
Congratulations to anyone who has purchased an automatic weapon. You have joined the proud ranks of people that now include 10 year old boys in Somalia and 12 year old girls in Burma.
I support the strictest “original intent” interpretation of the Second Amendment possible: you have the right to own any firearm available in 1789, when the Constitution was finally ratified. If you want to go hog-wild and own a single-shot muzzle-loading smooth-bore musket, I say no one should stop you. It’s a lot harder to go postal and shoot up your workplace when you can’t fire faster than once every thrity seconds. I say if you’re a “real man,” you have to stand still, get your hands dirty and load the powder, shot, and wadding yourself, EVERY time you squeeze the… Read more »
What a fascinating interview. (As an aside: The fact that it’s called “Patriot Radio” but is an NRA radio show, is hi-larious. Don’t love guns?–Then you’re not a patriot!) I love the part where the interviewer (is he really the interviewer if he talks more than the guest?) notes that he never owned a gun until he got married and had kids, getting a gun “for personal protection and to protect the ones he loved”, and then goes on to say he doesn’t think it has anything to do with masculinity, as if the whole “MUST PROTECT FAMILY WITH GUN”… Read more »