{"id":2091,"date":"2013-01-08T10:51:37","date_gmt":"2013-01-08T14:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=2091"},"modified":"2013-01-08T10:51:37","modified_gmt":"2013-01-08T14:51:37","slug":"understanding-the-culture-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/understanding-the-culture-war\/","title":{"rendered":"UNDERSTANDING THE \u201cCULTURE WAR\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Make no mistake: the \u201cwar\u201d over gun control is very much a culture war. Those who come in without an agenda and study it impartially as professionals \u2013 Adam Winkler in \u201cGun Fight,\u201d for example, and Paul Barrett in that part of his book \u201cGlock: the Rise of America\u2019s Gun<\/a>\u201d \u2013 \u00a0get that.<\/p>\n

So does Dan Baum, whose new book \u201cGun Guys: A Road Trip<\/a>\u201d is now out from Alfred A. Knopf, publishers. A self-described liberal Democrat, Baum researched the issue on both sides, a welcome but rare approach to this most polarized debate.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At a time when politicians and the media seek to restrict the rights, and tax and even confiscate the legally-owned property of responsible, law-abiding citizens following an atrocity committed by a single madman, Baum has a finger accurately placed on the pulse of the \u201cgun culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baum writes that \u201c\u2026a friend who is a neo-natal nurse in California, told me that her state legislature had ordered locked away emergency drugs that had always been readily to hand. Worried that an addict might get ahold of them, the legislature imposed a complicated process nurses must go through to get access \u2013 a process my friend argued might cost a baby\u2019s life. \u2018We\u2019re nurses!\u2019 she cried. \u2018We\u2019re responsible professionals! We know how to take care of our medications!\u2019 Again, substitute a word or two and she might have been any ordinary gun guy \u2013 who is certain that his <\/i>guns will never be a public-safety problem \u2013 railing against laws that restrict and infantilize everybody because a tiny percentage of miscreants might <\/i>do something ugly. Which isn\u2019t much different, when you think about it, than racial profiling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baum even gets the rationale of the so-called \u201chigh capacity magazine\u201d for the law-abiding armed citizen. After being \u201ckilled\u201d in a high-tech PRISM gunfight simulation when he quickly ran out of ammunition with his snub-nosed .38 revolver, Baum bought himself a sixteen-shot Glock 19 9mm pistol.<\/p>\n

After a year or so of experimentally \u201ccarrying,\u201d Baum chose to give up wearing a concealed handgun daily. \u201cI don\u2019t plan to let my carry permit lapse,\u201d he writes. \u201cAnd I plan to continue taking my carry guns to the range from time to time. Carrying a gun is a skill and a privilege I value, even if I don\u2019t exercise it daily.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dan Baum \u201cgets it.\u201d\u00a0 More people need to look at it as objectively and analytically as he did. Buy a copy of his book and pass it around.\u00a0 It might help other people to \u201cget it,\u201d too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Make no mistake: the \u201cwar\u201d over gun control is very much a culture war. Those who come in without an agenda and study it impartially as professionals \u2013 Adam Winkler in \u201cGun Fight,\u201d for example, and Paul Barrett in that part of his book \u201cGlock: the Rise of America\u2019s Gun\u201d \u2013 \u00a0get that. So does […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reviews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}