Having One Foot Inside Gun Culture and One Foot Outside It Memeified

Yesterday I answered a friend’s question about being a gun owner and voting for candidates from the political party in America that seeks to restrict the right to keep and bear arms.

This is part of what I called “The Agony of Liberal Gun Ownership” in my keynote address to the Liberal Gun Club National Meeting. (Note: LGC Executive Director has since pointed me to a blog post he wrote 10 years ago on “Unicorns” that included a link to a post in the Pacific Standard about “The Agony of the Liberal Gun Lover” — so I have reinvented the wheel!)

A major point of that address is one I make also in Gun Curious: I have one foot clearly inside gun culture and one foot outside it. I am “betwixt and between” the liberal world and the gun world. I am neither here nor there. This is Liminality 101.

I felt that liminality acutely when I returned from the Liberal Gun Club National Meeting to find the November issue of Shooting Illustrated in my mail stack.

The liberal repulsion I immediately felt seeing the NRA’s endorsement of Donald Trump, Virginia Foxx, and Mark Robinson on the cover of the magazine was paired with the gun-owner attraction I felt seeing a very generous and positive review of my book Gun Curious on the inside.

Though I always try to address guns in a fair and nuanced way, I realize that sometimes it is easier just to create a meme.