So the raving lunatic can no longer teach classes but he’s still armed.

*sigh*  Looks like I got out just in time when I left 20 years ago.  Always was a strong batshit crazy theocratic element in Okie land, but the lunatics are now officially running the asylum.

Amazing.

Not the hatred, the fact that the guy was fired and they were offered make-up classes.

The hatred is just nauseating.

Oh noes, Wolf is yet another victim of liberal fascism! This proves that Obama is a Leninist. Or something.

So the raving lunatic can no longer teach classes but he’s still armed.

Yeah, there’s a cheery thought, eh? Hope the FBI is keeping an eye on him.

Dipshit’s just afraid that a liberal might actually have a gun. Given the behavior of conservatives lately, maybe he should be.

Isn’t there some sort of psych eval required to have a gun permit in Oklahoma?

Ahhh, who am I kidding?

Libertarian -

You’d think so, wouldn’t you?  But if there’s one thing that defines the conservative mindset in this country, it’s siege mentality: us vs. them, and any response to “them” that isn’t hostile - ostracization or punishment - is showing weakness before The Enemy.  Wolf is a fairly extreme example (though not the most extreme by a long shot - Adkisson and McVeigh have that honor), but still a predictable and logical result of that philosophy.

“I would think you’d want to encourage (especially) young people to get involved in those activities so they would be more likely to agree with conservatives and Repubs on, at least, this issue.”

I saw the same attitude a year ago when my husband was ordering a gun from a local shop/range.  One of the clerks was crabbing about a girl who was currently on the range.  He wondered what she, being left-leaning and all, was “even doing here.”  It’s like “The concept of coalition-building is completely lost on you, isn’t it?”

You know, all of these conservatives who run around claiming they’re going to be able to win a civil war because liberals don’t know how to use guns are going to be awfully surprised if they actually try to do it.  Your politics have nothing to do with your ability to shoot.

Though if I remember my hunter’s safety course correctly, we spent a lot more time discussing hypothermia than actually shooting.  Maybe that’s an Illinois thing.

Yeah… considering that last time I was in rural Oklahoma, I kept seeing billboards saying things like “Team (truck) drivers needed: Jesus & YOU,” I’m with Caren on being a little bit surprised that they addressed the problem so easily. I’ve met some great people from Oklahoma but there’s a lot of it that’s very rural, very conservative, very fundamental Christian, and very suspicious of anyone who isn’t all those things.

And no, people with the kind of mindset of the guy in the story aren’t big on coalition-building.  They just want to assimilate you, borg-like into their ideology but they don’t want to be “tainted” by yours It can become very much a siege mentality.

There are some areas and plenty of people there who are much more sane but there are unfortunately plenty of people like this in OK too, from what I’ve seen.

Don’t we have a conscience (of a conservative) law on the books to protect brave patriots like Wolf from being forced to violate their sacred beliefs when performing a civic duty?  The Constitution is being shredded before our eyes, folks.  Pretty soon Osama Bin Laden will be able to vote in our elections while walking through town shooting god fearing defenseless Americans with his newly acquired fully licensed firearms, while true patriots are left defenseless.

Kell Wolf stepped over the line, and he was slapped down for it.  Good.  That was the right conclusion in view of such doltish behavior.  I’m also glad that the father and son who were discriminated against got taken care of so quickly and courteously by the state and were not made to suffer the irrationality of a lone nutjob.

See, liberals?  There’s no VRWC that’s holding you down.  Examples of occasional idiots are not representative of the entire Republican party, or conservative ideology in general.

-A

“Pretty soon Osama Bin Laden will be able to vote in our elections while walking through town…”

I lol’d.

Examples of occasional idiots are not representative of the entire Republican party, or conservative ideology in general.

Why not? If a very few extremists can be representative of the entire Islamic religion, then why can’t your racist nazi skinheads be representative of the entire conservative ideology? Seems completely fair to me.

See, liberals?  There’s no VRWC that’s holding you down.

That thing you just read?  You didn’t read it.  Those events?  They were apologized and rectified for, ergo they did not happen.  These are not the ‘droids you’re looking for.  Move along.

I think this particular Oklahoma fool has forgotten all too soon who the last people to bomb them were affiliated with.

Hint: they were NOT Muslims.

They really aren’t over it. One reason: Fox News won’t let them forget. We were eating lunch in the local pizza hut (no, I really don’t know why) yesterday, and Fox news was on the the flatscreens dotted all around the room. At some point they took a break from the current-events liberal-bashing for a “special report”: an hour’s retrospective on the McCain Campaign and how wonderful John was and what a great time the reporters had covering him. What the?

That’s just pathetic. Reminds me of the same inbred dolts who believe the South will soon “rise again” 150 years after the Civil War ended.

Examples of occasional idiots are not representative of the entire Republican party, or conservative ideology in general.

That’s what I tell myself, every time I see one of Atanarjuat’s comments.

“Hunting and firearm use and rights”

Of course when one does examine the subject of the rights they realize that the rights must be sensible and regulated. Machine guns aren’t something to be owned willy nilly and honestly a collector would be willing to go through hoops hence the collection part meaning you have to put effort into it.

The NRA is against sensible gun regulation and wants to protect the illegal gun sellers because if criminals dont’ get 90% of their guns from the 1% of bad gun dealers then well the 99% of the honest gun dealers won’t get as many sales from scared people.

preying mantis’s story makes me think:  So I really want to learn how to shoot.  Have for a while.  I’m all liberal and pro-gun-control, but a gun is a tool I don’t know how to use, and I just want to learn how to use it.  Kind of the same way as I enjoy learning to use various power tools.  I’m curious, and it seems like an interesting skill to learn that might be useful in some situations.

I’ve always worried that I’d catch hell from the other people in a shooting course because I’m a liberal.  Is it really necessary to buy into an entire ideology just to learn a skill?

I’ve always worried that I’d catch hell from the other people in a shooting course because I’m a liberal.  Is it really necessary to buy into an entire ideology just to learn a skill?

I’ve never done a shooting course, nor have I even held a gun before. However, I can’t imagine that your political ideology would be much of a problem in getting a shooting lessons. I’d tend to see the incident in this post as a pretty unusual one. If you’re afraid, you could easily just keep mum about your beliefs while taking the class. I’d go for it and take the class if I were you.

Snow, I really doubt you need to worry about it.  I’m a big gay liberal and I do know how to fire a gun.  I’ve been to many shooting ranges and no one has ever once asked me anything about my political ideology.  I never had to stifle anything, it’s really never come up.  As libertarian said, the prevailing “ideology” about guns in those places is about safety and responsible ownership.  People who don’t learn about their guns and how to handle them safely (as the people at a range are clearly doing), or stupidly wave guns around in anger, are viewed as “those idiots who ruin it for everybody.”

Snow: the same here.  I think target-shooting sounds fun, but it seems like whenever I see a target-range here in Virginia it has lots of Confederate flags and such about.  The one time I went into a gun place to ask about lessons they were also selling lots of “I hate Liberals”-type bumper stickers.

“Though if I remember my hunter’s safety course correctly, we spent a lot more time discussing hypothermia than actually shooting.  Maybe that’s an Illinois thing.”

When I took hunter’s safety, which you have to in Michigan to hunt deer at 14, it was mostly about not shooting anything you didn’t mean to shoot. Apparently things are different in Oklahoma.

Our instructor did the thing that I’d guess they all do, where he messes with the shotgun, holds it for 15 minutes while talking about other stuff, and then blasts off a blank round into the ceiling. (Stained the ceiling tile at the sportsman’s club, too) To drive home the lesson that you have to treat any gun like it’s loaded.

-A, that’s a little like death-penalty advocates taking examples of innocent men sprung from Death Row as evidence that “the system works.”

Idiots in the Republican Party and conservative ideology in general are far from “occasional.”

Hmm…. the government steps in and reinstitutes the rights to a liberal that some conservative took away arbitrarily, sounds like Liberal Fascism again.

Bitter Scribe, I meant the incident seemed to be unusual among shooting instructors, not unusual among Republicans or conservatives.

Woodrowfan; a shooting range with “Lots of Confederate Flags” sounds like they’re making the perfect use of ‘em! Oh, that wasn’t what you meant?
Pity.

Actually, atheist, my comment was to Atanarjuat, not you. I was just too lazy to cut and paste his/her name.

To drive home the lesson that you have to treat any gun like it’s loaded.

That reminds me of this video.

Best. Gun Safety lesson. Ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am-Qdx6vky0

“I’ve always worried that I’d catch hell from the other people in a shooting course because I’m a liberal.  Is it really necessary to buy into an entire ideology just to learn a skill?”

If it’s something you’re interested in, you should at least give it a go.  Unless you live in a very low-population area, there’ll almost certainly be other ranges/instructors if the first one gives you a bad vibe.  There are instructional series on the internet that can give you the basics (gun safety, parts of the gun, proper stance and grip, basic targeting).  Airsoft replicas were recommended by the last instructor I saw.  For real-thing instruction, ranges and organizations that cater specifically to sport and competition shooting tend to be more hobby-oriented than crazypants-oriented.  Beyond that, guns are loud.  It’s not an activity conducive to chitchat; once you’ve got plugs in, muffs on, and another shooter on the range, communication is generally limited to only what’s necessary.  And if you’re paying for instruction, the topic ideally shouldn’t be straying too far from brass tacks on your dime.

We were stuck listening to a clerk be an asshole about politics because we were placing an order for a gun.  The paperwork is pretty involved, at the time the basic background-check was while-you-wait, etc., so we were tied to the desk near a chatty clerk and a knot of chummy regulars who clearly viewed this as a social gathering in addition to a place of business.  It wasn’t terribly unlike what you occasionally run into in comic shops or other niche hobby places.  If I went back to the same place today, assuming they weren’t busy, I’d be on the range within a minute of walking in without exchanging more than a few sentences with the clerk on duty if I wasn’t interested in socializing.

I see two possibilities: one is for leftists interested in arming themselves to go in twos and threes to gun shops and shooting ranges to train and practice.  Wear your Obama buttons and Free Mumia T-shirts.  Bring, as Mark Temporis seems to imply, paper Confederate flags to shoot up.  Be visible, visibly armed liberals.  This will serve the dual purpose of breaking down stereotypes and serving notice that they’d better not try any of that civil warfare shit they’ve been fantasizing about.

The other option is to start our own gun clubs, maybe even our own militia units.  Oregon People’s Militia, anyone?  Red Army…?

Gun control proponents are doing everything they can to increase the cost of ammunition, close down gun ranges, and make buying a gun all but completely impossible essentially making firearms instruction prohibitively expensive for all but the most wealthy and impossible for some people.

How are they doing these things?

The only opposition I’ve ever heard of to gun ranges was from NIMBYs, who seem to come from all political persuasions, creeds and colors.

Maybe Gerald can share some examples I haven’t heard of.

“One of the more well known examples is the push for microstamped ammunition”

Which has been bought and paid for by the patent-holders of that technology to guarantee that they make bank off an idea that nobody in the free market wanted.  It’s not a gun-control issue any more than Abramoff’s casino-oriented corruption shenanigans were a gambling issue.

I saw the same attitude a year ago when my husband was ordering a gun from a local shop/range.  One of the clerks was crabbing about a girl who was currently on the range.  He wondered what she, being left-leaning and all, was “even doing here.”

My liberal, gun-loving husband would have responded, “Well, my guess is she is learning how to protect herself from nuts like you.”  The escalating level of bat-shit crazy from the Right has my husband looking into buying something with more firepower.