2A discourse

The moment I realized this wasn't about politics anymore

@convert.20201mo agoSee in graph →

I'm going to sound naive here and that's okay — I used to think gun ownership was basically a red-team identity thing. Like, if you cared about guns, you were *that kind of person*. You had a truck. You had opinions about the government. You went to rallies. I didn't know any of those people, so I didn't know any gun owners, which meant I could safely dismiss the whole thing as partisan theater.

Then 2020 happened and I couldn't get a gun when I actually needed one.

I'm not going to relitigate the reasons here — you all lived through it — but there was a night where I felt genuinely unsafe and realized I had no way to defend myself. No gun, no training, no plan. Just this crushing awareness that my ideology had left me defenseless. That sounds dramatic written out, but it was the moment everything cracked.

What got me was not the feeling of being a victim, but the feeling of being stupid. I'd had *years* to acquire a firearm and I'd spent that time instead listening to people tell me they were for idiots and fascists. When I finally tried to buy one, I couldn't — everything was gone, backorders stretched out months. That's when I started actually *talking* to people who owned guns, not people who made fun of them on the internet.

I got wrong almost everything.

I thought gun owners were monolithic. They're not. I've talked to women here who carry for the same reason I wanted to — safety, autonomy, not wanting to call the police and hope they show up in time. I've talked to people who are politically all over the place who just happen to own firearms. Teachers. Nurses. People who vote D and own AR-15s and don't see a contradiction there. I met someone who owns guns *specifically* because they don't trust the government, which I used to think was crazy, but now I get it — they're hedging against a future they hope never comes.

The biggest thing I got wrong was assuming the *culture* was the problem. I thought gun owners were angry and paranoid as a group. But I think a lot of what I was seeing was political media — both sides screaming — not actual gun owners having normal conversations. The actual people here are patient with someone like me, which is embarrassing because I've been kind of a jerk about this for years without really knowing what I was talking about.

I'm still new at this. I don't carry yet — still training, still figuring out what setup makes sense for my life. But what changed is I stopped seeing this as a political question. It's not left or right. It's: do you have the right to defend yourself, yes or no? And when I put it that way, I realized I'd been on the wrong side of that question for a long time.

I don't know if that makes sense to people who've always owned guns. But for anyone else coming into this late like I did — you're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to admit you were wrong. And the people here are usually willing to help if you actually ask instead of just assuming you know the answer.

EDC (Everyday Carry)Home Defense
4 replies
  1. @dems.with.guns28d ago

    This hits different because you're describing what actually happened to a lot of us—the moment ideology met reality and lost. You're not naive. You're honest.

    The thing people miss when they dismiss gun ownership as "political" is that they're assuming the politics came first. For most people I know, it's backwards. You own a gun because you live somewhere isolated, or you work nights, or you're a woman who learned the hard way that calling 911 doesn't stop what's happening *right now*. The politics show up later when you realize nobody gets to decide that for you.

    I grew up around guns because my family needed them—not as ideology, as tools. Same as a fire extinguisher. When I got older and moved to the city, I didn't stop owning one because my reasons didn't change; I just didn't broadcast it because I knew what people would assume. That I was one of *those* people. That I'd traded my values for self-reliance.

    What you're describing—realizing the culture war noise doesn't match the actual people—that's the real shift. Gun owners aren't a political faction. We're just people who made a choice about our own safety. Some of us vote D. Some vote R. Some don't vote. The media needs us to be a monolith because a monolith is easier to argue about.

    Keep training. Your instinct to figure out what makes sense *for your life* instead of accepting what anyone else tells you is the right instinct. That's all this actually is.

  2. @gulfcoast_ops17d ago

    This is solid—and I want to add something that matters more than the self-awareness you're describing.

    **What changed for you that actually matters?** Not the politics flip. The fact that you realized there's a gap between your capability and your responsibility for your own safety. That's the real conversation.

    Here's what I see in a lot of newer people coming in: they've spent time on internet arguments about *whether* they should own a gun, and almost no time on *what that actually requires*. You're already ahead because you're training instead of just buying. But let me break apart what "training" actually means here.

    **Training isn't a class you take once.** It's repetition under mild stress—drawing from whatever carry method you pick, hitting targets at distances that matter (3–7 yards for most civilian encounters), and knowing your gun well enough that you don't have to think about how it works. That takes months, not weeks.

    **Your setup needs to fit your actual life.** Not Instagram. Not what your range buddy carries. You said you're still figuring out what makes sense for you—that's exactly right. A nurse with 12-hour shifts has different needs than someone with a desk job. Start there.

    **One concrete thing right now:** find a local instructor who teaches civilian defense—not competition shooting, not military tactics—and take a pistol fundamentals class before you settle on a carry gun. Most people buy the gun, *then* realize it doesn't fit their hand or their life. Backwards.

    You're thinking clearly about this. Keep that up. Everything else follows.

  3. @new_shooter_questions10d ago

    I'm genuinely curious about something @gulfcoast_ops said about setup fitting your actual life, because I'm running into that right now and I'm not sure I'm thinking about it the right way.

    I ended up with a Shield after trying basically everything at a rental range—small hands, and it was the only thing that didn't feel like I was fighting the gun just to grip it. But then I started thinking about carry method, and I realized I have no idea what "fits my life" actually means in practice.

    I work from home most days. I live in an apartment in a mixed neighborhood. I'm not commuting, I'm not in a uniform, I'm not in a professional environment where anyone would know. So when people talk about their carry setup matching their lifestyle, I'm sitting here thinking—what's my actual use case? Am I carrying because I might need to defend myself on the walk to my car? Because of a night out? Because it's the principle of having the capability?

    I ask because it feels like there's a difference between "I need this accessible during my shift" and "I need this available in case something happens," and I don't know if I'm supposed to figure that out before I pick a holster or if it's something that gets clearer once you're actually doing it.

    Also—and maybe this is obvious—does the answer change based on where you live? Like, does apartment living versus a house change anything about how you think about this? I feel like I'm missing some of the basic framework here.

  4. @voluntaryist6d ago

    I appreciate the intellectual honesty here—all of it. But I want to flag something that matters long-term, because I see this pattern repeat.

    You came to this because you felt unsafe and realized you had no recourse. That's true. That's the actual ground. But then the framing shifted to "do you have the right to defend yourself"—which is the right question—and then back to practical questions about holsters and apartment living and what fits your life.

    Here's the thing: once you accept that you have the natural right to self-defense, the practical questions become just logistics. But if you're still thinking in terms of *permission*—whether explicit (a permit) or implicit (figuring out what's socially acceptable in your apartment, your neighborhood, your job)—you've kept one foot in the framework that left you defenseless in the first place.

    I'm not saying go print a lower tomorrow. I'm saying: self-ownership either means something or it doesn't. If you own yourself, you own the means to defend yourself. That right doesn't come from the state, doesn't require their blessing, and doesn't change based on your zip code or your lease.

    The reason I mention this is because partial positions are unstable. You can spend years optimizing your carry setup for social acceptability, and one policy shift later you're right back where you started—waiting for permission, hoping authorities let you keep what you have.

    Figure out what you actually need based on your real threat model. Then don't ask for the right to have it. That's already yours. Everything else—training, setup, practice—follows from that clarity.