“It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”
Many will immediately recognize that famous line from comedian George Carlin.
He was generally criticizing the perversion of the American Dream co-opted by a devolved, three-tier society that subjugates average citizens beneath the influence and power of politicians and wealthy elites.
It’s something the Second Amendment community recognizes and fights tooth and nail against daily, citing things like:
- gun control laws that exempt law enforcement
- politicians who ban firearms but retain a retinue of armed, private security
- arbitrary laws disarming the law-abiding in public while armed criminals terrorize
Yet, many in the 2A community are COMPLETELY BLIND to their hypocrisy when they do the exact same thing to outsiders or newcomers.
I was struck by this inherent double standard when, over the weekend, a small mob of fudds openly criticized a woman who posted her shooting targets up on social media after a range session.
The derogatory comments were rude, harsh, and unwarranted. And many of them came from people whose accounts showed they were involved in the shooting sports or supporters of gun rights. Some even came from those who identified themselves as veterans and Christians.
(To be fair, larger influencers in the 2A community came to the defense of this woman, encouraging her for her effort to train, receive professional instruction, and reprimanding the naysayers.)
In a rather ironic twist, the woman who was the subject of so much ridicule and criticism happens to be the Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon. She also happens to be the head of the newly-launched Second Amendment Section, devoted to protecting and restoring gun rights.
While Ms. Dhillon’s public statements in support of her boss, Pam Bondi, have sometimes drawn criticism – even from us – the Second Amendment Section is the ONLY division of the DOJ that has a 100% perfect score on the ACTIONS it has taken related to 2A rights – something we have tracked extensively and exhaustively.
Putting aside Ms. Dhillon’s occupation, the response this weekend specifically from the 2A community is just one more notch in a worn belt representing a pattern of exclusivity from the gun owner community that MUST change.
Consider the second, less repeated part of Carlin’s famous line:
By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy.
Gun owners are notorious for wielding this club, and I speak as someone who is a firearms instructor, 2A advocate, and has spent a lot of time around mixed groups at ranges.
Many male gun owners specifically tell women what they “should” buy, rather than encouraging them to try out different products and see what fits – like we do with everything else.
We talk down to them, rather than listen to their experiences and concerns.
We assume their lack of capability rather than see their potential.
And we do it to men, too:
- “You’re only a man if you own a 1911.”
- “XYZ brand is just a plastic toy gun.”
- “Rack that shotgun slide to scare off intruders.”
- “Carrying one in the chamber is a good way to shoot your dick off.”
- “I don’t need to train; I grew up around guns.”
There’s an endless stream of lore, fudd drivel, false narratives, and “tribal wisdom” that isn’t rooted in anything other than ego.
This behavior is off-putting and exclusionary and does nothing to promote the universal adoption of Second Amendment civil liberties, and we do it to ourselves – as if we need more resistance than what we already get from our anti-gun and anti-civil liberty opponents.
Ms. Dhillon is as tough as they come. You don’t rise up the ranks and get appointed to that level of responsibility without having thick skin. But the next woman (for that matter, new immigrant, reformed lefty, teenager, or cautious man) who ventures into exercising their rights may not be. Choose your words carefully, for as one book of wisdom states, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.”
