3 ms·

From my reading, it sounds like the author was more in love with the idea of guns than guns themselves.

• smacktoward 14y ago
  Or with how guns could be used as props around which she could construct a new self-image for herself: I fell in love with guns from the first shot. It’s hard to explain what it was that did it... That I, a historically scrawny, weak nerd who’d been the prey to all sorts of danger, could now be the danger... Guns seemed the pinnacle of virility, and the ultimate way for me to be a badass woman—a tough girl in a man’s world, just a hair shy of being an actual man. (Which, in her defense, is the same thing a lot of male gun owners get out of them. They're not shooting because they love shooting, they're shooting because they love the image of themselves that holding a gun plants in their head.)
  • commandar 14y ago
    And that's one of the great problems with the entire debate from both sides; the mythology of the gun often overshadows the utility of the gun. From the gun control side, there's often a fundamental misunderstanding of the operation of firearms which breeds emotional fear rather than intellectual caution. On the gun rights side, there's often a romanticism about the firearm that's just as emotional and absent the view of cold rationality.