Most people have heard about paranoid, fundamentalist, my-home-is-my-castle militant people. You know, the type that lives on a farm and stockpiles food and ammunition. Some of them are insane anarchists, some are just afraid of the government or Y2K, and some are actually cult members. Some of them are just individual families, and some are entire groups. But there aren’t very many of them, and they’re pretty crazy. They shouldn’t be hard to recognize. They’re certainly not something that most people should have to worry about.
Right?
Right?
Wrong.
Now, I live in the Midwest. I have talked to a few number of people from the coasts who seem to think that the Midwest is full of crazy, gun-toting idiots, but I can assure you that this is not the case. Sure, people here are a bit more conservative than elsewhere (well, much more in some areas..), but are generally quite sane and reasonable. Or so I thought…
Earlier today, I was conversing with some friends. They’re quite typical evangelicalish Christians – pretty much par for the sort. I had thought that the oldest daughter of one family was even rather feminist leaning – in any other family she would certainly have been an activist type. And all of them are intelligent, not bigoted, not obsessed with silly obsolete church rules. Fairly reasonable people, I had thought.
During the course of the conversation, she (the daughter) was telling a funny story, and casually mentioned that they were carrying pistols at the time. I thought that this seemed odd, and asked, if they were hunting at the time. She responded that they always carried pistols – it was part of their ‘family security’.
I was rather… taken aback, to say the least. It wasn’t just her family, either. On asking more questions, the situation became clear: It seems that after 9/11, a large number of otherwise normal conservative families became scared for their safety. Rather than cowering in fear and voting for Bush, they bought guns for every person, and started acting like insane anarchist militants (And they still voted for Bush, too…)
They call it ‘tactical living’, I believe. This ‘tactical living’ includes training every member of the family to use a pistol, running an endless variety of emergency drills, creating protocols for every situation to ensure security, and generally assuming that people are always trying to kill them, and making sure that they shoot them first.
Sooner or later, someone’s going to get shot. And it won’t be a terrorist.
Now, I’m actually in favor of private ownership of weapons (with limitations, of course), but these people are utterly insane. The strangest part, though, is that they are not like the stereotype of insane militants. They’re just ordinary families who have reacted to the post 9/11 world by arming themselves. It’s not just an isolated case, either – it’s a growing movement, according to my friend.
I don’t really have an overall point to this – don’t trespass, I suppose – but mostly I was just surprised and shocked at all of these people, who are so prepared to kill for whatever reason.
An Aside:
They all just love Sarah Palin. I suspect that her penchant for hunting is the overriding consideration. The aforementioned daughter, particularly, has a rather obvious repressed-lesbian crush on her. It’s quite frightening, really.