I love being from Texas and have only moved away when the Army made me and got back as soon as I could. We have great weather, good people, low taxes, amazing food and you can own all the guns you want. A place where when I'm shooting machine guns and the cops show up, after looking at the paperwork, the usual follow on question is "
can I shoot it?". However unfortunately we have many gun-owning clowns down here in addition to our wacky politicians.
Recently is
San Antonio a bunch of those clowns got together for another one of those stupid "let's walk around with our guns and make a big scene" rallies in San Antonio. Best of all the invited infamous crackpot Alex Jones to their little party.
Aside from mass shootings, I can't imagine anything else doing more damage to the image of gun owners in America. A bunch of people waving guns around in public, cheering for a crazy person, calling police "
tyrants with badges" and rambling about "
2nd Amendment solutions" doesn't endear us to the public at large.
If we want to win over supporters, it's not by confrontation and other counter-productive, emotional outbursts. Rather it's by acting like adults and being anything but the guy with the tin-foil hat or Founding Father costume and "Keep your government hands off my Medicare" sign.
Be a proud gunowner, but not a confrontational one. Know someone who doesn't like guns? Take them shooting and show them guns aren't evil. Doing so I've turned quite a few people from anti-gunners into people who at least understand why you'd want to own one.
Ranting and waving guns around may make you feel good and get attention, but it doesn't do us any favors as a group.