I think a lot of this also ties into one of the biggest overarching problems we have in our society: extremely low trust. Like I know there are responsible gun owners out there who absolutely despise the loot crated up fetishists who would otherwise be recognizable as high-functioning addicts.

But it’s hard to easily and quickly clock whether someone is the latter or the former, especially not in person.

Also, the people who are reasonable and responsible tend not to be the ones you hear talking about guns. There are plenty of people I knew for years before I found out they owned a gun, while the most obviously irresponsible people I know talk about them all the time. It skews people's perspectives.

I gotta be honest, buying a gun is basically like buying a T-shirt that says 'low trust high disagreeableness' and the rest of your demeanor has to balance that out

It really does! You really ought to go out of your way to project “safe, calm, completely sane person you don’t have to worry about” if you’re a firearms owner and so many people obviously don’t.

this ends up in conflict with the vague air of unhingedness that accompanies all my other endeavors and this is also a reason i don't do stuff with guns much

Yeah unhinged motorcycle jockey with long guns is definitely a type.

i get RSO level autistic about firearm safety because i know way too much about how they work (misspent youth full of delusions if arms design culminating in learning some calculus explicitly in order to be able to understand 6dof external ballistics models) and i feel like that's against type

I’m also extremely over the top about firearm safety because that’s how my dad taught me to be and he was very explicit about the reasons why it’s imperative to handle them respectfully and responsibly.

Someone hands me a weapon and it doesn’t matter if I literally saw them pull back the slide, check the safety, etc. I’m immediately doing it too and I don’t care if that makes me look weird.

It’s really humility, is what it is. You’re handling a machine that can end a life faster than your brain can process the thought and you have an obligation to treat that machine accordingly.

Likewise.

especially when both lootcrates and people who are just really serious about competition shooting have a lot of gear overlap

I've been thinking lately about how bad guns carcinating once ARs and Glocks got cheap was for the culture

i enjoy target shooting but damn if that didn't push me hard away from going to ranges

It's like if a Ferrari cost as much as a Corolla and so every time you went outside there were Ferrari's spun out into every ditch

That’s the most amazing analogy of the problem.

I'm pronouncing that like a Greek name btw

Lootkrahtees.