Light Over Heat #9: Guns Are Tools, But Not Just Tools

People in the gun culture often talk about guns as tools, and those outside gun culture reject the idea that guns are just another tool. As is often the case with guns, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

In Episode 9 of “Light Over Heat,” I argue that guns are indeed tools, but they are not just tools. They are tools that are by design dangerous.

As the smart guys at Open Source Defense say, this is a feature, not a bug. And as gun training old head Tom Givens puts it, “if they weren’t they wouldn’t be useful to us at all.”

Take a Newbie Shooting (Open Source Defense)

Yesterday I wrote about a new source of information about guns in America, written from a gun rights perspective, Open Source Defense.

One aspect of their work that I neglected to mention was the dedicated page on their website called “Take a Newbie Shooting.”

Screen cap of https://opensourcedefense.org/take-a-newbie-shooting/

What I’m Reading: Open Source Defense

Open Source Defense is an online platform (website/blog/digital newsletter) dedicated to defending gun rights by enlivening, enlightening, and enriching the discussion of guns — and gun culture itself — in the US.

I enjoy the materials they are producing, and recommend them to the gun curious, for a couple of reasons. First, regardless of your political position on guns, they are a good source of information about what a pro-gun position in the US looks like without the additional culture war rhetoric that plagued the now deceased NRATV. No smashing TVs with sledgehammers or burning newspapers here.

Screen cap of https://opensourcedefense.org/