02 Apr 2016

Wanna Bet?

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Hamilton Nolan
Gawker’s Firearms Editor Hamilton Nolan

Millennial Hamilton Nolan advises us geezers to give up on carrying. We’re all too old and too infirm, he contends, to draw, aim, and fire with any hope of success.

We live in scary times: sharia law, foreigners, and rape gangs haunt the streets of this once great nation. Some old people believe that they must arm themselves in order to find peace and safety.

Wrong. Old people. Wrong. Want to find safety? Can you even “find [the] safety” on the handgun you’ve purchased? Probably not very quickly, with your poor eyesight and fingers ravaged by arthritis.

The Wall Street Journal reports that interest in guns among retirees is booming. In just the last five years, more old people are buying guns, training with guns, and cupping their hands over their ears to try to hear whether the instructor at their gun safety course said “Shoot” or “Stop.” In this day and age when you have Obama, ISIS, and Chief Keef, you—an elderly American—are thinking seriously about getting yourself a gun, for protection.

Might as well get yourself a dragon, or a unicorn trained to be your bodyguard. That would help you just as much.

When you’re old you’re slow as hell and decades of muscle erosion have made you weak. Pretty much any healthy young person can beat you up. Is a gun gonna even things out? Nope. In order for that gun to work you have to pull it out and aim it in a moment of crisis. While you’re fumbling to do that, all slow, a young person is just pushing you on the ground. And taking your gun out of your feeble hands.

Leave the guns to the young nuts, oldie.

Smoothly drawing a gun from a holster, aiming it quickly, and firing it accurately despite the kickback require a level of strength and dexterity that you just don’t have. I’ll lay 5-1 odds that any street criminal can kick you in the knee and chuckle as you roll around on the ground, grasping for the gun you dropped, as they rifle through your purse and then steal your gun, too. That gun you bought will end up in a pawn shop before you ever get to blow a hole in one of these disrespectful young menaces. Were you to somehow squeeze off a shot in the course of being attacked it’s as likely as not that you’d shoot yourself in the knee replacement as shoot the bad guy. It’s time to wake up and realize that though your irrational age-induced fear of the outside world may be here to stay, so is your physical inability to defend yourself. And where are you going anyhow that’s so scary? The grocery? Those teens may be delinquents but they probably aren’t a stickup gang. Please return that Beretta to the nice gun dealer before you mistake a stray rap lyric for a death threat and put a bullet in some poor C student cutting class. Yes, yes, Have Gun Will Travel was one of your favorite shows, but you’re no Paladin and there ain’t any bandits on horseback in your subdivision. Stop watching cable news so much. All it does is scare you. Failing to take your medication is the greatest threat you need to worry about now.

Your reflexes are faded as hell so you might as well just learn to get along with people. Who do you think you are, Charles Bronson? More like Charles Osgood. Stop acting crazy.

I was at Woodstock and am definitely getting on in years, but I would bet little Hamilton that if he tossed a bottle in the air, I could still draw and hit it before it came back down, and then still have more than adequate strength and dexterity left over to hammer him into the ground like a tent peg before he could push me to the ground or kick me in the knee.

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7 Feedbacks on "Wanna Bet?"

Dan Kurt

Old picture of Mr. Peepers (Wally Cox) sans specs? If not note both gingers.

Dan Kurt



LibertyorWhat??!!

Firearms editor? Pfft. This snowflake wouldn’t recognize a firearm if he was having carnal relations with one, which come to think of it probably would get him excited. He should read more news stories of WWII vets, with and without firearms, handling home invaders and muggers.



Cactusjack

Don’t go betting your life on that ,young Hamilton .



John The River

“Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time”.

Start wondering why that old fart is still in the fight; pity, mercy and hesitation were burned out of him a long time ago. Now he’s just adding to his honor guard in Valhalla.



JKB

It’s sad. He has no concept of how a firearm is used in self defense. Nor has he the education to give it any critical thought.

First off, you don’t pull a gun when someone can touch you. You back off a couple steps before you draw. And if you draw, the threat should be very, very near to imminent and the second it goes imminent, you discharge your weapon to stop the threat.

Secondly, if they push me down, lean over menacingly to take my wallet, or perhaps rape me since I carry my wallet in my front pants pocket. I fear for my life and the first hint they have that I am armed is the pain of a small piece of high energy lead tearing through something they consider vital.

And, quite frankly, the value of a carry gun is that one carries oneself with the confidence you can stop threats that may arise. This generally causes the threats to move to easier prey. Faking it works, but there is always that one who might not get the signal or is just plain evil on the prod.



Figbash

Firearms.
The Great Equalizer.



T. Shaw

What is Gawker?

I carry a big-assed knife, a six-inch, five-eighth inch length of steel pipe (think judo stick) and I always know who and what (cover) is anywhere close to me, because NYSSR won’t allow me to carry a M1911.



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