Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
Maybe because this has been a slow burn I never noticed it. And there were always the fringe out there who hated the government. The guy who refused to pay income tax because he felt the founding fathers were against it, or the group that went off into the woods and declared themselves an independent nation, but it did not seem to have this same general appeal.
My memories may also be defective... but my memory of the late 70s is that the gun world was overwhelmingly focused on hunting and the outdoors; with competitive and recreational target shooting also in the mix. Accuracy and ease of handling were what people looked for in a firearm. I spent way too many hours on ranges, shooting and listening to the talk, never held or fired an AR or AK or similar... I don't recall ever seeing one. Lots of modified Springfields and Garands around but those were the only weapons of military pedigree you'd see around. Home defense was of course discussed, with shotgun and handgun camps prominent, and some of politically fringe characters would occasionally speak darkly of the imminent need to defend against the Commie sympathizers and their darker skinned allies if the Guvvermint failed to do its duty. Why these nefarious groups would march out of their urban haunts and head straight for our little rural enclave was never quite explained, but it was never something too many people took seriously..

I don't recall ever hearing anyone speak, or reading anything written, about the possibility of having to fight the government, and I think any talk of having to use armed force against the police would have been smacked down very quickly.

I think you're right that there have always been people around who disliked government, even hated it, but I don't think there were so many people then who feared it. That may be because government is more fearful today... but is there really any special reason for that to be so? I recall not long ago seeing photos of rows of retired MRAPs stored in a lot in the southwest being circulated as evidence of imminent government intent to declare martial law and seize absolute power. That sort of paranoia seems to me relatively new, though of course that's a very subjective observation.

I don't think people are buying AR or AK type weapons (or whatever we want to call them) with the intent to secede, revolt, or commit mass shootings... but the same qualities Carl cites as making these weapons highly suitable for defensive use even by relative non-experts also makes them equally suitable for aggressive use by relative non-experts. Given the recurrence of mass shootings and the kind of rhetoric we've discussed here... that's bound to make some people nervous. What the solution to that is, I really don't know. I'm not sure there is a really good one, and there sure isn't one that's going to make everyone happy.