Whipped Cream Difficulties

(Quote attributed to Voltaire.)

A while back, there was a meme going around the gun blogs, asking “Why do you carry?” Answers to that generally fell into a couple of categories: “to protect myself/my family”, “because I can”, “because f–k you, that’s why”.

A kind of related question that I haven’t seen talked about is “why do you own guns in the first place?” Many of the answers are the same: self defense, because we don’t like people telling us what we can and can’t do, and so on. But one answer I haven’t really seen people talk much about is “history”.

Since I got back from the S&W Collector’s Association convention in Boise, I’ve been thinking about history and guns, both together and separate. There were a lot of intersections in Boise with areas of my own personal history, and there are some other things are just simply curious or interesting.

I believe an argument can be made that weapons are actually one of the cheapest ways to establish a connection to history for the common man. You can collect cars, for example, but it takes a millionaire’s pocket to collect anything historically significant. If you’re lucky, you might see a vintage warbird at an air show two or three times a year, but good luck touching one, let alone sitting in the cockpit. And flying one, again, requires a millionaire’s budget.

But I think there’s more going on than just the money element.

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