Celebrate Diversity

Caught this piece over at American Mercenary and it got me thinking, particularly this portion.

"Other cultures that "celebrate freedom" are really nothing more than groups that celebrate homogeneity, from motorcycle clubs to drum circles, it is the same BS from everyone in the group. Not so with gunnies. We have gays, goths, The Queen of Snark, an Engineer who hosts Boomershoot for fun, Active/Reserve/Retired Military, Moms, college kids, Ph.D's, Mensa members, machinists, artists, political activists, preppers, threepers, pacifists (yup, Ghandi was one of us), we are truly "diverse" and connected only by our mutual desire for the freedom to be left alone to do what we want to do."

"Messianic Stoners" was missing from the list, but I'll take it in the spirit it was intended.

It is a sociological truism that closed groups tend towards homogeneity over a long enough timeline-look at how punk rock splintered into a thousand tiny identity factions from sXe vegan hardcore to east coast splattercore. Self identification as part of a larger whole can be empowering but it is also the most subtle of traps because you are surrounded by people that are just like you right down to choice of music and dress.

So am I a gunnie? There are plenty of gunnies that would say no. I'm short on guns-I only have one pistol, one rifle and one shotgun, with a smattering of tactical nylon. I flout the law on a daily basis-not just 3 felonies a day bullshit, but laws that people actually get killed for. I have a low opinion of "traditional" (i.e. government sanctioned) marriage and have a lot of deviant sex with multiple partners that would make conservative pundits tuck their testicles back up in their bodies and swear off the Vile Internetz. A lot of these things are not popular on the gunblogging circuit. Yet I have never gotten anything but respect from my fellow gunbloggers.

An armed society is a polite society, perhaps? But that isn't the case really; gun owners get all butthurt about the minutae of their hobby in every gun forum, as any argument over the best charging handle on an AR will demonstrate. We aren't really obliged to "back up his words with his life" on the internetz; no matter how much the market is dying for an iphone app to castrate people through the internet, you remain safe no matter what nonsense or venom you spew online. No one ignores my unpleasant characteristics because they are afraid I'm going to fill them full of 7.62x39s. They do so because these are people who genuinely want to be left the fuck alone and are willing to extend me the same courtesy.

Now for the big question-how far have we fallen as a civillization that this behavior is a novel concept?