Texas Pride – A Rebuttal
Texas has roughly a million citizens licensed to carry a firearm and Lord knows how many more regular gun owners. Maligning an entire culture of millions over one afternoon with a few is as arrogant as it is inaccurate.
Earlier this month a visitor from Germany went to the Pasadena Gun Show and attempted to vilify all Texas gun owners with her evaluation of her experience.
You can find her thoughts here: German visitor looks for secret to Texas pride at Pasadena gun show
I took offense to that.
She, with zero self-awareness, laments that patrons of the event shied away from her after mentioning she was a journalist.
“I already know what your story is going to be like,” one visitor said. “The media never reports about the cases where people's lives are being saved because of the use of guns.”
Accurate.
While she was looking for reasons to be angry and offended, complete strangers were digging and searching for ways to connect with her.
But when I told this man that I was a reporter from Germany, his mood changed: “Germany —that’s where Texas barbecue is from,” he said. “Did You know?”
Polite, friendly and also accurate.
She follows with this judgmental haughtiness:
I didn’t want to short-circuit our newly established connection by telling him that I am a German vegetarian.
Finally, she goes on to try to portray Texans as fearful xenophobes.
El Paso had not changed their minds. Guns are not evil, they would tell me; they alone cannot do harm. “America doesn’t have a problem with guns; it has a problem with people,” one dealer stressed.
Also, accurate.
The problem is that she went into this situation with a clear expectation of what would happen and she wouldn’t leave without.
Texas gun culture and Texas pride has nothing to do with fear. It has everything to do with self-preservation and self-reliance. We value independence and hard work and we don’t want a government treating us like subjects. We appreciate freedom, and we don’t like being told what to eat, what to do, or what we can or cannot own. Her fear of assault weapons was clear from the beginning and it exposed her entire outlook and unwillingness to accept another culture or way of life. Instead of recognizing that, she chose the immature route and attempted to vilify those who took the time to meet with her, exactly what the first person she quoted said she would do.
When I first heard about the shooting in El Paso, I thought what a lot of gun-owning Texans though.
“I wish someone with a gun was there to kill that guy.”
This is often dismissed by the left as a “hero fantasy,” but the fact of the matter is guns are used every single day in this country to prevent crimes and save lives.
A few days later it came out that a heroic citizen, Chris Grant, took action during the shooting “while trying to stop the gunman by throwing bottles.”
Throwing bottles.
He was attempting to save lives. Heroic. Facing a gunman with an AK, he was trying to save lives. Just imagine if he had a gun. Imagine, instead of taking the time to throw bottles and get shot, imagine he had been carrying a Glock 19 on him like I do almost daily.
Instead of throwing bottles he could have shot a few 115gr 9mm hollowpoints back at the shooter and actually stopped him. Instead he was shot multiple times. This is in no way meant to disrespect the man. His actions were undoubtedly heroic. I truly wish she had a better experience dealing with Texas gun culture than the Pasadena Gun Show, which I admittedly have never gone to, but if she was going to judge Texas pride I wish she would have experienced something like Houston’s Hurricane Harvey recovery instead of preemptively making up her mind.