How I became a gun nut

How?  I didn't.  It's not nuts to have a handful of firearms.  But I am out of blog fodder right now, so I might as well mine Jennifer's meme.

I became a history enthusiast in elementary school, reading library books about WWII, watching war movies on channel 20.  That transferred over to an appreciation of surplus firearms.

I remember thinking the Nazis and Hitler were pretty cool back then.  Snazzy uniforms.  They were just 'the bad guys' that the US fought.  But I knew that we were the 'bad guys' to the Germans.  And heck, my family emigrated from Germany in the 19th C, so I thought that in some parallel universe I'd have hailed from the part of the world.   It took a few years before I fathomed the evil behind all the neato military equipment, and why the madness that threw the world into that war was to be absolutely abhorred, root and branch.  Live and learn, emphasis on the learn.  Silly 4th grader.  Amazing was the tolerance extended by my teachers.  Nowadays kids are getting expelled for showing an interest in combat and drawing guns.

As for later in life, the interest in history served me well.  If I wasn't going to hack it as an Aeronautical Engineer designing the replacement for the F-15, I could at least get a degree doing something I had a hobby in already.

History leads to political awareness.  And the realization that tyrannical systems I learned to eschew in elementary school could take different, incremental, deviously insinuating, forms.  Widespread ownership of firearms was a thumb in the eye to such encroachments.  It's not the only way to struggle for liberty, but it is a good way.  And it's a personal duty that I ascribe to and encourage in others.

So I have a handful of firearms and some spares.  Some heirlooms and some firearms of historical interest.  How is that nutty?

Plus, shooting is fun.  And I have a buddy who is also a so-called gun nut that could show me the ropes when it came time to actually SHOOT stuff.  And familiarize me with various types so I could decide what I wanted for myself.

[Update:  About the only 'Gun Nut' thing about me is the fact I've started a gun blog and posted nigh daily for 4 years.  Mainly about what it's like to go from an absolute neophyte to a gunnie-beginner.]