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[get the red out]

16. I've never gotten the "gun culture"

And all that it entails. I've lived my whole life in Kentucky and it's not much different from TN, so I certainly identify with Rick's OP.

I am not bothered by RESPONSIBLE hunters. My BIL likes Venison, and is a deer hunter. He and his kids (not my Sister, she's picky like me with food) eat what he kills. And if the deer overpopulated due to lack of enough natural predators then many would starve in the winter. A lot if duck hunters are the same way. They eat what they kill, and it their case get the joy of working with their retrievers and taking pride in that partnership with their dogs. There is a guy like that in the same dog agility class with me, he loves training his gorgeous Flatcoat at everything he can.

But the guys who have to have guns, just to have guns, and the bigger the better and look how tough I am! That attitude makes me very uncomfortable. That is generally a type of man that had an aura about him that made me uncomfortable for as long as I can remember. In my younger years I dated some real NON-prize winners, but NEVER was even close to getting close to someone who radiated that air. They have a hardness that puts me off. I think the NRA is all about that hardness, that patriarchal sneer and desire for control, at the end of a gun if necessary. I feel like that hardness is a part of the patriarchal control, which snares men as well as women. A man can't face his insecurities, but BY GAWD he can buy a gun and pretend they don't exist. Those are some bad rules for society.