Guns An Age-Old Part Of Family Culture In Appalachia
By Andre Teague/Bristol Herald Courier
Todd Sutherland of Gunslingers in Kingsport shows a selection of revolvers and semi-automatic handguns that are popular for home-defense and concealed-carry use.
The first thing Karla Schmutzler did after shooting her first deer was text message her friend, Todd Sutherland, who was in his Kingsport gun store with a customer at the time.
“I got hooked. Big time,” Schmutzler said. “You know, all the guys would go hunting, and it never really occurred to me to ask to go along. Because, you know, it’s a guy thing.”
But then she went with them.
In Appalachia, guns are an age-old part of family culture. “Down here, we’re mostly pro-gun. It’s part of who we are,” said Sutherland, who owns the Gunslingers store on East Stone Drive in Kingsport.
“There is nothing more fun than going to the range on a Saturday morning and plinking away with your kids,” he said. “It’s good clean fun.”
Bill Miller, a local National Rifle Association board member and gun club president, estimates that 85 percent of folks in Appalachia are in some way involved in a firearms sport. And, he said, Schmutzler represents the fastest-growing demographic: women.
By the handfuls, women are joining one of the oldest, richest and most cohesive communities in the region. “Women are saying, ‘We’re gonna take care of ourselves,’ ” Miller said.
In recent months, the thriving community of gun enthusiasts has been rattled by the election of President-elect Barack Obama and what it might mean for their favorite pastimes. Gun enthusiasts across the nation are stocking up on ammunition and guns, citing concerns about higher taxes and fearing future bans on some of their favorite weapons.
On the second full weekend after the election, more than 4,000 people attended a gun show at the Meadowview Conference Resort & Convention Center in Kingsport.
“We had an extremely large crowd compared to normal,” said Jeremy Pearson, manager of the RK gun show held Nov. 15-16. “It was the best one we’ve had here this year.”
And on Tuesday of that week, a group of old friends sat together in the clubhouse at the Kettlefoot Rod and Gun Club, sipping Styrofoam cups of coffee and exhaling laughter in toasty puffs of air. At the mention of Obama, one said: “Don’t even get me started.”
Perhaps most frustrating to local enthusiasts isn’t the upcoming threat, but that the frenzy is a mere symptom of the deep-seated frustration gun lovers have felt for decades of what they call a lack of understanding and prejudice from anti-gun camps.
“All through history, people have been afraid of what they don’t understand,” Sutherland said. “Taking guns away from us, all you effectively do is disarm honest people, because the criminal isn’t going to turn in his gun.”
At the Kettlefoot club, friends Wayne Wills and Terry Lovins, both lifelong members, talked about their club and the role it plays in their lives. Wills carried a manila envelope holding printouts of his favorite Thomas Jefferson quotes on the Second Amendment. He also brought National Security Council statistics that ranked hunting as one of the safest sports around.
“See, you’re more likely to get injured playing basketball,” he said.
Kettlefoot is the area’s largest gun club, stretching over 400 acres of wooded, mountain land in Washington County, Va. The club has about 800 members, 100 of whom have been there more than 20 years. The club boasts facilities for practically every avenue of the sport – a virtual playland for archers, hunters and competitive shooters, to name a few. Once a month, the club hosts a shooting event where families gather over warm meals and friendly competition.
“You come out here and you say, ‘I’m gonna shoot skeet today.’ And there’s four or five guys out there with you. One of them is a businessman, like me – we both run body shops,” Wills said. “And the other guy is a brain surgeon.
“Shooters are just people,” Wills said. “They’re just people with their hobby.”
At Sutherland’s Kingsport store, the owner is trying to keep up with increased business that has nearly tripled in recent weeks. He’s enjoying the profits, he said, but not the reason behind them.
“It’s good now, but it could hurt later,” he said.
“We’ve got regular guys who come in here often, and they don’t buy something every time,” Sutherland said. “It’s a community. They like coming here because they’re part of something. And everybody likes to feel a part of something. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Schmutzler and her husband took a hunting trip to Texas to celebrate their wedding anniversary this year. Not only does she enjoy the sport with her husband, but it’s a family affair. Between them, they have eight children – girls and boys – and all of them hunt, she said. All but one of their kids have grown up and moved away.
“We go with our teenage son, and we laugh at all the weird stuff the animals do,” she said. “Half the fun is just calling the animals and seeing them. It’s not just about shooting.”
Yet across the board, the overriding sentiment is not that a hobby is under attack, but what the hobby means to the people who love it. The Second Amendment is part of American heritage and freedom, many said. When folks attack guns, they attack a way of life.
“Every freedom we have today was won by someone who knew how to use a firearm,” Sutherland said. “The Second Amendment is the one that stands when all the others fail.”
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Reader Reactions
I note your obsession with serial killers. I observe them mostly to be the city bred psychotics Jung warned of, not the country hunters you despise..
Again you are full of unfounded assumptions about other people. You demand we justify ourselves to you but reject any questions about yourself and your philosophy that might allow an actual dialog. But you ask about the need to kill. That answer depends upon YOUR philosophy that you deem off limits. If you believe in God the Creator, the need to kill was imbedded in us at some point after the Fall. If you believe in Evolution, then we evolved as this planets super predator. Millions of years of evolution have programmed us to hunt as surely as any other predator. It is merely the natural order of things and to deny our nature would be mentally ill. Either way, we are meat eaters by design. (whether that design came from God or Evolution) You prefer that animals be raised in cages and killed by someone else so that you may deny your part in it. I prefer to let the animals enjoy their freedom and natural life and the honesty of doing my own killing. I fail to see how that makes you superior or entitles you to pass judgment.
Let me ask you another question dlyn,
Are you aware that you are “taking a life” when you pull that trigger.
How often does the Life end immediately when you do? Does you prey ever try to run for its life? Do you ever imagine that this other creature can actually feel pain?
Or is it like shooting a cardboard cutout? You cannot empathize with any other creature but yourself. That my squirrely friend is what I meant when I said that every serial killer ever know, started the same way.
They had no empathy to the pain and suffering of animals and killed them as a source of amusement. What does a trophy hunter do? Take a wild guess.
You leave me with no option but to think that you fall in that same category because you haven’t given me one good reason why any creature deserves to suffer and die.
At the moment you have the rifle pointed at somethings head or heart, what are you thinking? “My buddies are gonna think I am so cool because I have killed this big animal” Or do you think “This living, breathing, thinking, feeling creature is about to have its life ended and it is all from the effort of pulling a trigger”.
Does it matter how intelligent this creature is? What species it is? Or if it is loved or if it gives love to any other creature in the world?
I am not sure how many questions I have asked you throughout this conversation, but do you think you can actually answer one without saying, “hey what about You?“ If you look deep into that question, doesn’t that give you the answer to everything? It certainly tells me a lot about you.
I am sorry if I seem aggressive, I admit I started this conversation that way, the only way get through to someone who lives by violence is through violence. A wife beater will only understand if you kick the snot out of him.
I admit I did not expect to be debating with anyone with any intelligence. And ya, I do now one or two hunters that are not completely brain dead. Just please help me understand your need to kill. That is all I ask.
LOL Again with the assumptions ! Never said I ate it. Just provided a recipe from those who do. There are no groundhogs where I live. But you would never believe what I HAVE eaten. Groundhog would be tame and people do eat it. I am sorry your kin waste good meat that way. Like Nugent, I eat what I kill.
And now you actually think you are going to lead me to believe you eat ground hog. Do you even know what it looks like cooked? It is black as coal, and has stark white blobs of fat hanging off everywhere.
If nothing else, I gotta say you sure can dance.
There we have your problem. You Assume. You should know that the vast majority of people in the medical profession are not Doctors. But your assumption led you to error. In the same way you assume that hunting is about love of killing. This led you to the error of demanding (as if one could demand over the internet) that I focus on defending the love of killing that you imagine I have. In idle time I was browsing some of Jungs remarks You might find some of these relevant. And below that I have included a groundhog recipe for you to try.
Carl Jung
I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.
If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.
Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.
Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.
1 groundhog, cleaned, skinned, head removed
1 tablespoon salt
1 large onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
5 large carrots, peeled and cut in slices
3 potatoes, peeled and cut up as desired
Salt and freshly milled pepper to taste
METHOD
Cut groundhog (or ‘Coon) into pieces. Place in a large pot. Cover with water, add 1 tablespoon salt and bring to a boil. Reduce to hard simmer and simmer for 1 hour.
Remove meat from water. Place pieces in a large roasting pan (or tear the meat from the bones and cook just the meat) along with 2 cups of the water in which the beast was cooked. Cook for 40 minutes.
Add onion, carrot and potatoes. Season with salt and pepper to taste, cover and bake another 20 minutes or until vegetables are done.
Remove vegetables to a platter, and leave meat in the pan. There should be some liquid in pan with meat. If not, add some of the original cooking water to make about 3/4 cup. Bring quickly to a boil on top of the stove, adjust seasonings and thicken with a little flour dissolved in water. Remove to platter with vegetables and serve hot.
Serves 4 - 6 people.
dlyn454
“And actually I work in the medical profession healing people”
“As I am in between patients for a moment, let me elaborate”
I suppose you were trying to insinuate that you are a shoe salesman? Considering the information you gave me, was that the profession I should have assumed?
“You clearly believe that inflicting harm on animals other than for physical need is sinful.“
You actually got something right here. Of course you are right in assuming I wouldn’t say “Sin” because when religion is introduced into an argument, right and wrong has no place.
Cars do kill animals that is true, I seem to notice many more just before the season begins when there are a bunch of dolts roaming the hillsides looking for hunting sites, and animals trying to run and hide end up in roadways much more often.
Lets make one thing clear, the act of hunting for food has never been any issue. It is what every carnivorous creature does anywhere in the world. Humans are no different.
Here is the line that anyone with a brain stem should be able to understand. When an animal is hunted and killed merely for the “Fun” of killing it, it becomes the “Sin” or “Crime” or whatever label that has the definition of “WRONG”
It is why Michael Vic is now banner from the NFL, his action were of a human that used the pain and suffering of animals for his amusement. There is absolute proof and there is no shortage of that. The majority of hunters in the forest are there simply for the pleasure of murdering an animal.
Vic was convicted of a crime that would have been laughed at and thrown out of court just a few years ago, but as anyone can see, the vicious nature of the crime has now become apparent. The same evidence that was used to convict Vic is quite obvious in the case of most hunters.
How many “hunters” out there, love to shoot ground hogs for fun and laughs? Then how many of you would ever consider eating one? Thus the pleasure of causing pain and taking lives is the only benefit to this activity.
You’re gonna have to dig a heck of a lot harder to prove these facts wrong, or to give them any justification what-so-ever.
Again, I would really appreciate your focus to be on your love of taking lives, rather than trying to point fingers at me for taking notice of your cruel nature.
Thank You
As I am in between patients for a moment, let me elaborate. You clearly believe that inflicting harm on animals other than for physical need is sinful. You would not use that word, you would say Wrong. We question the grounds for this assertion, and how far you carry it. More animals die by car than by bullet. Is ALL your driving Needful ? Are all the modern conveniences you enjoy at the expense of nature Needful. Where is the line drawn ? Do you feel the pain of those animals left homeless and hungry for cropland to grow your veggies? Do you recognize that there are psychological Needs just as important to human beings as physical ones? Both Jung and Freud asserted man had psychological needs for weapons and nature and would be unbalanced if these were denied. Whatever you may think of their theories, there does seem to be some evidence they were correct in the psychosis observed in urbanites removed from nature.
First I must protest Sir ! I have NEVER made myself out to be a medical Doctor and I take offence at that accusation. LOL. You really must learn to read. And you are equally wrong about the classes I have taken. And you say your faith or lack thereof has no bearing, but all your comments thus far have been Faith based. Do not be so narrow minded as to think Faith only refers to belief in a creator. All humans have a Faith. Some world view upon which you base your determination of right and wrong. Atheists especially. One element of your Faith is clearly that humans may only cause animal suffering in case of physical need. That is understandable, but not all people share your Faith.
This is just sad. Both of these responses fall completely flat on the real issue. You two want desperately to make the offending perpetrator to be me. So you focus on my faults, instead of the crimes that I am accusing you of.
First fsilber:
I am going to just have to laugh at your reasoning. You should really be careful on what topics you make statements like that in. I am going to take for granted that you are in grade school or somewhere along those lines, but I am an adult with adult reasoning and experience. Trust me, everyone in the world has some sort of ancestry that had to hunt for food. But I will give you kudos for that last line, I haven’t laughed so hard in months.
Now dlyn, I am very disappointed in your response because you are making yourself out to be a medical doctor, and your psychological analogy is just pathetic and juvenile. I know without a doubt that you have never had a psychology class in your life, and that my friend really makes me curious about your true medical history.
If you want to get my attention, make your case and produce facts that prove that there is no suffering, no victim, and no death. These are the crimes you are accused of. My faith or lack there of has no bearing on this question. Your focus on me is pitiful, and it ranks with someone who breaks their own child’s arm and argues that in Afghanistan, they kill their own children. So therefor you a good person. that is just plain stupid.
Before women’s rights, it was quite normal and legal to beat your wife. Just because the law did not recognize women as human, does this mean that there was no victim? Your flimsy excuses are getting to the point where I am expecting you to throw the race card and call me a racist next.
Like so many horrible crimes of the past, this one too will be acknowledged as such, and is overwhelmingly being seen so by the rest of the nation. And you and your type will be labeled as the cruel heartless people you truly are.
Many of us have a small amount of Native American ancestry. Hunting is a _huge_ part of Native American culture, and most Native Americans do now use firearms to hunt.
Anyone who denounces hunting denounces Native Americans—and all that doing so implies.
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