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
Notice the irrational emotion based nature of responses. The self righteous loathing of any who differ with his worldview or challenge his positions. He honestly believes that he has irrefutably made his case and is not touched by the statements of those he regards as moral inferiors. Attempts to get him to examine his faith are shunted aside. He dismisses such as a Colonial of the British Empire would dismiss the attitudes of the natives.. However, notice as well the damage Slob Hunters have done to all good hunters by poisoning his attitudes. Arguments are futile, he would only respond to positive exposure to honorable hunters, and in his case it is too late for that.
rawbleed,
I think I need to rearrange my line of questioning, just in case you dont have the faculties to go back and digest what has already taken place here, Here is the big question.
Why is it that something must die for you to get your rocks off.
Nobody said anything about hunting purely for the sake of feeding ones family, that has been a necessary evil for hundreds of thousands of years. We are talking about the sheer act of killing another creature just because you think it is fun.
I have made my case that shows why one who does such a thing is lacking in so many ways morally and mentally that I think that any jury would be inclined to agree with me.
Now it is your turn. I am going home and going to bed. I am just bursting with anticipation of reading the pearls of wisdom that you may deposit for us all to read in the morning. You have all night. What have you got for me?
rawbleed,
What an appropriate name for this conversation.
First of all, please, have we not covered that ground many times in this conversation? And hasn’t that pathetic accusation or excuse already been dismissed many times over?
Dont think I didn’t notice your line of insults before, but seriously, out of all the questions that I have laid before you, are you not able to answer one and use that information to bring any validity to the whole reason that a creature must die for you to have pleasure?
If you really do have a valid point and can bring any kind of light to this mystery, please bring it on.
If not, then I will just simply assume that you are another one of the subhumans that I have so many times made reference to in my case against killing for pleasure. Which will it be Billy Bob?
Eddie: You are a vegetarian?
dlyn454
Perhaps you see the death as a necessity of your observation of nature. forgive me if I fail to see the connection. You are an educated person obviously, and you have no shortage of money, so the hunting for food explanation has no validity. I would be very curious to know how much money you do spend on preparing for “the hunt” if you would be so kind as to indulge me.
Dont sweat the typo, I was expecting someone to try and belittle me because I misspelled “liar” earlier in a rant.
My grandpa was a hunter and a trapper, and I loved no other person in this world more than he. But he was from another time, and hunting was a necessary function to survive. That time is gone now. I also refuse to eat in any establishment that has corpses hanging on the walls of poor creatures who were murdered.
When I grew up here. I spent my whole youth running around in the mountains. I saw 1 deer here my whole life growing up. That was because earlier people killed them all. It is nice to be able to go into the woods and have a flock of turkey walk right past you now. Do I get the urge to blow one of them out of existence? Can’t say I ever have.
Perhaps you have some sort of honor that you place in your actions, but all I ever see are the kind like my brother-in-law.
I was going to his house to see my sister on day. As I came through the gate, (couldn’t let the cows get out) I heard a strange knocking sound. I looked down to a tree close to the creek and saw a huge woodpecker with a brilliant red crest on his head. There had been a storm the day before so I thought maybe the storm blew him in. Oh how magnificent it would be to have birds like this in our world. He was bigger than a crow, and bigger than most hawks I have ever seen since.
I went to my car, closed the door quietly, and rolled down the hill to try and not scare it away. I drove around the hill and ran up to my sister’s house, then ran in and said “Tammy, Tammy, you have to come see this beautiful bird that is just around the hill!“
“KERPOW”
I heard a shot coming from just down the road. I didn’t say a word, or move. I sat there until a car rolled around the hill. Out jumps my brother in law, and he says, “G0@ D@#*, You ortta see that bird I Jus Kilt”
A part of me died that day.
And I am reminded of that every time I hear some fool talking about all the victims he has claimed “Oh, I hunted all these mountains and those mountains, and I killed so many this or that. This one dragged himself for 2 miles before I caught up with him”. It just makes me sick.
I have never met anyone who mounted an animal out of respect. Do you mount your pets? Those are the animals you respect the most aren’t they?
I personally have never seen any animal who looked anywhere as beautiful dead, as they are alive. Have you? Seriously, I expect an answer to this one.
But the last thing I would like to say, is that no matter what anyone else does, it does not make it right. Just because a cow dies and is used for food, doesn’t make it right that all other animals are now “fair game”. A needless death will always be a crime against nature.
Pardon my typo “there shameful” a patient came along as I was finishing the entry.
Eddie, like most hunters I have always had pets. I have healed and tended and raised a myriad of wild and domestic animals and loved them deeply and mourned their inevitable deaths. And actually I work in the medical profession healing people. You project a love of killing on hunters. Not so, like most I am saddened by the killing. We do not hunt to kill, but we kill to have hunted. How to explain that to you. Perhaps you engage in some recreation that produces blisters and sore muscles. Do you love blisters ? No, but you accept that as a necessary part of the activity. We hunt because in so doing we are not merely observers of the natural world we love, but participants in it. As you are. You are responsible for the deaths of many animals. Only you hire your killing done by the slaughterhouses you condemn. Or perhaps you are a vegan, in which case you pay farmers to turn animal habitat into cropland and spray it with chemicals and drive off or kill hungry animals that seek food there. You seek denial of this reality by separating yourself from it. As hunters we remind ourselves that our lives come at the cost of other creatures, and we appreciate both the more. Those who mount their trophies do so out of respect for the creature they shared the cycle of life with. No one mounts a cow head on the wall. Are their shamful hunters ? Yes. What group of humans can say otherwise ?
I have a special note for dlyn454
Do you have a pet? What if someone were to hide in the bushes and waited for your pet to come outside. Then they blew it away. How would you feel when they jump up and down in joy and laughter with the excitement of the kill? There is absolutely no difference what-so-ever. it is just retarded.
If you love killing things so much, you must work at the slaughter houses. That way you can stand as close to the animals as possible, and look them in the eye, and laugh as you tell them you are about to take everything from them, including their life. Then you could bathe in the spray of thier blood as thier life is wrnched from them. Wouldn’t that just be the greatest job ever? I’ll bet you would like that wouldn’t you? How does it feel to be placed in a position of extreme ignorance? If you dont like it, dont do it to me.
Speaking of which, The only thing I despise IS ignorance. Our ancestors needed to hunt to survive. Only the rich did it to bolster their egos. There are still a few that need to do it to feed their families, and do not go looking for the trophies that the vast majority of “hunters” do. The bigger and older the deer, the more useless it is.
The vast majority of those who do it now, spend lots of money on equipment to make it even more pathetic, and have absolutely no need to do it what-so-ever.
You have still yet to come close to any valid reasoning that will explain the love of killing. The only thing you have done is to attack me personally, not my reasoning or my logic. Please answer me back when you have something valid to say. I would very much like to see something of intelligence.
Many of you may think that I am unfair, that I have no right to rain on your parade, but I would like for you to see this situation from my point of view for one time in your life.
I was visiting my in-laws, and of course I had to sit and listen to the stories of heroism and courage.
One such story was about how a 600 lb. bear was shot and what a hard time the “hunter” had keeping up with the bear afterwards. He ran as hard as he could for the bush, and took half the day before he finally died. But the next one he was going to make sure he dragged out, because he wants to have him mounted. I made the stupid mistake of asking how it tasted. He looked at me like I had just grown another head. “Tasted??!! H__ I ain’t gonna eat it!“
Then I had to hear about an Elk who had befriended a deer. The deer was an 8 point buck, so killing the buck just got much more fun. The group laughed at how the Elk just ran up and down the mountain crying and looking for his friend for days after he had been killed.
I felt sorry for my wife because I knew the shame she felt from her family. So, of course I had to smile as if I had no heart or intelligence also.
If you think that these people are not the “Norm” you are very very wrong. This mentality is what makes up the vast majority of the people wandering the woods looking for something to kill. I grew up here, and I see many of them every day.
Some of you would like to beat me up, and I am sure that many of you could. But I will never tangle with you, just as you would never tangle with a gorilla. Same difference.
But as a human being, I do have words to use to make my point. You can laugh at me or call me names, whatever you like, but reality and knowledge will always be on my side.
Just remember that in all likely-hood, one of your children sees the truth every time you tell a story of one your great conquests. Inside they will feel the shame of having you for a parent and will look forward to leaving this place, just as soon as they can. And if they ever want to be a good contribution to humanity, they need to leave as soon as they can.
One more thing Eddie. YOU assert we are purely the product of nature, and then condemn people for living accordingly. Is this logic? If we are purely the product of nature, by what criteria are you so judgmental of hunters? Where do we find the standards that makes YOUR culture so superior? From the Bible you clearly hate? Or from the ways of the animals you despise ?
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