Guns are fun. Shooting guns is fun. Finding rare guns for your collection is thrilling. Hunting, shooting, competing, and more are fun with guns. I didn’t know any of this was ever up for debate. Apparently, it has become the subject of debate amongst the firearm community, and that leaves me utterly perplexed. Are guns fun? Are they supposed to be fun?
The Fun and Gun Debate
The debate seems to be focused on making guns an extremely serious thing. Without a doubt, firearms are serious. They should be respected and treated with seriousness. They should be handled safely, and I don’t think any part of the debate is arguing that fun means being willy-nilly with firearms. Firearms and parachutes are a lot alike. They can be a ton of fun but are also deadly serious.
The training and defensive use only side of the argument will say firearms are not fun. They are tools. Like a hammer, they are designed for a specific task, which isn’t enjoyable. Firearms are serious and should be treated seriously. This side of the argument focuses on the defensive and duty use of firearms. It doesn’t seem to think much about hunting but seemingly embraces some parts of competition shooting as a training tool.
This side of the argument seems to completely disregard any firearm not designed for defensive or duty use. PCCs, over/under shotguns, and the like are seen as useless and a waste of time, effort, and aluminum in most regards. If it’s not maximally efficient, it doesn’t have a purpose and doesn’t need to exist.
The fun side says both serious guns can exist and fun guns can exist. Shooting can both be fun and serve a purpose. Shooters who are mag dumping into trash and having fun believe recreational guns are completely valid. The recreational firearms side embraces all competition and all shooting as fun. Each trigger pull is fun, and everything from training to competing is enjoyable. This includes USPSA and IDPA, as well as PCC, Steel Challenge, and Skeet shooting.
The Fun, the Guns, and the Grumps
It’s weird to see the debate play out in these dark corners of the internet. It’s not a big debate, but there seem to be a few former military-turned-firearms trainers who want to take the fun out of guns. From their perspective, I guess I can understand their point. These are guys that might not have ever been ‘gun’ guys.
They are good shooters, but to them, shooting is just a job—a task they were forced to do, become adept at, and teach others to do. It was never something they did recreationally, and the military has a way of killing the fun when it comes to shooting. Trust me, as fun as it would be to shoot a .50 cal M2, the military absolutely kills your enjoyment of it.
These guys can’t even see the fun in firearms. They might get the same dopamine hit when they see improvement and get better at shooting, but they aren’t going to be shooting just for the hell of it on the weekend.
The not-so-fun side would like to argue that shooting just isn’t enjoyable. I believe them. For some people, it’s just a thing they have to do to maintain proficiency. There are plenty of hobbyist woodworkers who love wielding a hammer, but a very skilled carpenter isn’t working on the weekend just for kicks and giggles.
Why So Serious?
Let’s be absolutely clear: guns are fun. If guns weren’t fun, we wouldn’t have a gun industry. Everyone would have bought their Glock 19 and AR-15, and the industry wouldn’t have a million different options. They wouldn’t have made massive improvements in how guns handle if it wasn’t for the folks having recreational firearms.
This idea that every gun has to be super useful and optimized for shooting bad guys is silly. PCCs, and retro reissues of Vietnam-era rifles are fun, and so are revolvers, long slide hunting pistols, and finely made over/under shotguns. Guns and shooting as a whole wouldn’t have progressed nearly as far as it has if it wasn’t enjoyable.
If shooting isn’t enjoyable for you, that’s fine, but recognize it is for most people. You might want to call us nothing more than enthusiasts, but enthusiasts drive the industry.
