The slight derives from Elmer Fudd, the shotgun-toting rabbit hunter immortalized by Looney Tunes. There’s some truth behind the generalization. Fudds generally carry double-barrel, over-under, or pump-action shotguns. If they’re carrying a rifle, you’ll find them with a Winchester Model 70 or Remington Model 700. You won’t generally find them covered head-to-toe in camouflage. In Texas, they might sport blue jeans and a cowboy hat. In colder climates, they might don the Elmer Fudd hat itself. A Fudd might own an AR-15 and some camo, but they would never brandish it; some might not even admit it. To a Fudd, an Armalite rifle might be a useful tool of self-defense, but it is undoubtedly a vulgar departure from the craftsmanship and tradition that once defined American sporting. 

... If you ever come across a Fudd, you might hear them deride the new-coming gun owners as “tacticool.” Tacticool refers to the sometimes ostentatious behavior of self-defense enthusiasts. Their ear-drums blown out at the range by AR-15s and AK-47s, Fudds are inclined to raise an eyebrow. Red-dot sights, flashlights, bump stocks, scopes, and every other James Bond–esque device you could think of strike the Fudd as unnecessary. Given the average shooting takes place at three yards, discharges three rounds, and wraps up in 3 seconds, the Fudds are generally right. Tacticools might point to hog hunting as justification for the arms race, and there’s some merit to that, but Americans have been hunting hogs since Hernando De Soto loosed them on the continent.

To me, Fudd-ism is less about what you wear, how you look, or even what guns you own than it is how you view the right to keep and bear arms. I look pretty Fuddish myself; I'm more Carhartt than Grunt Style, more Wrangler than 5.11 Tactical. I wear Tony Lama cowboy boots, not combat boots. I sport a big beard and am rarely without a ballcap. And given my tendency to eat my feelings over the past eight years of my wife's battle with cancer, if I did ever go full "tacticool" in my attire (I can't describe my clothing choices as "fashion" in any way, shape or form), it wouldn't be long before the anti-gunners labeled me a part of Meal Team Six or a Gravy SEAL. 

But even though I live in the country and the last time I shot a gun was to send a couple of raccoons that were preying on my chickens to the Great Garbage Dumpster in the Sky, I don't consider myself anywhere close to a Fudd when it comes to my support for the Second Amendment. 

In my opinion, what defines a Fudd isn't their look, their appreciation for classic firearms, or even their distaste for more modern guns like the AR-15. It's their desire (or at least willingness) to force others to adopt their own standards at the expense of our Second Amendment rights. If someone would rather stick with their bolt-action rifle than use a semi-auto, that's fine by me. But when they start advocating for a gun ban or support politicians who claim to support the Second Amendment and a semi-auto ban in the same breath, that crosses the line into Fuddism. 

As Pruett writes, "[t]ension between traditional sportsmen and newcomers wouldn’t matter outside of their circles if not for the public policy implications."

Tacticools, generally urban and concerned with self-defense, view their firearms as a means of protection and increasingly as a defense against government. This attitude prompted President Joe Biden to address the phenomenon, crassly blustering that domestic militias would be dispatched with the Air Force. Regardless, tacticool bravado and associated no-compromise politics create unease among the Fudds. Open-carrying an AR-15 into a Texas diner might be a legal expression of one’s rights, but to the Fudd it is undoubtedly distasteful. The sea-change in American gun culture may have provided short-term benefits, but the widespread embrace of culturally alienating habits may prove a long-term political liability.  

First of all, I can't recall the last time I saw someone open-carrying an AR-15 rifle, so I question Pruett's assertion that such practices have been widely embraced by gun owners. But he also needs to face facts: the anti-gun left has been going after our fundamental Second Amendment rights long before the rise of defensive-minded gun owners. The "tacticools" were hardly a thing when the National Council to Control Handguns was established in 1974, when D.C. banned handguns in 1977, or when Chicago followed suit with its own handgun ban in the 1980s. 

The older long guns favored by Fudds have never been a primary target of the modern gun control lobby, and over the past couple of decades pump-action shotguns and bolt-action rifles have become the firearm of choice for gun control activists who want to feign support for the Second Amendment. Now the needle of public opinion has moved far enough that the Democratic presidential candidate claims to own a Glock and talks about intruders to her home getting shot; not because of any deeply-held belief that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to armed self-defense (Kamala Harris has actually argued the opposite), but because she sees owning a pistol as more politically advantageous than calling for a nationwide ban. 

The Fudds among us did nothing to make that happen, and that's the problem. You could argue that carrying your AR-15 to your local Subway to grab a footlong hasn't advanced the cause of Second Amendment activists either, but there's no denying that the embrace of gun ownership among non-hunters has helped to take the Second Amendment beyond the confines of the tree stand and duck blinds over the objections of the gun control lobby. Dress how you want and own what you want, but don't stand in the way of the restoration of the right to keep and bear arms. That's classic Fuddism, and it's not worth defending.