It's easy for many of us to dismiss states like California and Massachusetts as monolithic, anti-gun territories. That would be very wrong, especially since I have friends in both who are fighting the good fight for the right to keep and bear arms. Yet we all know they're drastically outnumbered.
However, it's sometimes important to realize that not everyone out there who supports the Second Amendment is necessarily someone who might wear a MAGA hat.
There's a lot more nuance than that.
In fact, the Boston Globe decided to take a look at blue voting regions that also have a lot of lawfully-owned firearms.
By at least one metric, here is the gun capital of Massachusetts, a hamlet that shares its name with a South American nation and is home to about 800 residents nestled in the hill country of the Berkshires, just under three hours from downtown Boston.
The center of town consists of a few nondescript buildings along Route 143. There is a tiny library and an unremarkable-looking town office building that sometimes is unlocked even when no one is there. As in many New England communities, there is a church painted white, and a patch of grass memorializing the town’s war dead. There are no gas stations, convenience stores, restaurants, or bars. There is a single blinking traffic light in Peru’s 26-miles-square.
But there are guns. Many guns. According to a Globe analysis, Peru has the highest per capita rate of licenses to carry in Massachusetts. Nearby Savoy, with a population of about 645 people, according to the 2020 census, is No. 2. (The Globe did not count communities with a population of less than 500 in its review.)
“Everybody on our street owns a weapon,” said Dave Drosehn, a 65-year-old retired machine tender and Peru resident.
The politics around firearms and gun control remain bitterly divisive, both nationally and locally, but even in blue Massachusetts, which has one of the most strict gun-control laws in the nation, there are towns that voted Democratic last fall where not only are guns a part of a way of life, but they are also ubiquitous.
...Like any community, none of these rural towns are political monoliths, and to dismiss this corner of the state as MAGA country would be inaccurate.
Despite high rates of gun ownership and a prevalent hunting culture, Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, last fall defeated now-President Trump, the Republican candidate, in huge swaths of Western Massachusetts, including Peru, Hinsdale, Worthington, Cheshire, and Savoy.
Dotted throughout the Berkshire hill towns are the occasional political signs. Some express support for Trump, others the opposite. Some extol the need to protect the Second Amendment. Some encourage people to contact their state representative to voice their opposition to a gun control bill that passed last year.
Interestingly, many of those they interviewed echoed the very things folks like you or I might say, such as not fearing guns in and of themselves, but fearing the people who obtain guns illegally. Another man, a gunsmith, noted that guns are safe, it's the hands that hold onto that gun that can make it dangerous.
Pretty based, really.
And yet, there was a quote from a local police chief I have to quibble a bit on:
Peru Police Chief Bruce Cullett pushed back on the notion of a gun culture locally, saying it would be more accurate to say that rural culture here has a firearms component. Simply having a license to carry, he said, does not necessarily make someone a gun person or a firearms enthusiast, or even indicate that the person actively owns a gun.
“The majority of LTC holders in Peru view firearms as practical tools used for hunting, protecting their family/pets/livestock, and for recreation … the same way they have been used for generations," he said.
I hate to break it to Cullett, but that's what the majority of gun owners across the nation think about firearms as well. That is, ultimately, the heart of the gun culture in this country. Some of us are very into guns, sure, but many of us see them as those "practical tools" and want to preserve the right to use those practical tools for all of those lawful purposes.
Just as they have been for generations.
The piece goes on to note that many of these people aren't big fans of how Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey addresses firearms. A vehement gun-grabber, Healey is ready to do whatever she can to curtail the right to keep and bear arms, often despite many gun owners being supporters of her other policies.
On one hand, it's difficult to feel a lot of sympathy for people who vote for someone who says they want to push gun control, only to have them win and push gun control.
On the other, we actually need these people. We need them as allies in the fight for our right to keep and bear arms. At a minimum, with enough numbers and activism, they can dissuade Democrats from voting for gun control, which at least keeps the anti-gun forces from advancing.
Still, I find the look into the gun culture in rural, yet blue, Massachusetts interesting, to say the least.
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