Originally Posted by
Doc Glockster
I'm usually pretty forgiving of the mall ninja set, as long as the person doesn't stay mall ninja forever.
I think there is a learning curve. A lot of gun buyers start out young and inexperienced and buy an assault rifle for the "cool" factor. If they didn't buy that first AR, maybe it would have been a dirt bike. I bought my first assault rifle partly because it looked like a machine gun (in my mind) and because I thought I'd be the only person at the range with one.
I think most people, if they stick with it and develop, will go from owning expensive toys to being handlers of quality HD equipment. You buy a Luger with a mile-deep blue finish and fancy wood grips for how it looks and because it's the coolest of the cool. You buy a Glock because it shoots.
Same with AR's. As a young buyer you get talked into the cheapest one you can afford or the one with the Punisher skull logo, then you spend another thou' bolting shit to it. One day you wake up and realize that KISS really works, and that it doesn't matter so much what your weapon looks like or how much you can attach to it as what you can do with it.
So, staying with the learning curve you turn to competition and eventually training, and your journey to the dark side is complete.
You look back with either disgust or humor on your mall ninja days, but you've improved , and that is the point. Maybe it took you longer because you weren't part of a sanctioned training program from day one, but you got there nonetheless.
The ones I have disdain for are the ones who have owned guns for twenty years and still buy a gun because of its looks rather than its performance.