When us liberals use terms like "gun fondler", they're not just random insults drawn from a hat. We're pointedly drawing attention to the, to us, peculiarity of constructing a "culture" around guns in the first place. We perceive a gaping cognitive dissonance between attempts to portray the gun-owning population as boring geeky hobbyists drawn to firearms technology or to honing an abstract skill like marksmanship, in contrast to the tribal paranoia and rage and relentless political violence (primarily from its self-anointed representative on Earth the NRA) we associate with "the gun culture".

It doesn't help that all (and I do mean 100%) of the visible members of the gun culture seem to be vocally rightwing. You guys have deeply alienated us liberals by imposing a property settlement in our cultural divorce in which you've taken "the gun culture" and religion, and awarded science to us. Which, now that I think about it, is actually a pretty good deal. But for the sake of argument let's continue to pretend that it's probably bad for our society to be fractured along those particular lines.

I think we need better terminology than "gun culture", at least insofar as it does a disservice to the responsible gun-owning unicorns who really are in it for the smell of the machine oil and the satisfaction of a steady hand and a steely gaze on the gun range. I know you're one of the latter group of presumably Good Guys With Guns, so what term would you use for your faction to distinguish it from the dangerous whackos?

In a related story, I've come to the conclusion that it's disrespectful to call jackasses like the tea baggers and the religious right "conservatives". They're reactionaries, plain and simple, and should be addressed as such.

Words are important, and proper terminology brings greater clarity. Perhaps even peace.

That out of the way, we were both kids in the mid 20th century, and toys were pretty much the same everywhere and hadn't changed substantially for decades. I remember cap guns, cheap sheet metal stamped out by the millions for us boys in our cowboy suits. I don't remember soldier uniforms on kids ever being popular...maybe it wasn't all a plan to train us to grow up and fight with guns. I also remember how some us figured out how to make IEDs from a roll of caps by stacking the caps in that zigzag pattern like when you're idly folding a soda straw wrapper, aligning the powder spots on each into one big column you'd then smack with a hammer to make a big bang. Boys love loud noises and bad smells, and gunpowder rewards us with both. Course, every once in a while there'd be a report of some kid taking the idea to foolishly epic proportions causing injury and property damage and once in a long while, death (a hammer brought down on a big pile of small packets of gunpowder can end up embedded in a young forehead). But toy gun caps don't kill, kids kill.

But I digress. I also had a couple of BB guns (liked the .45 pistol best, because I have a congenital problem with my right eye that makes it really hard for me [a right-hander] to hold a rifle and sight along it), occasionally shot my Dad's .22 rifle "for sport". Played around with mixing up all kinds of home-brew explosives and fireworks.

I grew out of it, but some guys (seems to be almost exclusively guys) don't. Lots of people continue skateboarding into their 30s. Go figure. I really want a society that accommodates both kinds and the whole gamut of other eccentricities and quirks of my fellow human...as long as those quirks don't end up killing or maiming other people. That's all I really want.