King, your comment: A whole new generation has grown up disengaged from the land and killing things as it sought shelter and jobs in the cities. nails it. The urbanization of society really has altered the culture. I grew up in New York City and still spend part of the year in Manhattan; the rest in a semi-rural environment. Manhattan's East Side is about as urban as it gets and my friends there are not innately anti-gun or anti-hunting, it's just that those activities are so alien that they cannot comprehend them. Gun-related activities are as strange to them as a steady diet of concerts, theatre, art galleries, openings, museums is to my rural neighbors. My rural neighbors are not oafs and my NY friends are not snobs - they are in two different worlds.
And these worlds are farther apart than ever. When I was young, my father's business friends hunted and fished the Maine Woods and the Adirondacks. That was quite common then - their counterparts today no longer do it.
People have always lived in cities ever since man became "civilized". New York and Chicago were big cities 100 years ago. But as Gnomon points out, hunting and the shooting sports were quite commonly practiced by city dwellers then, even the wealthy elites. Maybe especially the wealthy elites. That is who was buying Parker A-1 Specials, Lefever Optimus', and the high grade British doubles that made it across the ocean.
But something has changed dramatically since I was a young boy. There has been a concerted effort to increase the separation or divide between those who engage in shooting and blood sports and those who do not. It is more than mere coincidence that the media elites and the lowly media reporters who have been hard at work pushing an anti-gun, anti-hunting agenda are almost all liberal left wing thinkers and practitioners. It is not, by and large, the right wing that has demonized even the mention of guns in our schools, or advanced the legislation to control or eliminate guns, or published and broadcast the steady drumbeat message that guns are bad. Almost all activities that show guns in a positive light are ignored or ridiculed. Very popular shows like The American Sportsman are long gone. Coverage of shooting events in the Olympics has been gradually decreased to nothing.
Gnomon laments the fact that the divide between the right and left, conservatives and liberals, is wider than ever... and so do I. But he chooses to excuse the behavior of the extreme left wing liberals who have co-opted the heart and soul of the Democrat Party. The party my Dad called the party of the working man has become the party of the non-working man. The votes of poorly educated and dumbed down masses are being bought with so-called entitlements. The ACLU is filing suits right now to prohibit states from drug testing welfare recipients. It is the liberal left that has been so hard at work to demonize guns and remove them from our culture. I am not a single issue voter, but preserving the Second Amendment is more important to me than many other issues.
You cannot claim to be pro-gun and support gun rights and then go into a voting booth and pull the lever for a man with a 100% anti-gun voting record. Taking a few city dwelling friends to the range and introducing them to shooting is not going to offset the damage that one powerful anti-gun politician can and will do.
