I think that's the thing about being a minority (which, to be clear, as a mainline Protestant I hardly qualify here!): you have those experiences to pull on. They make you more empathetic I think. It's a good question to ask, no doubt.
I'd expect her to own guns. Firing range owners tend to be gun owners themselves (naturally enough) in my experience. And I think on some level I really should be upset. I don't use that word bigot lightly, but her willingness to make this jump to all Muslims... I don't know any other word for people that would make those assumptions against whole classes of people. It's damned insulting, actually, and I'm not the one being insulted, except to the extent that anti-Muslim bigotry in the wake of 9/11 hits a bit close to home as a New Yorker. But that's not the biggest insult by far in this story.
I almost wish that was my only reaction. It feels wrong that I'm almost amused by all this, at least at one level. (Hardly the only reaction I had, but still.) I keep hearing Inigo Montoya's line about "You keep using those words. I don't think they mean what you think they mean." (Or whatever the precise wording is.) And folks with these kinds of attitudes are scary, particularly when they have access to guns. But mostly it just seems bizarrely pitiful.
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I'd expect her to own guns. Firing range owners tend to be gun owners themselves (naturally enough) in my experience. And I think on some level I really should be upset. I don't use that word bigot lightly, but her willingness to make this jump to all Muslims... I don't know any other word for people that would make those assumptions against whole classes of people. It's damned insulting, actually, and I'm not the one being insulted, except to the extent that anti-Muslim bigotry in the wake of 9/11 hits a bit close to home as a New Yorker. But that's not the biggest insult by far in this story.
I almost wish that was my only reaction. It feels wrong that I'm almost amused by all this, at least at one level. (Hardly the only reaction I had, but still.) I keep hearing Inigo Montoya's line about "You keep using those words. I don't think they mean what you think they mean." (Or whatever the precise wording is.) And folks with these kinds of attitudes are scary, particularly when they have access to guns. But mostly it just seems bizarrely pitiful.