Fudds. When I hear that I hear "n*-lover" or some other term meant to exclude anyone that isn't extremist/fanatical.
I think it comes from the cartoon character Elmer fudd, and stands for someone who is part of the traditional sporting/hunting culture as opposed to someone approaching it from a broader and more modern "self defense", 2A, entertainment (video game/movie) influence.
Those cultures do overlap, but there is definitely some friction between them at times.
People who liked guns hunted, and or owned things in calibers that overlapped between hunting and the military (think .308). They had revolvers, or full metal frame pocket pistols for self defense.
The standard today would be something like a glock 19 (plastic frame, 19 rounds of hollow point, small size) carried concealed in an appendix holster. Now often with a red dot sight and a rail mounted tactical light. There are dozens and dozens of AR (using the term very broadly) manufacturers out there today, pushing everything from systems designed for suppressed cqb (think short barreled suppressed .300 blackout) to long range precision shooting (ar-10/6.5 cm).
These kind of options, and the hobbies/communities they enable, didn't exist at the consumer level even 10 years ago.
The inflection point seems to be the sunset of the assault weapons ban, but it took quite a bit of time for this stuff to become mainstream.
The old guard supported by a base of hunters and sport shooters is aging out, and not growing anywhere near as fast as this new generation. The needs (and opinions) of someone out on regular elk hunts range pretty far from someone who wants a firearm for self defense.
1. People who don't care about stopping gun-grabbers as long as they can keep their .30-30 henry or remington 870 or whatever, because "nobody needs one of them plastic guns, they're for killing people!"
2. People who are generally ignorant/out-of-date/willfully uneducated. The "muh 2 world wars, stopping power, I use a .45 cause they don't make a 46" boomer-tier stuff. The "22 is the deadliest caliber because it tumbles around inside!" people.
Edit: yeah, as 'nataz pointed out it's from Elmer Fudd. I'll tell you that most of the racist people I've met in the gun scene are fudds. The ones you'd call "fanatical" don't give a shit who you are as long as you're pro-gun and/or anti-govt.
You can just say 'racist', or 'person who relies on outdated ballistics information'. No need to have one derogatory term to lump the two in together and then sling in around casually.
People say that 22lr is the 'deadliest caliber' because it is the caliber that has ended the most lives in the United States, that being because it is by far the most common. The original source for that was a study done in ~1970 but there have been others to back it up since.
I'm not going to go so far as to say that _no one_ ever has said that .22lr is more lethal than any other caliber, but it is the exact opposite sentiment of "I use a .45 cause they don't make a .46" so it's not likely to be a person from that group saying it.
I've read this theory many, many times on gun forums and comment sections.
Bump stocks. I think they should remain illegal. I'm a fudd.
Fully automatic, military weapons should probably remain heavily regulated. I'm a fudd.
This is what I'm describing.
Dick Metcalf as editor of Guns and Ammo magazine suggested in an editorial that maybe some gun regulation is a good thing. He was out after that.
Or for that matter, what "reasonable" abortion restrictions were supported by pro-abortion advocates? Somehow all the abortion restrictions turn out to be unreasonable, and all the gun control restrictions are always reasonable.
I don't follow these debates too closely but put them in the "culture war" bucket, rather than the "public policy" bucket.
The object is to defeat your enemy, not to make optimal public policy. Facts and figures are recruited to make the other side look bad and worthy of contempt, not to determine which policy is most effective.
The pro-abortion side basically argues that if you can find a doctor that says you need it, you should be able to get it even at 9 months. And they also insist that psychological harm to the mother is enough of a reason to get it, it doesn't need to be risk of physical injury. And that you can go to as many doctors as you want until you find one that will agree. Many abortion clinics have such doctors on staff to meet the legal requirements of medical consultation.
Or about the "post-birth" abortion debate, in which an abortion is botched and the baby delivered? The pro-abortion side wanted to allow the child to be left on a table and not provided with life sustaining care (or even food/milk) to die in the hospital.
The anti-abortion side insists this is infanticide, which gets the other side really angry, since they are not the ones killing the child, they are just refusing to provide care and letting the infant die on its own.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47066307
Interestingly, in the ancient world, people would leave new borns on the side of the road if they didn't want or couldn't care for them. There are lots of stories about these castaway infants - Moses being put into a basket and sent down the river are an example of this genre. Also in Venice (my favorite city) there was a scaffetta, shaped like a lion's mouth, where you could slip an unwanted infant, and it would be raised in one of the Catholic orphanages. Vivaldi was a conductor for a girls' school in such an orphanage -- the Four Seasons was first performed by orphaned and abandoned girls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ospedale_della_Pietà
Of course the majority of normal people believe in some regulation and some rights. They view these issues as complex and morally ambiguous. But not activists, and certainly not activists in a culture war.
I disagree, bump stocks are largely a gimmick and automatics are "military weapons" because they've been so limited for the populace. I don't see the problem with "fudd" to describe people who care only about their guns.
"Extremists" is not the word I wanted to use, but I didn't know a better one.
No regulation on any guns at all. Period.
I don't know a good name for that take on gun ownership.
Nahh it's perfectly fair because there are gun owners who don't own an AR but think they shouldn't be banned. Same as how I don't wanna buy a hooker but still think prostitution should be legal. Or same idea as "I don't agree with what you're saying but will defend your right to say it."
Not sure why you can't just say "gun rights advocate" cause that's what it is. Saying it's extreme is just as much a value judgement as "fudd". And for somebody who fit the stuff I described above, I don't know any good name other than "fudd" for that take on gun ownership.
From where I stand it points out that the mainstream opinion is far from mine, but doesn’t imply which is more rational/correct.