“Fuddism” is just as great a threat to the shooting community as the civilian disarmament crowd. In recent months it’s become a hot button issue in the shooting community online and to be honest, it’s about time these ideological skirmishes were had.
In basic terms, a fudd is usually defined as a simple gun owner who doesn’t see the need for anything other than what he or she has.
You’ll often find these types going on about how long they have been shooting as a justification to lead into some tenuous argument about why you don’t need an SKS, but he owned several until 1996 when they disappeared into a PVC pipe somewhere.
Often the blame for fuddism is directed solely at the older generations, namely the boomers. While hating on boomers appears to be in vogue for just about anything and it remains true that the boomer generation do often display this kind of nonsense thinking, it is also true that this kind of mindset is also prevalent among the Gen X, Millennial and Gen Z crop of shooters.
However, they often can very rarely put forward a good argument in defence of this ideological predisposition save for the usual semantic tropes such as America, Port Arthur, John Howard, it’s a privilege not a right, etc. They’ve unfortunately bought into a lot of the indoctrination the anti-gun crowd has drowned this country in for the last 23 years.
Anecdotally speaking, I know several of my fellow Gen X gun owners that also think that Australia’s gun laws are “about right”, see no need for semi-automatic self-loading rifles to be deregulated, support registration and so on. It was morbidly amusing to see their outrage during the Adler War of 2015 and still be unable and/or unwilling to connect the dots.
Although generalisations about generations can be counterproductive and wildly inaccurate, for argument’s sake they do hold some observable relevance.
The broader point is fuddism is a mindset that does not adhere to generational boundaries.
When you boil it down to the essence, fuddism is really about self-interest and self-preservation. The fudd mindset in a nutshell is “doesn’t affect me, don’t care, I’ve got mine, screw you.”
The fudd can’t see a need for anything other than what he has and his experience. There’s also a large element of ego in some fudds. Ie “I know better so shut up.” That’s generally a larger psychological issue and beyond the scope of this article.
These people are not interested in being political or pro-active on the issue of firearms until it directly affects them. They then often complain the loudest as to why someone else didn’t do something for them politically when it’s already too late. In other words, they’re not interested in politics until politics inevitably decided to choose them, as it always does. Political apathy is an Australian cultural issue that has pervaded all forms of life and needs to be righted post-haste, however that’s a debate for another time.
This is a similar predicament to the idiots in the Australian journalism corps who are currently whining about press freedom under attack, yet have done everything they can to subvert and oppose true freedom of speech.
There is consistent, demonstrated behaviour globally and throughout history that disarmament of the middle and working class is what the ruling class of each country wants, as it allows them to bully and dominate the populace writ large. That’s the end goal of gun control – no guns in civilian hands. Whether or not people choose to recognise this or not is another story, but that is bluntly the overt and covert objective.
The fudd either doesn’t recognise this or doesn’t want to recognise this – the self-preservation element of the fudd is on display here. For example, I have even heard one old fudd at my rifle club point blank state “Maybe they’ll let us enjoy them a little longer if we keep quiet.”
Talk about gutless. Enjoy what, further increments of disarmament until we have nothing left? How well has the quiet appeasement approach worked, *Trevor?
However, you can see where this guy is coming from and where the criticisms of the boomer fudds also emanate from. He enjoyed the golden years of Australian firearm ownership where semi-autos, suppressors, pump-action shotguns, etc were the norm. Now in his 70’s he doesn’t care, doesn’t have the will or interest to fight for the younger generations coming through and is just playing for time until his caravan holidays to Cairns and bench rest shooting come to an end.
To be fair to the Trevors and Bobs, this is where the younger generation of firearm owners has to step up, take ownership and fight to restore what we had. This is entirely possible, contrary to the beliefs of some blackpilled nihilists in the firearm community that erroneously believe disarmament is some fait accompli.
Firearm owners want to be left alone to pursue their culture and lifestyle. The reality is there is a well-funded global group of people that don’t want to leave you alone and wish to dominate you by taking away your personal property, under the guise of safety and knowing what’s better for you than you do – all the while obfuscating (until Beto O’Rourke finally spilled it) the real reason.
It’s also worth noting that the term fudd often also gets misused as an ad hominem in minor disagreements between firearm owners and this is an important distinction to make. This is also not helpful and firearm owners need to be mindful of this as well.
Fuddism needs to be called out respectfully at every opportunity as that’s the only way to defeat it. Fudds aren’t going to change their minds unless they are repeatedly challenged on their views or their guns are up next for confiscation. There are some people who are too stubborn or narrow minded to change their views and unfortunately there isn’t much you can do about that.
However, there are a large number of people that are amenable to reason and this is where it can be won.
A reminder to the fudds – you’re not untouchable, you’re just a little further down the list. You don’t have to like all forms of shooting or hunting. You also have to understand that others may not prefer your shooting or hunting discipline, your views on self-defence or your choice of firearms. All you have to do is change your perspective from “you don’t need that” to “that form of shooting/hunting or firearm etc is not my cup of tea but I can see how others enjoy it and if it keeps people shooting or owning guns I will support it.”
Because at the end of the day, we’re all firearm owners and to hijack an infamous George W. Bush quote, an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.
agree wholeheartedly. it is because of this attitude on the part of so many that if i had the money i would more than likely immigrate to a place that has more liberty even if there was much greater crime. The gun laws we have now have made crime far worse than it ever was and as they take more away from the law abiding it will continue to get worse. Criminals dont fear getting caught by cops, they fear the victim with the means and will to fight back
Great article.
Great piece.
Yes, the late 20th century up to the 1996 changes, were indeed a golden age for shooting in Australia.
Higher standards of living and more travel opportunities opened Australia up to a people who still enjoyed mostly not-very-restrictive gun laws. You could go on an outback trip with a gun or two in the boot and if you wanted to use them, you used them, and if not, it was no trouble to pack them. WA was different and you could be unlucky if you were unaware you had to register your guns, but even there was easy-going compared to now.
I’ve long considered disapproval of sawn-off shotguns to be very silly and of some relevance to the wider topic of fuddism. One no-no from decades before 1996 was having a sawn-off shotgun, supposedly to help prevent armed robberies. As if the kind of people who commit armed robbery would be worried.
Nowadays our entire gun laws are this kind of craziness writ large. As far as I’m concerned, if you want to have a sawn-off shotgun, that’s your own bloody business. They may well be a good option for some people, such as old people with limited strength. I think with sawn-off shotguns, what has happened is that people hear the word and it’s like a dog salivating when it hears a bell. There’s no actual thought involved beyond the assumption that somehow a sawn-off shotgun is the work of the devil. Now it’s the same thing but writ large with guns as a whole fin the minds of most people.
No-one made a fuss about the ban on sawn-off shotguns, and this ban surely made it easier for Howard to do what he did.
I believe the same could be said for handguns. People even before 1996 tended to think only of long arms when they thought of guns. In most cases it wasn’t really fuddism, but simple lack of reflection on the matter..Long arms were easy to obtain and handguns were seen as something for police etc and a few unusual people who were into them for some reason. About as much thought was given to why handguns had to be registered as was given to the prohibition on sawn-off shotguns, ie good old Aussie bugger all. And look where we are now.
Before 1996, there was much less of a shooting community, and that was a good thing. I hate the fact that no guns can be legally purchased by anyone who’s not somehow or other made to be part of the “shooting community”, even if that only means getting a gun licence..Gone are the days when you could have a gun given or sold to you outside of the system and no-one cared. Post ’96, if you are a gun owner you are marked out, even if it is only the fact that you legally own guns, every one of which must be registered.
The line between gun owners and everyone else is really sharp these days and guns are not seen as something that are naturally to be found informally throughout the community. Social attitudes of course were changing before the gun laws but the laws themselves took this split to a whole new level, and a lot more non-gun owners than gun owners vote.
Some gun owners seem to make a virtue out of a necessity, and that’s a form of fuddism. The expensive, intrusive and demeaning steps that must be gone through in obtaining and keeping a gun license do NOT mark gun owners out as some sort of special breed. They only mean they are able to have access to what was previously taken for previously, access that can be removed for any time and for any reason. And the general population, which for decades now has had no exposure to shooing, would take a lot of convincing before they took any sort of interest in what happens to gun owners.
Re the Fudds, I always point out to them that the anti gun crowd are demonstrably using a salami slice approach (get one gain and then move to the next, the only end point is no guns in civilian hands), so they need to fight any encroachment and push back whenever possible to keep as many ‘slices’ between them and the anti gunners,
The only defences are to push back and to recruiter new shooters, we can win this at the ballot box, but we have to stay in the game long enough to do it.
What an absolutely amazing, intelligent, well written article! I am not so into the anti social media, but it should be shared by people far and wide! Defend your sport guys! I’ve learnt a lot from this site and others in the last couple of years.
Australians have go to get rid of the “she’ll be right mate” mentality. No, she won’t be right, she’ll be wrong if you don’t help her.
I’ve never voted for mainstream, anti 1st or 2nd amendment parties in my whole life! What’s wrong with people? Fudds should be reading sites like this! People should have a conscience! Shocking!
Like what this article is saying, the upper class want to disarm people! The proof is poor gun states in Australia and Australia-like gun law states like New Jersey in America! If they can do it to New Jersey state people IN AMERICA with their “2nd amendment,” they can do this to any country, state or territory around the world at any time! Britain had the Bill of Rights and other historical documents but around ww1 or before they had their guns taken away from them too! Governments are evil and the big business! They don’t like ordinary people having freedoms. They only want their Government’s Mafia (police) to be armed and MAYBE security guards. They don’t care that police officers go against 1996 legislation. Their motto is “some people are more equal than others” (which is obviously comedic and absurd but at our expense) I believe some NWO/Illuminiati person said once…..
>In basic terms, a fudd is usually defined as a simple gun owner who doesn’t see the need for anything other than what he or she has.
You’d be amazed how often I run even into Texans of all people with this attitude. I dislike people like this, that just simply go with the flow. But the great thing is that the Internet and WWW are almost entirely different beasts than how they were in 1996, so there’s much more power behind countering mainstream media promoted narratives, spins, distortions, lies, gaslighting, and the like.
“This is a similar predicament to the idiots in the Australian journalism corps who are currently whining about press freedom under attack, yet have done everything they can to subvert and oppose true freedom of speech.”
Rarely has a truer statement been spoken (written).