Could you be a gun nut?

Everyone knows someone that is referred to as a “Gun Nut”? Perhaps you’re that person. Just what constitutes a “Gun Nut”? Do you have to own a lot of guns to be a bonafide “Gun Nut”? If so, how many?

The number is not all that important. In my mind it has more to do with your daily – or more accurately – hourly thought process that lands you in that category.

Now I’m not talking about the criminal kind of Gun Nut, I’m thinking about the law-abiding kind that has, let’s say, got a little bit obsessive about the whole affair.

I’ve given this topic a fair bit of thought and then taken a personal inventory. According to my “Gun Nut Scale” I fall squarely into that realm.
Here is a list of indicators – all of which I have observed in my self-examination:

• If you pause movies so that you can identify the firearm being used in a scene – you might be a Gun Nut.
• If you can readily identify the kind of gun used in a movie without pausing it – you might be a Gun Nut.
• If there is a pile of 12 or more magazines on guns, reloading, hunting and related topics piled askew on the table beside your bed – you might be a Gun Nut.
• If that pile continues underneath your bed, and there’s a copy of Guns and Ammo draped over your toilet tank – you might be a Gun Nut.
• If you still have a tattered copy of the 2008 Peterson’s Hunting Giant Gun Catalog – you might be a Gun Nut.
• If you have memorized the average muzzle velocity of four or more high-powered rifles – you might be a Gun Nut.
• If one of your Internet favourites is www.canadiangunnutz.com - you’re most likely a Gun Nut.
• If you stare longingly at the rifle and shotgun pages in Cabela’s catalogue with the same yearning as an 18-year-old boy looking at a girly magazine – you just might be a Gun Nut.
• If you remember every gun you’ve ever owned and talk about the ones you’ve sold or traded away like they are some kind of lost love – you might be a Gun Nut.
• If you have ever sold a gun and then bought it back from the person you sold it to because they just weren’t taking care of it properly – you just might be a Gun Nut.
• If you sold a Winchester model 70 with Weaver see-through mounts and a Tasco 4X scope so you could buy an engagement ring for a girl but secretly don’t worry about it because it wasn’t a pre-1964 Winchester model 70 collector’s item – you most definitely are a Gun Nut!!

And honey, if you’re reading this, I still would have sold the Winchester model 70 even if it was a collector’s item. (I just might think about it from time to time.)