Introduction And Why I Started This
My ultimate goal is to be able to inject more minority voices into 2A activism and make more people see 2A as a very important right to be defended just like the First and Fourth Amendments
Hey there and thanks for stopping by. I have divided this post in three major sections:
Background (about me)
Reasons for starting this
What I hope to get out of this
Background about myself. I am just a regular guy living in a suburb close to a major city in an apartment complex. I have a wife and kid and a job working as a software engineer. I am a Muslim and I immigrated to this country, although my wife and kid are both born here. Thats just about it, nothing special really.
Reasons for starting this. Taking the oath of allegiance is the proudest moment in my life by far and I feel really really grateful to God for giving me such an incredible privilege to be a citizen of this great country. Ever since getting my citizenship I was thinking of doing something worthwhile and getting involved in the community in a meaningful way. Just giving donations to charities was not cutting it, but at the same time I could not find time to go out and do stuff and the pandemic is not helping either. I recently started a youtube channel as well and was looking to start a blog. Substack sounded appealing to me because one of my favorite writer recently resigned from a publication he founded himself and moved onto here, and also because all of us techies are naturally inclined to like sites with the word stack in them. See here and here, also here and here, hopefully you get the point. During registration process I was extremely surprised and happy to find out that I was able to register the guns.substack.com URL. I took that as a sign from God that I am meant for this :). I feel like I can grow a platform and lend my voice as an advocate for the defense of the constitution, especially the 2A, and inspire more to do the same. But why another blog talking about firearms and 2A you may ask. There are so very many doing the same and doing a much better job than what I may ever be able to do. I thought of the same before starting this and have come to the conclusion that it is still worthwhile for me to do this. These are my reasons for littering the internet with even more firearm content
Most of the firearm channels and blogs are run by very experienced firearm users, and which is a very very good thing. But there are not many channels/blogs which give a beginners perspective, someone who is extremely new to firearm ownership and is learning along the way. So I plan to document my journey with firearms and hopefully it will benefit not just me but to some of you all as well.
As I already mentioned, I am a new gun owner. Never owned any firearm before the pandemic, even though I had some firearm experience before but never owned one myself. And even now I just own one handgun. I do not live in a countryside where I have access to a lot of open area for shooting practice. The nearest open range is a couple of hours away from me. I live in an apartment complex and not in a house with a basement and a backyard and when I can I go to an indoor range to practice, maybe once a month. So I am definitely NOT the guy you come to when you need critical gun advice. However, I think there are a lot of gun owners in a similar situation like me who will hopefully appreciate my perspective on things.
My regular day job is in IT and not remotely related to firearms or law enforcement or security etc. I am sure there are a lot of civilians who own and love guns but have never and will never work the kind of jobs which give you access to firearms. If that sounds like you then great! That's what is going to define my perspective. I want to give a voice to the gun lovers who work in jobs where just the mention of firearms will be frowned upon, I get your pain. One of the reasons I am not revealing my identity just yet. Do not want to be ostracized at my workplace as that gun nut guy you know.
Even though I only have one handgun, there was a lot of learning I had to do to handle and operate it safely and legally. Especially if you are planning to carry it sometime in the future it is an even bigger responsibility. I ran into some issues which are obviously very basic, like using the slide stopper properly. I want to document the noob issues and hopefully that will help out someone in the future.
Want to talk a little bit about the choice of my youtube channel’s name - Guns & Coding. Seems like two very unrelated things at a first glance. However as with everything else in life, technology is very heavily involved with firearms. From their R&D to marketing to trading, technology is everywhere and coding is the workhorse of new technology. Also as anybody can tell you, guns as a hobby can end up costing a pretty penny. Guns are not cheap and ammo is not cheap, and you will never have just one gun for self defense. Like I only have one right now but I am already deciding on my next handgun, my first rifle, my first shotgun and on and on it goes. So yeah, you will need some money if you want to have a nice gun collection and also to train yourself. And in the day and age we are living, coding is one of the best ways to earn money without investing a lot of your time and money upfront in education. You do not need a formal degree. You do not need to get any state approved licensing. You just need to be good at coding and that can come with some practice. And one of the best things about a coding job is that a lot of them are remote, especially in the current situation. Which means you not only have the money to support your gun passion, you also have the freedom to move to a gun friendly place. Not many other jobs will be able to give you this type of flexibility. So yeah, guns and coding are much more closely related than you may initially think.
Last but not the least, I am a Muslim. If that happens to make my content more appealing to you, then great, if you don't care either way then that's great too. I hate doing identity politics and don't plan to make my religious identity the centerpiece of this channel, but I do not want to hide this fact either. I know just because I am muslim would turn some folks off so let me put out a small disclaimer. I was not born in this country, but I do not love it any less than any other patriotic American. I willingly naturalized as a citizen of this country. I stood up, took off my hat, put a hand to my heart and facing the American flag I took the oath of allegiance to this nation. I have taken an oath to defend this nation from all enemies and I meant every word of it. I love this country and I consider myself very lucky to be living here and enjoying all these rights that billions of other people can only dream of. Like just owning a firearm can land you in prison for years in so many countries in this world. Forget the whole firearm, in some countries cops used to plant a bullet and then arrest whoever they wanted to. But here we have it enshrined it in our constitution as an inalienable right. The 2A is truly what makes our country unique and I want to do whatever is in my power to make sure everyone understands it and stands up to protect it. One of the reasons I am mentioning my Muslim identity is that you can take almost any aspect of life and find many many channels run by muslims that cater to it. Fashion, cooking, parenthood, travel, politics you name it. But when I tried to find a firearm youtube channel being run by a muslim I literally could not find even one. I understand many in muslim community are scared of openly talking about firearms but the thing is it is a right, just like the right to free speech and when you want to defend the constitution you gotta defend all of the rights not just pick and choose. I know there are many muslim gun owners and many more who would become one just if they can get over that initial fear. It is not a small group and I want to be able to normalize firearm ownership and 2A advocacy within the muslim community and the best way to do it would be to lead by example.
What I hope to get out of this? I have started this as a side activity to publish my insights on firearms and related things and make some basic videos because I am truly very passionate about the subject. I hope that this inspires more people to join in the community. Even if one person reads my posts/sees my channel and it opens their mind then I’d be happy. I will donate as much time as humanely possible to this but obviously having a full time job and a toddler would severely limit that. My long term hope is that with enough support from the community I am able to pursue my passion full time and also produce good, relevant content and services to give back to the community.
P.S. - I have kept the default substack subscription options just in case anyone feels the generosity to support my work but I am planning to keep all the content free. Maybe in the future if I have enough subscribers and demand I will think about adding some extra stuff for paying supporters but have no plans as of now. Comments are only allowed by paid subscribers which I think is a good way to fight spam so I let that setting be. You can always engage me on my twitter or reddit however.
May peace be upon you all and God Bless These United States 🇺🇸