Wow, I'm surprised I missed this... Have a few friends who are still practicing Scientologists... while Scientology isn't my "thing" so to speak, it really does work for them... and I do like L. Ron's SciFi works, and some of his other writings. . I'll have to look up the article - I bet it's fascinating.

Hi Susanne, my name is Bill Young, and I've been a fan of Ayn Rand since 1973 when I read Atlas for the first time. I even saw her in person in NYC and in Boston.

I saw yr recent post in the Gulch about those who despise AR, and what they're like, and it caught my interest.

I wanted to ask you, have you ever heard of a fellow named L. Ron Hubbard? In the late 1960s he wrote a now famous article entitled "The Anti-Social Personality", where he describes in great detail (based upon many years of research) the kind of people you described in your post. Though his writings were generally non-political in nature, it's obvious from various comments he'd made that he was an avid anti-communist, and strongly believed in the rights of the individual as did AR.

Have you ever heard of him?

Awesome. Thanks for the back story. I grew up shooting as well. These days I just shoot for fun, but definitely have been picking up some new guns in light of Obama

Since I was a kid. My folks were shooting sports enthusiasts and hunters, so I got an early start - back then, it wasn't a bad thing for a kid to handle firearms, know how to shoot and hunt, so it became a passion.

One of my earliest (and findest) memories was using my mom's 12 GA duck gun (old, scarred, and beat up) and going to a weekend shoot... and bringing home Salami, Bread, and winning $25 (worth 5 boxes of shells back then)... I also won a bottle of wine, but my folks got that one. After all... I wasn't quite 13... Never turned back. Branched into Pistol shooting, and then, when I was older, long range steel. Looking at Black Powder now... as if I needed another hobby!

Got into Gunsmithing a few years back as a hobby, found I liked it (and was, to my amazement, good at it), and began restoring antique and (occasioanlly) C&R stuff.

--shrug-- That's about all there is to it. Reworked part of my shop to do same-day in-n-out work for friiends and neighbors, which has been surprisingly fun and profitable - when you can turn something around in an hour or 2 where another smith may take 2-3 weeks to do the same job, it gives you a certain good feeling about helping the hobby!

Nice intro. How did you get involved shooting guns? I always love to hear people's stories