From the article, something I had not known: &quot;Before the nineteen-seventies, the N.R.A. had been devoted mostly to non-political issues, like gun safety.&quot;<p>That seems to fit with the limited number of rural individual gun enthusiasts I anecdotally know and grew up with (namely, 1980-90&#x27;s). That is, these individuals take pride in their involvement with gun safety (via receiving and displaying awards, community recognition, and so forth), using rifles nearly exclusively for hunting purposes.<p>Gun culture represents a spectrum. In my rural area, church pews seemed predictably empty, come deer hunting season. Our family and friends hunted with rifles. Out-of-season, we stored them, in a semi-secured gun rack, in the basement. We did not own handguns. We did not subscribe to gun enthusiast magazines. That&#x27;s the extent of gun culture, for me; they were just there and we used them once or twice, per year.