Internal Immigrants
Published by Ninth Stage March 8th, 2006 in Culture, Guns.Tam posts about the reasons why there are bumper stickers reading “Thanks For Visiting - Now Go Home.”
It’s a problem everywhere migrants decide to stay. Oregonians hate Californians, even the Californians who’ve moved there hate Californians. Farther north a friend had his car windows smashed for having California plates in Washington state.
As a California escapee who has met other Californians in Tennesse I have to concur with Tam’s post. I’ve met too many recent arrivals who say “Tennessee is so nice but they need to …” and then describe some tax and spend project to make TN more like CA.
“They need to…” is an interesting phrase. “They”, meaning the nanny-state or “they” meaning Tennesseans? Either way they’ve made an error. If they mean “Tennesseans” what or who do these people see themselves as, why didn’t they say “we”? For these folks it’s time to move here in mind and heart, not just in body. Be a Tennessean and you make the change you wish to see. If it’s the former, it makes you wonder why this person left California and why they chose Tennessee. They can still make the changes they wish to see through the democratic process but most won’t because they simply want the state to take care of them without effort or responsibility.
Tennessee is not a libertarian idyll. The state is suffering to this day under the weight of a socialist experiment, Tenn-care, as if giving insurance companies carte blanche and an incentive to disenroll folks who’ve ever had anything wrong with them would lead to anything less than the disaster called Tenn-care. I bring this up to point out that some of the arrivals I’ve met have come to this state for the expressed purpose of using Tenn-care, imagine that. No wonder everything isn’t quite to their taste.
Good comes from bad and ex-Californians can learn lessons from others mistakes. It’s made me think before I open my mouth and say something stupid about what “they should do.” I am now Tennessean in heart and mind. I’ve traveled to shooting matches throughout the southeast and whenever I re-enter Tennessee I feel home. Leaving northern Alabama into Southern Tennesse the landscape changes, for the better, leaving the pine forests for the hardwoods of Tennessee, home.
About me in brief. I came to Tennesse from California because the firearm laws here (a large portion of my gun collection is device non grata in California) fulfilled my preconditions for a habitable state, no AWB, shall issue and Class III. And after visiting on a scouting mission, the beauty (I chose eastern TN the Wife middle, guess who won).
I have to add that the Tennesseans we’ve met since we’ve moved here have been very friendly to us and I was never so pleased than when one older gentleman at the range I belong too asked me “where’re you from”, “California” I replied, “well at least you ain’t some damn yankee” he concluded.
At least I ain’t some damn yankee.
Tennessee’s nice, but it’s one of those gun-unfriendly states that puts no firearms signs everywhere, even at the rest areas.
Two things.
One. I came from California, some gulags probably seem free in comparison.
Two. As a TN resident (perhaps one with a large bladder) I have to say I almost never notice a “no guns” sign. The only places I normally see them is at the entrance to some parks. That’s not advice but it may be a sign of a personal, comfortable myopia, I don’t know.
For competitve shooting my first choice was the Phoenix area but that was a big no-go for my wife and her health and Phoenix suffers from the large influx of Californians too.