NYTimes Writes in Praise of Preppers?

Well, maybe not in praise of the “prepared citizen movement” (as the Times calls it), but it’s hard to find any outright scorn or denigration of those gun owners who are preparing for the excrement to hit the oscillating blades in reporter Thomas Gibbons-Neff’s piece on the movement, which is a refreshing change of pace from the paper’s typical coverage of gun owners. 

Gibbons-Neff chose to let his subjects speak for themselves, and his story is devoid of any commentary from gun control activists or critics who would accuse these gun owners of contributing to the “paranoid style” of American politics described by historian Richard Hofstadter in the 1960s. The Times story not only details the training that these preppers are doing (and why), but does a pretty good job of portraying these armed citizens as complex human beings instead of cardboard cutout stereotypes. 

The vice president of a construction company based in Tampa, Fla., Mr. Eppert represents the quintessential prepared citizen.

“If I’m gonna own this stuff, then I want to become proficient with it — not that there’s any illusions of becoming Rambo or anything like that. It’s just I enjoy the challenge,” Mr. Eppert said.

Wearing camouflage, a chest rig loaded with AR-15 magazines and black-and-white Adidas sneakers (he forgot his boots at home), Mr. Eppert spent the minuteman class shooting from barricades, practicing pistol draws and learning a new way to store ammunition on his belt.

Mr. Eppert’s AR-15 rifle had a close range sight, a flashlight and a sound suppressor, or silencer. Some students had infrared lasers on their rifles for night-vision shoots, a class Mr. Roscher also teaches.

And though Mr. Eppert has a less gloomy outlook on the future than his instructor, he stressed the need for self-reliance, especially with the enduring threat of deadly hurricanes across the state.

“Am I putting a bunker in my backyard?” he asked, jokingly. “I don’t have plans for any of that, but I think it’s important just to be smart and be able to take care of things.”

Gibbons-Neff also highlighted the work done by gun owners in a group called Protect Peace; an Orlando-based organization founded just a couple of years ago. The reporter spoke to co-founder Danielle L. Campbell, who detailed how the gun owners who are a part of the group are “helping local communities affected by gun violence.”

Ms. Campbell’s group helps provide medical trauma training; distributes naloxone, an overdose reversal drug, in impoverished neighborhoods; and hosts community shooting events attended by dozens of gun owners. She is also working to get members of the group amateur radio licenses so they can communicate in an emergency.

“Part of the reason why we do it is to really form a community,” she said. “We had a public defender, a police officer, state troopers, all kinds of people. It was just so welcoming and inviting. I think that’s where this whole concept was born.”

Campbell’s closing comment is one that may strike many Times readers as a surprise. All too often the stereotypical portrayal of a gun owner, much less a preparedness-minded one, is that of a solitary figure who hunkers down and keeps the world at bay as much as possible. That’s a far cry from the community of gun owners that Campbell is helping to build in central Florida, but it also mirrors the work of other organizations around the country that are working to bring gun owners together; from the Diversity Shoots run by Tony Simon in New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the dozens of chapters of a Girl and a Gun that have popped up in almost every state of the Union. 

Gibbons-Neff presents these gun owners as normal folks who may be doing something unusual to the Times audience, but not anything abnormal. That in itself is a positive development, and I hope that we see more of this type of reporting in the future… say, with the paper’s coverage of the upcoming NRA Annual Meeting.