Well, a resume isn't a place for that sort of thing at all, but I do pretty much that now. My name is unique - look me up. For what that's worth, a good portion of my posts even here on HN have something to do with guns. I try to be more "informative" than "confrontational", but that's because of the nature of the site more than anything else. I'm here to discuss, share, and learn, not to argue.

I'm definitely a "card-carrying gun owner". I literally put guns in the hands of children on a regular basis (I'm a 4-H youth firearms instructor), a past board member of a state gun rights organization, and an outspoken advocate for the recognition of individuals' rights to both defend themselves and to own and carry the most effective tools possible to that end.

It would be fair to say that I'm anti-abortion as well, with the caveat that I'm much more anti-government. I believe abortion is a terrible thing, but I also believe that giving government the power to prevent it would be much, much worse.

> Or hell, even start a personal blog using your real name talking about opinions that are anathema to coastal dwellers.

I need to redesign my blog, and post more often, but hey - it's still in my real name: http://www.lyndsysimon.com/category/politics.html

> If you actually had opinions many people disagreed with strongly, you'd be bullied and held back as well.

Did you read my last paragraph? I'm an anarchist. The license plate on my Jeep is literally "ANARCHY." I'm actually not sure I could name a political position that's more strongly opposed by more people.

[edited for spelling]

Even if someone did put something on their resume that I personally agreed with, I still wouldn’t hire them. In the context of work, I only want someone who comes to work to do the best job they can at the company, collect a check and go home. I don’t want to talk about politics at work.

Sort of related, my wife and I are Black in a mostly White part of the city. We rode an Uber and the driver who was also Black immediately started talking politics because he assumed we “would relate to each other”. I agreed with most of his political points but that’s not what we wanted to hear when we are just wanting to have a relaxing night on the town, and have a few too many drinks.

That being said you need to be respectful of everyone, regardless of their religion, ethnicity, gender identification etc. I think it is very possible to do that and still be a strong conservative.

LOL - well, thank you very much!

Fountain pens are in fact awesome. I'm carrying a semi-custom Indian pen today, an ASA Galactic. I replaced the nib it came with with a TWSBI #6 in extra-fine that I pulled off a broken Vac700. I've smoothed it a great deal and it's probably somewhere between a medium and a fine right now. I have a broad nib that will fit it as well that I'm thinking of grinding into an Architect. My work notebook is a top-bound Clairefontaine A4. I prefer French ruled, but am using "plain" ruled right now.

I think you misunderstand - I'm saying that the professional contacts I've gained through this are about evenly split. Those contacts are not representative of the general population; people who agree with me are very disproportionally represented.

> And obviously you are coming from a specific background and applying for types of jobs where a your contribution is valuable enough to the company that they are willing to overlook potential political issues.

Of course. This applied even before I was a developer, though. For instance: when I was working as an electrician.

> If you were not as skilled, or applying for government, non-profit, banking jobs, or jobs in Red States your experience might have been completely different.

I could never work for government. I've worked for non-profits for the three of the past seven years, and the fact that they were considering accepting federal funding was a factor in my leaving that job.

I live in Arkansas, one of the reddest of Red States. My employer is in California. My previous employers are mostly in Charlottesvlle, Virginia.

> So try to recognize your coming from a privileged position.

I never said I wasn't - everyone here is coming from a privileged position. That's potentially relevant when considering what I say, but it doesn't make my perspective invalid.

> I know my organization checks Twitter accounts when they get resumes, and they will throw away the ones that use foul language immediately. This is bizarre and backward to be sure, and I'm fighting to change that but its still goes on currently.

I'm OK with that, because as I said before I see protecting the company's brand image as part of the employment contract. I wouldn't want someone working for (or with) me that doesn't come across as a reasonably mature adult. I wouldn't disqualify someone for "foul language" in and of itself, but I would absolutely do so if it featured prominently in their speech or if it were being used in an aggressive way.

No offense taken whatsoever.

I will note that "open" is not the same thing as "aggressive". I'm not trying to convert anyone, and I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable at work. For one thing, I'm an empathetic person and don't like to think that I've unintentionally offended someone. For another... if someone is working with me, by definition we're contributing toward the same things. Alienating them would harm damage that cooperative action, and I wouldn't be there if I didn't think it was right.

> I would really prefer not to work with anyone who openly and gleefully calls themselves an anarcho-capitalist.

Why? People's actions are what I care about, not their reasons for them.

At a previous employer I was working to increase access to scientific publications and supporting materials to the general public. One of the reasons I think that's important is because much of the work is funded by taxes, and I view it as much worse to use tax dollars for private gain than to use it and at least make the results available to anyone. Several of my coworkers were authoritarian socialists of various stripes. Their reasons for wanting to make that stuff available were wholly different from mine - but we shared a common cause. We'd discuss politics sometimes over beers or after a "crunch time" when we were all in the office at 2am and a bit delirious, but otherwise it just didn't come up.

> without needing to confront that

Ahh, that's the rub. I know I'm an extreme minority politically. I know many of the people I work with and interact with on a daily basis hold positions antithetical to my own. I have zero desire to "confront" that. Discuss it? Sure, if they're open to it. I'm happy to debate if someone wants to do so (and if they're similarly willing to not make it personal), because that's how I arrived at my positions.

Metaphorically, I feel like my positions have been forged over time by repeatedly beaten against the anvil of others' positions. Where they were deformed, they were weak. I modified them and repeated the process. At 35 years old, I feel like my views are fairly rigid - but that doesn't mean they are unchangeable, and it's because I continually do my best to test them and look for weaknesses. To me, a good political discussion is one where I come away with something to think about that I hadn't considered before. A great one would be where an inconsistency in my positions was pointed out to me.

I actively try to avoid this conversations with coworkers, because many people aren't comfortable with them. That's OK. If they change their mind later I'm happy to oblige, but it's not like forcing people to argue politics is something desirable.