Its hard to make any headway with a rational debate on a subject that rests on an non-rational foundation. I like guns, myself. Wanna go out to the arroyo and plink beer cans with a .22, this hippy is on board. But I loathe violence, which is the main reason I loathe handguns. I’m not entirely alone on that, there is that rifle/handgun divide, but when the debate gets heated, you are pressed to “take sides”, all or nothing.
Like a lot of lefties, for me, its “fuck it, keep the goddam things!”, the fight just isn’t worth it.
But to the subject: its also hard to seperate cause from effect. Do American men crave guns because they had toy guns as children? Do Canadian boys crave toy guns more than American boys? Do boys in general crave toy guns from some instinctual attraction to objects of power? Do men? And why do “pro-gun” advocates often feel the need to stress the “home invasion” scenarios. As a Master of Cringing Mantis Kung Fu, I’ve protected my home just fine, on the other hand, I’ve got nothing much to steal.
If I’ve got to pick something, I’d say its because, for good and ill, American culture leans toward the boisterous, aggressive and impulsive. Its a good part of why we are so beloved of the nations. Yes.
Just dropping in to say that I agree that the gun culture largely traces back to the Founding Fathers and the Revolution. If there’s one thing Americans are anal about, its our freedoms, whether it’s speech, or something symbolic like a gun. Hell, gun ownership is encoded in the Constitution as a freedom, which Canada does not have.
The symbolic nature of the freedom of gun ownership traces back to our FFs, but it’s been constantly instilled in our culture every generation or so. How many of our heros and major events have involved guns? Besides the revolution, you have other major wars that helped to associate the gun with overcoming injustice and tyranny. You also have the “Old West” and the “Frontier”, both of which are inexorably associated with guns and are big parts of the American culture; I don’t think any other country has an equivalent.
Sure there are equivalents in other countries. Think Samurai and the sword or the Brits and their Fleet. In Mongolia today the horse is STILL considered a huge symbol, as well as having a practical value. There is a country in Africa (who’s name currently escapes me) who has the symbol for an AK-47 on their flag. Nearly every culture has such symbols. With ours though it’s more personal or less exclusive…every American (well, in theory) can own a gun.
To American’s the idea of the gun is similar to the idea that the Japanese have for the Samurai sword…except that our idea of the gun is more inclusive instead of exclusive. But the symbol is very similar IMHO and is tied up in our national identity and the roots of our collective ideals.
I don’t think the Fleet is a very good example, since it’s not an individualist symbol, but the epitome of a collective/government symbol. The Fleet was only possible through the people of Britain acting together, through their government.
As for the Fleet…I think it’s very similar but I’m willing to concede that it’s debatable. The Brits have other symbols…the Royal Family, say, or even the Brown Bess rifle.
My point though was that gun ownership in the US is similarly such a symbol IMHO…Freedom of Speech is another one. They are symbols that we identify with being American, as well as practical rights that we enjoy.
In Canada they have other symbols that they associate with being Canadian. And that’s why there exists a ‘gun culture’ in the US but not a similar one in Canada…or in most other countries. JMHO of course.
It should also be pointed out that the US is very far from homogenous when it comes to attitudes toward firearms.
In urbanized areas, guns are hated in the extreme, Second Amendment be damned. And I mean be damned–people want it repealed, desperately.
In some cultures with a sort of “minority resistance” or “mafia” culture, guns are seen as a means to power. “Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal.”
In more rural cultures, guns are normal, they are used for hunting.
Some people react against the urban hatred of guns by creating an ideology of gun glorification. This then excites the anti-gun crowd, & rhetoric gets ramped up.
Really, this country needs internal borders & checkpoints to keep high-powered weapons which are inoffensive in New Hampshire or southern Illinois from getting into New York City, most of Massachusetts, or Chicago. But that’s hard work, & would offend somebody. So guns with a lethal range of six city blocks get smuggled into high-population areas, & gun hatred in cities grows, & the rural types, unaffected, still don’t get it.
No it is a simple disagreement. The source of societal problems does not begin with the tool in which the end result of said problems are manifested. Instead, it begins with the brain and heart of the individual holding the gun and pulling trigger, or the community in which they live, or the education in which they did or did not participate in. You state that we are selfish, I believe instead that your logic is lazy.
No, it speaks to the idea that on a day to day basis, most gun owners don’t have to defend either their life from criminals or from the government. As such, the firearms that they own are used far more for recreational pursuits, no matter how much that concept may confuse or disgust some, rather than life or death matters. I thought I made that point quite clear. I enjoy my guns mostly for their recreational use. The fact that thy are also useful tools for providing food and self defense are great too.
Bully for him. Give the “gun culture” here in states something to think about regarding the greater good and you might find many who agree.
I’ve lived most of my life in cities…small one’s like Washington DC, New York, Phili, Boston, LA/San Francisco, Phoenix and most recently Albuquerque (I know the last two don’t count btw…I’ve also lived for months or even years in several foreign cities but won’t go into that).
I’ve never hated guns. Most of the folks I know don’t hate them either. So…I’m going to have to call bullshit on this. I think the great divide is not necessarily urban vs rural on the gun issue but simply pro vs anti…or even moderate/conservative vs raving liberal.
Here is the thing…if indeed the vast majority of folks who live in cities were opposed to guns and were desperate to get the 2nd repealed then guess what? It WOULD be repealed. Know why? Because most of the friggin PEOPLE who live in the US live in urban or suburban areas genius. Or did you think that most of the folks in the US still live out on the farm??
Your views of the virtues (or lack thereof) among gun advocates is really not relevant to this thread.
While his expression was less than felicitous, he did not actually say anyone was stupid.
Sarcasm invoked as a personal slam is not going to move this discussion forward.
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Look, folks, the question is the origin of a particular trait in the culture. There is no need to defend or attack gun possession or those who attack or defend the same. Simply stick to the actual issue in question.
Despite the constant efforts of the gun control crowd, recent trends have been pro-gun rather than anti-gun. Most notably, the majority of states have now passed shall issue laws. These specify that if someone who is qualified applies for a carry license, then they must be given one, rather than allowing local law enforcement to deny permits at will. The first assault weapons ban was allowed to expire in the face of questionable constitutionality and dubious utility. And then of course there’s Heller, which struck down an outright handgun ban.
I’d say that the broad majority of Americans accept that guns have a valid place in society, and that efforts to delegitimize them have not made the country a better place.
Um…well, normally I’m perfectly willing to fess up and take my lumps. And I suppose I’m willing to do so here. However, I seriously thought his name said ‘foolsgenius’ (you know, the whole dichotomy thingy) and have read it that way for years. So…it wasn’t actually SUPPOSED to be a slam in the way you think it was.
It only takes 17 state legislatures to block a Amendment, fortunately. If the national constitution was subject to majority vote, the U.S. could be even more screwed up than it is now.
I would guess that the “gun culture,” (such as it is), took place in two separate movements.
The first was the invasion by white settlers of lands held by indigenous nations. This is actually pretty rare. The Spaniards used their military through the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries to actively conquer and reduce the Indian nations where they invaded. When the settlers moved in–often at the invitation of the governments–individual settlers were rarely threatened by the people who had already been conquered. As Northern Piper noted, above, much of Canadian settlement also followed military pacification rather than preceding it. In Australia, there were similar government efforts against a much smaller population.
In contrast, settlement in the U.S. (or its preceding colonies) advanced without the active support of the government and often despite active efforts by the government to prohibit it. (The British tried to forbid trans-Appalachian settlements and the U.S. government kept entertaining the fiction that each land-grabbing treaty would be the last while failing to take any serious measures to actually restrain the settlers.)
As a result, settlers continued to encroach on Indian lands and tended to band together using their own weapons, either for assault or defense. (There are instances of similar events in Canada, Australia, and Argentina and Paraguay, but they tend to be individual events rather than 250 years of ongoing conflict.)
The second aspect of the migration ahead of the military was that people tended to move into areas where there was no pre-existing structure of law and a lot of disputes were settled with weapons.
The second phase was the Western novel. Writers of fiction latched onto the cowboy as a reincarnation of the knight errant. Writers in South America did much the same thing with the gauchos. However, where the gauchos did not tend to carry firearms, their frontier having been pacified by the military, U.S. cowboys did carry firearms and used them. These actions were glorified in dime novels and, later, the novels of Zane Grey and his literary descendants and were ripe for use by filmmakers when motion pictures made their debut. This created an ongoing and self-perpetuating image that settling disputes, (always in defense of one’s property or honor, of course), was a legitimate and even “normal” way to behave.
Ahh. I’m probably just jumpy that this thread does not have to be the same old “is so/is not” brouhaha over guns and yet I see it falling into the same tired rut.
That right there is the problem. In a nutshell. Very plainly.
It is also the source of friction between the pro- and the anti- sides.
How can a gun be the source of a societal problem? It is an inanimate object. I have one right now in my basement. Is that a societal problem?
Back before semi-automatic weapons became as inexpensive and readily available, there were still gangs and thugs and people getting killed by violence.
Guns are not so much the problem as the values we attach to them. Guns in America are too loaded (heh) with meaning as symbols of culture, gender, politics, etc.
Of course, denying this and saying “it’s just a gun” is an excellent way to short-circuit any meaningful debate about the roles they play in our lives, which is something many gun types probably do not want examined too closely.