“They Saw Their Guns as Friends and Lovers”
When U.S. Army foot soldiers are issued their weapons, the drill sergeant says: “This is your rifle. Without it, you are nothing. Without you, it is nothing.” Growing up in hill country, it’s almost like that.
Reader ‘r’ commented:
“I lived in the hills of Vermont for 5 years...and the locals do love their guns. ... Many were poor and did look forward to hunting season for extra food. (By the way, half came up from the Mass. suburbs to "play hunter." Those were the scary ones.) No one ever got shot except a deer. It was the stories of violence in the cities that freaked them out... [and] the rich flatlanders who they had sold their land to cheap, that they really hated... They saw their guns as friends or lovers.”
Reader ‘c’s Vermonters and others like them are the true owners of the tradition that the NRA appropriates to itself, trading on it to coax play-acting flatlanders to buy guns. Ignorant of the Frontier tradition, they replace it with the street gang’s itch for “respect,” and buy assault weapons. Profits rise for gun manufacturers who reward the National Rifle Association,
NRA Executive VP, Wayne LaPierre, presented his crazy-like-a-fox rant for such weapons despite their superiority at nothing but mass killing. He blamed the media, video games, lack of a database of the mentally ill (useless if gun sellers can’t do background checks), and tried to whip up fear that “copycats are waiting in the wings... the next Adam Lanza is already planning his attack,” and that, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
He thereupon proposed turning the entire U.S.A. into an armed good-guys-against-bad-guys battle-ground, gun-toting teachers and armed guards in every school, another juicy spike for gun sales. Reader, ‘C,’ commented:
“How about mothers and fathers? Librarians, crossing guards, Santa Claus (especially in the mall)? Let's just cut to the chase and arm the kids.”
NRA membership includes many true inheritors of the Frontier tradition, like those in Vermont who are disgusted by the gun violence in cities—30,000 killed a year beyond the toll of maddened child shooters running amok. But the NRA and Wayne LaPierre do not represent them. They represent gun manufacturers, gun sellers, and proprietors of shooting ranges.
It is time for a new gun organization, one that will respect and speak for traditional gun owners who support sensible gun laws, and who will send the NRA, whose mouth is where the money is, into the land fill of history.
The next post will include a suggestion for immediate action.
When U.S. Army foot soldiers are issued their weapons, the drill sergeant says: “This is your rifle. Without it, you are nothing. Without you, it is nothing.” Growing up in hill country, it’s almost like that.
Reader ‘r’ commented:
“I lived in the hills of Vermont for 5 years...and the locals do love their guns. ... Many were poor and did look forward to hunting season for extra food. (By the way, half came up from the Mass. suburbs to "play hunter." Those were the scary ones.) No one ever got shot except a deer. It was the stories of violence in the cities that freaked them out... [and] the rich flatlanders who they had sold their land to cheap, that they really hated... They saw their guns as friends or lovers.”
Reader ‘c’s Vermonters and others like them are the true owners of the tradition that the NRA appropriates to itself, trading on it to coax play-acting flatlanders to buy guns. Ignorant of the Frontier tradition, they replace it with the street gang’s itch for “respect,” and buy assault weapons. Profits rise for gun manufacturers who reward the National Rifle Association,
NRA Executive VP, Wayne LaPierre, presented his crazy-like-a-fox rant for such weapons despite their superiority at nothing but mass killing. He blamed the media, video games, lack of a database of the mentally ill (useless if gun sellers can’t do background checks), and tried to whip up fear that “copycats are waiting in the wings... the next Adam Lanza is already planning his attack,” and that, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
He thereupon proposed turning the entire U.S.A. into an armed good-guys-against-bad-guys battle-ground, gun-toting teachers and armed guards in every school, another juicy spike for gun sales. Reader, ‘C,’ commented:
“How about mothers and fathers? Librarians, crossing guards, Santa Claus (especially in the mall)? Let's just cut to the chase and arm the kids.”
NRA membership includes many true inheritors of the Frontier tradition, like those in Vermont who are disgusted by the gun violence in cities—30,000 killed a year beyond the toll of maddened child shooters running amok. But the NRA and Wayne LaPierre do not represent them. They represent gun manufacturers, gun sellers, and proprietors of shooting ranges.
It is time for a new gun organization, one that will respect and speak for traditional gun owners who support sensible gun laws, and who will send the NRA, whose mouth is where the money is, into the land fill of history.
The next post will include a suggestion for immediate action.
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