I put up a link to the Guns and Ammo story on my FB page and got some very interesting responses. One of my friends posted the following comment.
I own a gun as well, and I can discuss the merits of a shotgun versus a handgun for home defense all day because It is a subject that interests me. I also play my share of FPS video games, and consider Splinter Cell to be the greatest video game series to date.
However, I consider myself a gun owner and that's about it.
People like the ones I was referring to are zealots who refuse to even consider ways we can modify our pervasive gun culture and put a dent in the annual culling of over 11,000 of our fellow citizens. It is a mentality that makes no sense to me at all, from a logic standpoint. Their behavior these days looks less and less like people working to protect a Constitutionally guaranteed freedom and more like religious fervor and proselytizing.
Culling...religious fervor...proselytizing...check, check, and check.
When I told him of my prediction (a shooting at a gun show or some other place frequented by the gun community), he didn't agree and was surprisingly cynical.
They'll do what every one else does whenever a horrible crime makes the news: they'll ignore how their culture has contributed to the crime, then write it off as the 'actions of a sick individual', and go on about their lives, blinders intact. Some will even defend and apologize for, the individual in question.
If so-called "responsible" adults can do this with crimes like rape, they can do it with spree shootings.
Sadly, he might be right.
2 comments:
So your friend believe there is a 'culture' of rape? Tell us more.....
I can discuss the merits of a shotgun versus a handgun for home defense all day
and
zealots who refuse to even consider ways we can modify our pervasive gun culture and put a dent in the annual culling of over 11,000 of our fellow citizens
I'm constantly amazed at people like that who cannot see the inherent contradiction in these two thoughts.
Criminals break the law by definition. England is almost ideal for implementing a gun ban, considering it's an island nation. Yet criminals there still get guns. And you want to hand the advantage to such people?!?
It's not the "gun culture" that's the problem, it's the "criminal culture". If you separate the statistics for the largest inner cities from the rest of the country, you discover that the majority of the United States has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world. But those inner cities have one of the highest rates. It is that violent inner city culture (gangs, drugs, fatherlessness, etc.) that needs to be addressed. The use of guns is a byproduct of that culture, not the cause.
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