Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/08/14
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Aug 14, 2007, at 9:23 AM, Gordon wrote: > From: lindnich@tesco.net > Subject: [Leica] Armed americans seen in Exeter, England > To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org> > Message-ID: <294555533.20070814133846@tesco.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > Kyle's book of course; in Waterstones books. I looks wonderful; truly > menacing to the rest of the planet, and very surreal. I must buy it. > > > -- Best Wishes, Gordon Nicholson If the Manchester Guardian runs true to form, there will soon be a spate of editorials and follow up letters lambasting the American gun culture. Some will even blame the election of President Bush on the gun toting yahoos shown in Kyle's excellent book. This is ironic since every serious student of global politics knows that British actions of the 1920s through the 1940s re. the Middle East caused many of the problems Europe and the US are facing today. The ambivalent feeling toward guns is of comparatively recent origin in the US. When I was a child in the rural Midwest in the late 1930s almost every family owned one or more guns, usually a shotgun and a small bore rifle. For a while the Red Ryder BB gun was the most sought after Christmas present in Indiana and Illinois. Young boys started out with BB guns at the age of 8 or so and graduated to 22s by their twelfth birthday. Boxes of 22 rimfire bullets cost 50 cents and were sold in every drugstore. Buying your first box of bullets was a rural coming of age ceremony. Guns were part of American culture and history. Only half a century had elapsed since the closing of the frontier. The battle of Little Big Horn was in 1876 and the Shootout at the OK Corral was in 1881. Just two decades had passed since the end of the Great War. It was considered patriotic for all young men to learn to shoot. Gun ownership was clearly the secret to military preparedness. Men could come off the farm proficient in firearms. What enemy would dare to attack a well armed citizenry. Boy Scout camps taught gun handling. Every high school in a small town had a rifle team. Farmers paid teen aged boys to shoot crows in their cornfields. For many the annual deer or turkey hunt was essential to a well fed holiday season. The NRA was a respected organization, not the butt of late night comic jokes. The low population density of the US tended to reinforce the acceptance of guns in the national psyche. Once outside of big cities, much of the US landscape is rural with an abundance of small game. Deer and wild fowl hunting are major recreational activities. In some states school closes for a week during hunting season so fathers and sons can bond while shooting the Thanksgiving dinner. No shortage of game either. Because natural predators have been driven out of inhabited areas, there are more deer roaming the nation's woodlands than there were when the Indians owned the country. But when the bulk of the US population became urban, guns were viewed as the tools of bad guys. War was conducted with tanks and airplanes. Bambi was a runaway movie hit. Thanksgiving dinner was bought in the supermarket. Too many presidents were assassinated or nearly assassinated and Moses led the NRA. People who had never handled guns developed an unreasoning fear of the unknown. The rate of gun ownership correlates poorly with the amount of social violence in any culture. Israel and Sweden both require military reservists to keep their combat firearms at home in case of a quick mobilization. Yet the rate of domestic homicide in both countries is quite low. Sierra Leone, a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world, has relatively few guns but plenty of machetes. Two of the safest places in the USA are Vermont and New Hampshire, both states with the highest percentage of gun ownership in the country. If tough gun laws were the only answer, then Washington D.C. and New Orleans would be havens of tranquility. In fact they are unreasonably dangerous. The US "love affair" with guns has often been criticized by the foreign media, most notably the British press, as the precipitating cause of the high murder rate in some cities. It is certainly true that the number of gun murders in the UK is relatively low but the domestic death rate in parts of Britain is almost as high as that in the US, save that the weapons of choice are cricket bats, broken Guinness bottles and assorted blunt objects. The editorials tend to ignore the fact that England has twice the rate of property crime as the US and four times the rate of auto theft. Perhaps, as a London Times editorial suggested, the stratospheric crime rate in Britain is because there are too few guns. If home owners felt that they had a moral obligation to shoot housebreakers and thieves it might convince a few bad guys to think twice. Then Britons too could leave doors and cars unlocked - just like in Vermont. Sorry for persevering on this topic. I just had to get it out of my system. Now I feel better. By the way, my car was stolen while living in the UK. Larry Z