>part of it is personal. i lived in a county where NYS tried to locate a
>radioactive waste dump. and there were times that i did think that i'd be
>happy to help supply those pissed off farmers and rednecks with more guns
>if they *ever* thought they could get away with what they were doing. i
>was that steamed. and so were a lot of other people. they knew it and
>they were scared enough to actually worry about it from what i've found
>in research i did subsequently.
kelley, southernbelle, i lived my entire life in the big cities of el norte (ok, baltimore is just south of the mason-dixon line, but it's not a real city either) the only classification of living critters that makes empirical sense to me is two-legged (humans, pigeons), four-legged (cats, dogs, rats and drunks) and multi-legged (cockroaches, corporations and sundry sewer-dwelling lowlife) so i would not tell the difference between a redneck and a local yokel. So i think you are barking at a wrong tree chastising me (ah i miss mistress yoshie) for what you see as my attack on the redneck way of life.
what i had in mind was a totally urban phenomenon - a bunch of urban jocks and geeks dreaminng of being a tarzan - and gunz being a part of that dream. a short trip to *any* video outlet or video arcade provides ample empirical evidence of what i'm saying: gunz or rather images of guns being used as magic wands to transform - for a modest fee - this urban lowlife who is literally being told how to walk into tarzans, batmen and uebermenschen of self-sufficiency and prowess that defeats their enemies and gets them the chick of their dreams. it would be truly pathetic if some of of those kidz did not take that for real.
i dunno how this urban machismo of the north compares to rural machismo of the south (albeit flicks like 'green, fried tomatoes' or 'thelma & louise' want me to believe that the latter is even more raw than the former). otoh, i suspect that there is a great deal of villification of the rural life here - so at this time i must take your word for its face value.
>otoh, i'm ambivalent about it all. guns don't thrill me in any way
>whatsoever. i lived most of my life in gun country. i didn't really grow
>up around guns in the way it might have sounded from my parody. later,
>though, i lived with people who were avid sportsmen. i had always
>advocated gun control, until i heard the arguments of my friends from
>germany.
so what was that argument?
i'm quite ambivalent as well. i absolutely despise the glorification of violence and macho power, of which guns are a hierophany (i still think that eliade has much to say on methodology, as opposed to substance which i concur may be dated) that permeates pop culture - methinks that while religion is the opium of the people, this stuff is the free-base cocaine cum amphetamine of the people. but i have also a very keen sense of reality (which is why i got kicked out from all cult groups from boy-scouts to zen-buddhists) and i see a diffrences between images and reality. in reality, gunz are not as glamorous as they are depicted in popculture - i witnessed police shooting a man during an anti-war demo in santa cruz, ca - the most disappointing thing is the sound, just pop, pop, pop very very flat and then they take out an oblong object that you know is a human body - a far cry form those electronically enhanced and reverberated bangs and dramateic gestures made by the fallen heroes that hollowood produces. btw, the santa cruz liberals who were at the scene were most upset not by the cops shooting the man, but by the man shooting the police dog.
i absolutely cannot stand the vigilinate mentality behind the argument that guns protect 'law-and-order' in fact, each time i her that crap i tend to think about the most ridiculous form of gun control - just to spite this drivel. i profoundly detest all forms of self-righteousness and vigilantism, but i se that many us-eres are quite fond of it. i guess i came to a wrong country.
methinks, in a civilised and democratic country with instiutionalised forms of political participation for all, conflict resolution, economic opportunity for all etc. - there should be no room for gunz - there are much more effective ways of making political decisions and protecting one's rigths than shooting those we disagree with. however, the us is not such a country, au contraire, it's a very violent police state where the working class and poor folks cannot caount on anyobe but their fore power to protect them from both gangster and police violence.
however, i do not think that fire arms are an effective defence even in that situation. my opposition to gun control comes not from any perceived benefit of gun ownership (i see none, but i do not think gunz are evil either; as you said, guns do not thrill me in any way) but because such ban will inevitably mean two things in this country: 1. more police and a still bigger police state; and 2. more poor and working class people in jail.
>hope ya had fun el norte.
you bet. this was one of the most liberating trips of my life (real and virtual alike) - ah, that magic of the plymouth rock - more about it in the due time.
wojtek
Give me your watch, and I will give you the time of the day.