Long story short, bitch is right, as usual:
1) guns are pretty useless for self-defense; normally, then you need them, the bad guy has his out already.
2) this issue is a distraction for real issues. Like, anyone notice what the SCOTUS did about abortion today?
3) I'd add that, while I think that apart from hunting, which I don't get but it seems harmless enough, unless you are a deer, guns as objet fixee wrt Protection Of Our Persons, Property, And Freedom are ignorant fantasies, gun control talk and activity just brings out the cockroach right from under its rock. I think we should get them have their lethal toys and hope they stay more or less out of politics, instead of inflaming them and guaranteeing their participation.
I suggest we change subjects.
--- bitch at pulpculture.org wrote:
> At 08:30 AM 4/18/2007, you wrote:
> >But the U.S. is an urban country too, if not quite
> as much as
> >Australia, but in our national imagination, we're
> still country or
> >small town. Is there nothing analogous in
> Australia?
> >
> >Doug
>
>
>
> the typical shotgun owner I've known is just a man
> or woman who wants it
> for hunting. I'd say that half the small town I
> lived in actually lived off
> the venison they brought home, and about 1/6 of
> those people lived off
> other wild game. When I was a kid, I lived with a
> German family who'd moved
> here after WW II. I was fine with gun control then,
> I was probably 17 or
> 16? When Reagan was shot, I mouthed off about gun
> control, only to face a
> very livid man, who lived in Germany when they took
> their guns away. When
> he moved to the US -- as I recall, they'd lost their
> homeland when borders
> were redrawn -- he was a fierce supporter of the 2a
> because he remembered
> what it was like to be without weapons for both self
> defense and for
> hunting -- which the people in their small town did
> in those day: lived off
> the land.
>
> Consequently, a carpenter, he worked hard, found
> himself an affordable
> hundred acres and a shack. He gradually turned the
> shack into a log cabin
> he built himself and the whole family hunted, living
> off the land eating
> goose, duck, rabbit, turkey, pheasant, venison. The
> son (and I) trapped
> beaver, muskrat, rabbits, etc. skinning them for the
> money. Once a month,
> mutti would buy chicken and cook up a chicken dish,
> sometimes they had
> hamburgers. Otherwise, they bought no meat from the
> store.
>
> People like that are probably rare these days, but
> he was more
> representative of the kinds of people who frequented
> the gun shop I owned
> with the wasband -- and the kinds of people who
> frequent the gun club,
> skeet and trap shooting ranges. They don't go on and
> on about using a
> weapon to protect themselves but, rather, talk about
> hunting and about
> accuracy when it comes to trap and skeet. (I agree
> that the mythos around
> country folk is overdone, but it does us no good to
> go in opp. direction.)
>
> It was the very wealthy people who lived in Ithaca
> where we made any money
> btw. We made money from gunsmithing and from the
> sale of unusual weapons.
> We couldn't compete with kmart and walmart on your
> typical rifle or
> shotgun. Hence, where we made money was on the sale
> of weapons that cost
> thousands, as well as on collector's item handguns.
> It was a side business,
> too difficult to compete, but a dream the wasband
> had since his father'd
> always had that dream but ended up dying from black
> lung after spending a
> life time in the mines.
>
> As for the high priced weapons, these were mostly
> things coveted by people
> into guns. The big 'scary' guns -- the 'assault
> weapons' -- were the ones
> purchased by millionaires who lived among the
> swankiest of swank in Ithaca,
> right alongside millionaire outdoor ad honcho,
> Robert Park. Yer avg Jimbo
> couldn't afford them. [1]
>
> I know few people who own handguns who live in the
> city, myself. The only
> one who's ever talked about it lives in Queens, my
> friend BlackAmazon who
> has a concealed carry permit that's only good in PA.
> I think men have a
> much greater fear of getting assaulted because, from
> what I observed,
> becoming a man involves a lot of learning how to
> present yourself in public
> -- to avoid fights and to show that you're ready to
> take on a fight. It's
> fascinating to me to watch men engage in this
> behavior -- everything some
> sort of challenge from "the other guy." Anyway...
>
> Personally, I tend to think people who think they
> can protect themselves
> with guns are kind of goofy. E.g., one night, I was
> reading in bed. Heard a
> noise. By the time the wasband threw on his pj
> bottoms, got the gun from
> the dresser, loaded it, we would have been dead. It
> didn't happen too long
> after the family in Ithaca was murdered by intruders
> who'd apparently
> entered their upper middle class home in a swank
> housing dev. on the
> outskirts of Ithaca in order to rob them. That
> freaked people out for a
> week, then it was forgotten as there was no big
> media hysteria. But it
> stuck with me how ineffective a weapon would be in
> the face of a night time
> intruder like that. Similarly, I've thought the only
> way I could feel
> personally protected was concealed carry. Getting it
> out of a pocketbook
> would be pointless were I grabbed all of a suddent
> while walking down a street.
>
> Ever since the night intruder incident with the
> wasband, I usually shake my
> head when anyone goes on about self defense. You're
> better off studying up
> and implementing ways to secure your home and deter
> thieves if theft is a
> problem. But then, I like statistics to go by, not
> rumors about crime (or,
> in other cases, perceived threats to police officers
> lives. snark.)
>
> My own reasons for supporting the 2a or, rather, not
> much getting riled
> about it are that it's a stupid issue for the left.
> Is this going to build
> solidarity? Is this going to get janitors raises?
> Going to get nursing home
> workers better union contracts? Going to put a dent
> in rape and abuse
> stats? Going to get women out of the segregated job
> market? Going to end
> the sexism that pervades the IT industry? Going to
> put a dent in racism?
> Going to address global warming? What?
>
> It's a distraction.
>
> Finally, I tend to agree with Charles who once
> pointed out that, in the
> event that we end up with some kind of violent
> transition from capitalism
> to socialism, his guess was that it would not take
> place on the level of
> citizens fighting the government with it's monopoly
> on the means of massive
> violence, but would take place on a divided terrain
> -- civil war -- where
> it may just be likely that it's armed urban combat
> among, to paraphrase
> charles, the Michigan Militia v The Detroit Militia.
> There will be no
> government, but at least two, if not more, depending
> on the way the civil
> war breaks up a region. And yeah, I can see that
> happening. In which case,
> if I'm alive, I'd pick up a gun and do my duty. But
> again, I happen to feel
> that way due to realizing when facing down the guns
> of the Pork Power at a
> protest that I had it in my to fight those fuckers,
> and any fuckers who
> threatened people I loved. I was ready to fight them
> and die that day, but
> I was going to grab a gun and go out shooting if I
> were. If I'd to go to
> the mat like that to protect my kid and I had it in
> me then. Blame it on
> being a mom and my fierce mama bear protectiveness.
> I dunno.
>
> Oh yeah: you can also blame it on the fact that I'm
> a victim of my own
> commie symp version of Red Dawn. :)
>
>
> [1] Who knows why these guys were into them. For
> some, it was a childhood
> memory of being on a farm and hunting with gramps.
> For
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