Personlly I like firearms, I'd be in the wrong job if I didn't. I have been shooting in various forms since I was 12. I am fairly preficient with rifle, pistol and shot and I am qualified to run a shooting range. The wife is American and she hates firearms.
The father in law's side of the family are pretty much all republican and for the most part gun-carrying NRA members. Before I met the wife I knew very little about this side of America and I had a lot of misgivings due to my ignorance and foregone conclusions. They weren't a bunch of ignorant fools with no idea of what's going on around the world. Indeed my father-in-law has a mensa-like IQ and we have had many discussions about many worldly topics which have challenged my thoughts and opinions on what I thought I knew. Although he wouldn't change his opinions we have reasoned debate where we both listen to and respect each other's point of view. One of his friends is on the complete otherside of US politics. She is again very very smart, being a retired judge, and very well travelled. A staunch Democrat and very very 'green'. There is no debate on the climate with her, once you even start to talk about climate change if you dont agree with her then you are alien. End of. Now I thought that this entrenchment of opinions would be the other way around.
My wife's uncle sadly passed away earlier this year and he took me deer hunting a few years ago. He has about 20-30 acres and instead of a gun-cabinet he has a gun room. Yup, you name it he had it. He lent me an M14 with snow stock for the hunting trip. The first thing he did was check my weapon safety skills, he wasn't confident that the military would have taught me to the level that is deemed acceptible for NRA members, a fact which shocked and partly offended me. Indeed there were a few moments when I got that look where I had done somthing, completely normal in my line of work, but was not up to the standard of safety they expected. However they were nice and polite to me about it.
There was no loud shouting and 'hooting' when one guy made a kill, just a quick clean wth a knife and a comment that the shot wasn't as clean as he would have hoped, he was a few inches off the sweet spot. The deer was then taken away and hung to mature in an outhouse. It wasn't a trophy, it was food and the venison stew we had that night from a previous kill was delicious.
Many, although admittedly not all, of the gun rampages I hear of in the US are often commited by people who have had no upbringing with firearms, yet the ease of access to them (unchecked and without a parent figure to develop the necessary respect for firearms) is alarming to me. It would seem to be more of a problem with society rather than with firearms. Anyone can get a firearm, anywhere, if you try hard enough whether it be legal or not. You are never going to get rid of them. Indeed history dictates that if a state/country bans firearms gun crime will increase. In countries where nearly everyone has a firearm because they have all done military service you often find that gun crime is low. Is it because everyone is armed? Or is it because everybody has used and thus respects firearms?
So what do you do to solve it? Arm everybody? Scary! Ban firearms? Bad idea! Do nothing? Worse still! It's a question to which nobody has the right answer but the first reaction to it by the masses is often the worst.
I would certainly not take everything at face value when it comes to America. I would certainly throw away your stereotypes and the horseshit you are fed by the media. I have got to know that place pretty well over the past 10 years and I have had pretty much everything I thought I knew discredited.
I will most probably be moving there in the near future, I made a promise to the wife. But on one condition; that I could have a pistol, a rifle and shotgun.... for shits and giggles down on the range and, of course, just in case
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Topic: Guns and Americans (Read 1419 times)