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Wayward5oul -> RE: America’s Gun Madness, as Seen From Europe (10/9/2015 7:52:21 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
For me, there have been two kind of alarming experiences re guns in my lifetime: the first, when I visited France and saw the gendarmes carrying them in Paris; the second, when I took a flight from Heathrow Airport here in England, and saw cops carrying not just guns but damned great big rifles. (Automatics or whatever - I've no interest in ever finding out. Just big, fucking ugly, nasty-looking things.)
The ordinary Brit experience is never to see a gun * at all *. Seriously, I'd never seen a firearm outside of films till I was in my twenties - and this, from the son of a London policeman who was a qualified marksman and licensed to draw a gun from the store when required. (He hated guns, with an absolute visceral disgust. He said once that the sight of one made him feel pretty similar to the way he felt when he saw a rat - just instant revulsion.)
And on this side of the pond, it is an entirely different experience. I can't remember a time that guns weren't in my house. I was taught from the very beginning to not touch, and I didn't. But I would sit there and watch my dad and my uncles clean their guns after a hunt. I lived out in West Texas, which I pointed out in the Houston thread on another board.
Remember when you noted that where you are you don't have to deal with things rising up out of your front lawn to kill you? That was just an average day in my childhood. I really did have a shoebox full of rattlesnake tails taken from the snakes my dad killed in our yard and driveway. I remember one time I walking around the house with him, and saw what I thought was a stick sticking out of a hole in the foundation. I grabbed it and it came to life in my hands. It was a snake, and my dad grabbed it from me and stomped into into the ground with his boots.
At one point we lived so far out in the 'range' that my grandfather gave my mom a hunting rifle for her birthday, because she and my dad hunted for a lot of our food. They were even attacked by a bear one time. My dad would laugh about how he looked around and saw my mom, all 5 feet 2 inches of her, whaling on that bear with her gun. Not shooting it, because it was too close for that. So she was trying to beat it away from her with the gun. You may look at something like that and say 'how could someone live like that?' But the fact is, I am damn proud of my mom for that.
For several years in my childhood, I lived in a predominantly Asian family. I was a Caucasian girl, living with Asian brothers and sisters, in an area where a significant portion of the population was Hispanic. That made for a unique set of circumstances for me growing up. The stories I could tell you. What got me through all of that? I was brought up to face struggles head on, whether it meant studying hard so that I could provide my own future for myself as an adult (something my mother drummed into my head from an early age, as she didn't want me to have to depend on the men in the family to survive) or whether it meant whaling on a bear with a hunting rifle. I was brought up to depend on myself, and take responsibility for myself,. And I am pretty proud of the way I have lived a lot of my life. And I attribute it to these values.
Granted, I think part of all this was being in the Southwest, where the idea of independence and self-reliance is stronger that it may be in say, Seattle. But some of what I have described is ingrained into the culture as a whole. It is not as strong as it used to be. Some areas are still strong with it and others are not. That has created a big gap in areas, regarding what people think it is to be an American, and it is this disconnect that I think drives a lot of the conflict that
I see in the country.
Do I believe that we are going to have to make compromises on gun control issues to resolve this? Yes, I do. And while there are some controls that I
think are reasonable, I am sure there will be some that will piss me off. And I don’t even own a gun myself.
But the reason there is no gun in my house is because I know that I am responsible for whatever happens with any gun that is in my possession. And since I don’t know how to use one properly, I am not going to put myself or my son in a situation where an accident can become deadly. Whatever were to happen, it would all be on me. And everyone that I know that owns guns feels the same way. Everyone I know that has a gun has a gun safe. Most of them are bolted into the floor so that a robber couldn’t even make off with it to try and break into it later. People do not want others to get their weapons.
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