What's your take on American gun culture?

[Rawley]

According to Canadian people in the video that should know, shootings are very scrutinized to determine if they're self-defense. Combine that with less belief that guns are needed for self-defense (Canadian gun people in the video) and it's easy to see cultural differences.

?? You don't believe shootings in the home in the US are scrutinized to determine if they're self-defense?

 

[Fiddytree]

Note: This is not a gun control thread.

This is intended to be an open discussion thread. Post what you think American gun culture is. Although America's international and national gun cultures are related, this thread is about domestic/national gun culture.

This Vice video (viewing is voluntary) shows some stark differences between Canada and America's gun cultures. One of the biggest cultural (not gun control) differences is that the Americans featured say they want guns for self-defense, the Canadians don't. Another is that Canada doesn't seem to have and/or encourage castle laws, self-defense (and ~defense of property?) at home.





Note: This is not a gun control thread.

I would like it a lot more if the American gun culture would divest itself from the flag waving nationalism to justify having firearms for self-defense, hunting, or just as a fun hobby. I don't think people with firearms are contemporary Patrick Henry's just because they spent money on a toy.

 

[Rawley]

I would like it a lot more if the American gun culture would divest itself from the flag waving nationalism to justify having firearms for self-defense, hunting, or just as a fun hobby. I don't think people with firearms are contemporary Patrick Henry's just because they spent money on a toy.

"flag waving nationalism?"

 

[OlNate]

Gun nuts or gun owners?

There are gun owners who really do have a shotgun, maybe a handgun, in the home for legitimate self-defense. There are people who live at the gun range.




And then there are a bunch of yahoos who watched too many Westerns and altogether too much Rambo.

These are the people who see rifles as penis-extensions; idiots, but more dangerous than the ones who settle for giant pickups with oversized tires and a ladder so they can climb into the driver's seat.

The American phenomenon of flexing over guns is interesting... I mean, I hear the mantra "a gun is just a tool" all the time, but you don't see Facebook posts of dudes in camo standing aggressively with their jigsaws or socket wrenches...hehe... There is a weird sub demographic within American gun culture that seems to believe the gun makes the man....that's weird to me.

 

[The Old Soul]

A gunslinger gun culture. I grew up with guns. For hunting and shooting, target practice. They were never even considered for self-defense. Then these anti-govt, 2A nuts came around. Thinking any moment the feds are comin' to get ya. You need guns to protect yourself from the govt. Oh, yeah, and everybody else, too. More innocent people are killed by guns than not.

Wish I was...a wild west heeee-ro.
How young were you when you saw your first shootemup western? And how long since you've seen a modern show with a gun in it? No escaping the glorification of firearms in America.

 

[TomFitz]

Reminds me of the Michael Moore film where he interviews Canadians about self defense and guns. They say they don’t lock their doors and then they tell him they have been robbed 5 times.

The difference in gun culture is Canadians are apparently stupid

I wonder if you just made that up.

 

[Subieguy]

Too many people with questionable mental health issues still have it way to easy in getting guns.

 

[TomFitz]

Wish I was...a wild west heeee-ro.
How young were you when you saw your first shootemup western? And how long since you've seen a modern show with a gun in it? No escaping the glorification of firearms in America.

Wild west heroes didn’t carry AR-15’s.

 

[TomFitz]

American gun culture begins:

"In the Palmetto State, the integration of the state militia by Republican governor and Union veteran Robert K. Scott ignited the cries of “race war” from native whites who viewed the move as a tyrannical attempt to put the “bottom rail on top.” White men refused to serve alongside black men and instead formed their own “rifle clubs.” The clubs advertised their meetings as opportunities for members to practice their shooting and riding skills, and they were ostensibly civic organizations that posed no danger to the state’s black majority state government. In truth, club members were training for attacks on state government officials. Sensing the impending danger, the governor outlawed private armed organizations, but they simply changed their names, becoming organizations such as the Allendale Mounted Baseball Club or First Baptist Church Sewing Circle. Members would often drill outside black political meetings in an effort to intimidate potential voters. They broke up rallies organized by their opponents and they escorted white political candidates like future governor Wade Hampton, effectively serving as his private army.

Rifle club members were required to provide their own weapons. Martin Gary, the leader of South Carolina’s White League, informed rifle club captains that their men should be “well armed and provided with at least thirty rounds of ammunition.” But money was tight, and not everyone had a reliable weapon. So rifle clubs pooled their money to purchase the newest state-of-the-art firearms. The Colleten Mounted Rifle Club collected $116, enough to buy 38 new Enfield rifles and 23 boxes of bullets. The St. Martin’s club failed to collect enough donations, so they forged their own ammunition.

These weapons enabled the rifle clubs to intimidate African American voters and public officials, but they also became important emblems of white manhood. According to a young journalist from Charleston who covered the rifle clubs, a gun became a part of a man’s self-presentation and a sign of his racial and political allegiances. The bigger the gun, the better. A “.38 was the very smallest caliber tolerated in respectable society,” the journalist wrote. Without a gun, one could feel exposed and vulnerable. “A man without a revolver,” he explained, “felt undressed and embarrassed, as a man would walking the public streets at noon lacking his trousers.”'

Gunning for the Flag: Guns and Reconstruction

Before white supremacists in the post-emancipation United States ever reached for the Confederate battle flag, they reached for their guns.

werehistory.org

That was interesting. Protestants in Northern Ireland did almost the exact same thing.

 

[Evilroddy]

Gun culture in America is inexorably linked to brutal settler-colonialism, to a false narrative of rugged individualism, to property rights, to self-defence and to securing the ability of well-regulated state militias to defend the USA from invasion in the absence of a large Federally-controlled standing army. The settlement is almost done as space has all but run out in most of America. The rugged individualism was always a misrepresentation as America was built and maintained by communities and commonwealths and not so much by armed individualists standing alone against the hordes. Property ownership levels are now rapidly dropping in America due to income and wealth polarisation, as more and more Americans have become marginalised day-labourers who rent rather than own immoveable property. The US military (the most powerful military in the world) has replaced and absorbed the state militias, making them and the second amendment largely moot. Self-defence has changed from a predominantly low-density, rural type of self-defence against a wide spectrum of threats into a predominantly high-density, urban type of self-defence against other armed human beings. Guns are both the problem and the preferred solution to this new version of the urban self-defence issue, creating an increasingly predatory and destructive feed-back loop of more powerful firearms in the hands of more criminals and more self-defenders alike, creating a spiral,of escalation.

Thus three of the four pillars of American gun-culture have crumbled and fallen away, leaving only self-defence, predominantly in crowded urban environments, as the last demographically relevant and remaining basis for that gun-culture. The marketing of fear has allowed the pro-gun lobby to balloon the "gun-problem" and to sell the "gun-solution", thus maintaining American gun-culture's relevance and the relevance of the pro-gun lobby in modern American society. However it has done this at the cost of creating a societal caldron of firearms-fuelled injury and death, while the other three pillars of gun-culture have fallen away. Welcome to the self-predatory, gun-marketing, gun-culture of today's America.

Cheers and be well (if you can).
Evilroddy.

 

[Antiwar]

Canadians: What about the tyrannical government angle? Is your government taking advantage of you because you don't have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms (I assume)?

Militia: Is Canada being invaded?

 

[Fiddytree]

I wonder if you just made that up.

My memory of “Bowling” is very limited, but I think that tracks with his humor and argument style. He ascribes stereotypes on both his villains and his “normies.” Plus, we in the northern Midwest *did* used to joke that we or our parents had unlocked homes. Normally, though, the argument is that “here” “we” don’t have violence and crime like “they” do, and so doors are unlocked.

 

[pamak]

Gun nuts or gun owners?

There are gun owners who really do have a shotgun, maybe a handgun, in the home for legitimate self-defense. There are people who live at the gun range.




And then there are a bunch of yahoos who watched too many Westerns and altogether too much Rambo.

These are the people who see rifles as penis-extensions; idiots, but more dangerous than the ones who settle for giant pickups with oversized tires and a ladder so they can climb into the driver's seat.

For two of the guys in the top picture, the biggest threat to their life is not a bad guy with a gun.

It is obesity.

 

[pamak]

I am not that alien to the concept of the American gun culture because it has some similarities to the gun culture in a particular island in Greece (Crete) which is the birthplace of my father and I hav been exposed to its culture

Guns on Crete set back Greek efforts to save lives | eKathimerini.com

All the road signs in the mountain villages in the regional unit of Rethymno on the island of Crete are riddled with bullet holes.

www.ekathimerini.com

The pro-gun sentiment is so strong that Greek gun control laws are (mostly) not enforced in that island

 

[Crovax]

I wonder if you just made that up.

I wonder if you have seen the movie. I did misremember it a bit. The lady never said exactly how many times she was robbed

Have you ever been a victim of crime?

Yes.

What kind of crime?

Uh, I've had people walk in while I've been sleeping and vandalize my home and steal from me.

And that didn't want to make you lock your doors at night?

No. No.

 

[Buckeyes85]

My thought is that America is not a gun loving nation, but a gun obsessed nation. To what extent that contributes to any gun/murder related issues, I do not know. But the obsession many in our country have with guns is not healthy.

 

[Torus34]

There exists a perfectly legal way to begin to bring US gun deaths per capita down to the levels of other modern democracies. It will take immense public pressure on our federal legislators, but as the publicity of gun deaths ratchets up, that pressure will build.

The US Constitution defines a process for amendments. That may be what it will take to end the level of annual slaughter once and for all. Couple that with a very severe sentence for illegal possession and the number of guns extant will decrease sharply.

Regards, stay safe 'n well ... 'n un-shot.

 

[phoenix2020]

Gun culture in America is inexorably linked to brutal settler-colonialism, to a false narrative of rugged individualism, to property rights, to self-defence and to securing the ability of well-regulated state militias to defend the USA from invasion in the absence of a large Federally-controlled standing army. The settlement is almost done as space has all but run out in most of America. The rugged individualism was always a misrepresentation as America was built and maintained by communities and commonwealths and not so much by armed individualists standing alone against the hordes. Property ownership levels are now rapidly dropping in America due to income and wealth polarisation, as more and more Americans have become marginalised day-labourers who rent rather than own immoveable property. The US military (the most powerful military in the world) has replaced and absorbed the state militias, making them and the second amendment largely moot. Self-defence has changed from a predominantly low-density, rural type of self-defence against a wide spectrum of threats into a predominantly high-density, urban type of self-defence against other armed human beings. Guns are both the problem and the preferred solution to this new version of the urban self-defence issue, creating an increasingly predatory and destructive feed-back loop of more powerful firearms in the hands of more criminals and more self-defenders alike, creating a spiral,of escalation.

Thus three of the four pillars of American gun-culture have crumbled and fallen away, leaving only self-defence, predominantly in crowded urban environments, as the last demographically relevant and remaining basis for that gun-culture. The marketing of fear has allowed the pro-gun lobby to balloon the "gun-problem" and to sell the "gun-solution", thus maintaining American gun-culture's relevance and the relevance of the pro-gun lobby in modern American society. However it has done this at the cost of creating a societal caldron of firearms-fuelled injury and death, while the other three pillars of gun-culture have fallen away. Welcome to the self-predatory, gun-marketing, gun-culture of today's America.

Cheers and be well (if you can).
Evilroddy.

Great, thoughtful summary - thanks!

 

[Captain Adverse]

There exists a perfectly legal way to begin to bring US gun deaths per capita down to the levels of other modern democracies. It will take immense public pressure on our federal legislators, but as the publicity of gun deaths ratchets up, that pressure will build.

The US Constitution defines a process for amendments. That may be what it will take to end the level of annual slaughter once and for all. Couple that with a very severe sentence for illegal possession and the number of guns extant will decrease sharply.

Regards, stay safe 'n well ... 'n un-shot.

IMO if you really wish to start a rebellion, or push States to unite in secession, go ahead and try to remove or even dilute the 2nd Amendment.

What you are suggesting is the same as if one proposes to "reduce/limit/eliminate" the rights preserved in the 1st Amendment.

One of the first steps in any move toward authoritarian government is to disarm the general population. It seems to make them more "amenable to control" when the government has all the guns and the will to use them against anyone who disobeys.

Meanwhile, it does not seem to work so well when the population is armed and the possibility to resist remains an option.

 

[phoenix2020]

IMO if you really wish to start a rebellion, or push States to unite in secession, go ahead and try to remove or even dilute the 2nd Amendment.

What you are suggesting is the same as if one proposes to "reduce/limit/eliminate" the rights preserved in the 1st Amendment.

One of the first steps in any move toward authoritarian government is to disarm the general population. It seems to make them more "amenable to control" when the government has all the guns and the will to use them against anyone who disobeys.

Ironically it turns out you don‘t need guns to control the general population. You just need to post some crap on 8chan, Twitter and get Tucker Carlson to repeat it nightly. Boom, population under control.

 

[Captain Adverse]

Ironically it turns out you don‘t need guns to control the general population. You just need to post some crap on 8chan, Twitter and get Tucker Carlson to repeat it nightly. Boom, population under control.

Ah! You are talking about propaganda and the means of controlling the dissemination of information. The Left has that almost sewn up, with a few exceptions, and have proven the effectiveness of goebbelsian dicta:

1. This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it;

2. Not every item of news should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose;

3. If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself;

4. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred;

5. Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street;

6. We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection.

Seem familiar to the methodology of our various Media, whether News, Social, or Entertainment?

Thus we are faced with the constant demonization of our right to keep and bear arms. With opponents of this right labeling it "American Gun Culture," as if our entire culture is defined by this one freedom. Loudly broadcasting rare loner misuses, while ignoring or diminishing "good guys with guns." Examples of which only show up in local news as local heroes because to report it nationally would run contrary to the "Guns are Evil" narrative.

Except of course, the guns held by those who protect the powerful, and can be used to control the populace if ever fully disarmed.

 

[Craig234]

I have to recognize that my feelings aren't entirely practical. The idea of hunting animals I hate, while some people love it. This rolls over to human politics; I value human life and go pretty far in valuing it given other tradeoffs, while some people just look at people being killed and say 'too bad' and war in terms of how it benefits them and so on.

But I find things like animal food industries nightmarish while I enjoy the result. I'm a vegetarian in inclination but not practice. And this moderates my judgement of people on hunting and food, recognizing at least that my views are lacking in practicality.

I also understand a culture difference here, that people who have different views and are around hunting and food processing probably are annoyed by people who have a distaste for it. 'You'd like to think your hamburger grows on a hamburger tree' they might comment.

But I don't think I see them as able to recognize where they have similar shortcoming in their views like the effects of many guns in cities, and the price and what could help there. I mostly just see 'I want my gun, you can try to take it you lib'. I think to them, every shooting is 'other people' that don't affect them or at worst a price worth paying.

 

[TeZZa]

Note: This is not a gun control thread.

This is intended to be an open discussion thread. Post what you think American gun culture is. Although America's international and national gun cultures are related, this thread is about domestic/national gun culture.

This Vice video (viewing is voluntary) shows some stark differences between Canada and America's gun cultures. One of the biggest cultural (not gun control) differences is that the Americans featured say they want guns for self-defense, the Canadians don't. Another is that Canada doesn't seem to have and/or encourage castle laws, self-defense (and ~defense of property?) at home.





Note: This is not a gun control thread.

As a Pom, now living in Aus, I think it's ****ing nuts!

 

[Grandpappy]

I grew up 30 miles from Tombstone, AZ. Everybody had guns, some leaning against the wall in the living room. Nobody cared. We didn't shoot each other. I had a rifle at age 12, my dad taught me gun safety.
Now, with all the insanity of social media and the general lack of common sense in American society, brought on by a variety of failed institutions, mostly the education system, it's a problem.
Sometimes I don't care. Let the idiots shoot themselves, I think. Darwin takes control.
But a small part of me wants to try to fix it somehow. And it's way bigger than just guns.

 

[Torus34]

IMO if you really wish to start a rebellion, or push States to unite in secession, go ahead and try to remove or even dilute the 2nd Amendment.

What you are suggesting is the same as if one proposes to "reduce/limit/eliminate" the rights preserved in the 1st Amendment.

One of the first steps in any move toward authoritarian government is to disarm the general population. It seems to make them more "amenable to control" when the government has all the guns and the will to use them against anyone who disobeys.

Meanwhile, it does not seem to work so well when the population is armed and the possibility to resist remains an option.

Hi!

I don't see a problem if the procedures specified in the Constitution of the United States of America are followed.

There should be no problem from the left.

The right has, at every opportunity, expressed its belief in and reliance upon the Constitution of the United States of America. I cannot imagine the right being hypocritical over something done in strict agreement with the Constitution.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.