The media portrays the Wild West as a gun-slinging free-for-all when in fact, in Dodge City, Kansas (where Matt Dillon shot someone every week) between 1877 and 1886 there were an average of only 1.5 murders per year. Although there were plenty of guns in the West, for the most part they were in the wilderness, not in town where most communities made it against the law to carry a firearm and you were required to check yours in at the local sheriff's office.
Even during the Roaring Twenties when the Tommy Gun became the weapon de jour, they were quickly outlawed by laws passed in 1934 & '38. Those laws banned machine guns, taxed certain firearms, required some gun owners to register their weapons and created a licensing system for sending guns across state lines.
So, all of this gun rights hoopla going on today is just a bunch of crap stirred up by the gun industry through their lackey, the National Rifle Association, for the purpose of.... of course... selling guns! Capitalist greed. Plain and simple.
When confronted by one of those idiots who pronounce the 2nd Amendment guarantees their right to own a gun, simply point out to them that the 1st Amendment guarantees the right of free speech but that it's still unlawful to yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
Gonna be on the road this week and away from the computer but will try to check in from time to time. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with a little beauty. A candle festival in Thailand.
Excellent post C! However facts and logic are lost on knuckleheads so we continue the march to perdition.
ReplyDeletePretty, but all those bags landed in my backyard. Who's going to clean up this mess?
Be careful out there.
Those are special bags designed to bio-degrade and re-nourish your yard with needed carbon and nitrates. So relax, it's all good.
DeleteThose bags could all fly to my yard and I would be pleased.
ReplyDeleteSo StupidBowl Sunday about 5 doors down moms and pops out of town or some shit and the 16 yr old and his friends get the bright idea to pop off a few rounds from the old man's big bore whatever.Gotta love Detroit, 911 was called...1 million guns and 2000 coward cops that never show up for anything at anytime. Kids were lucky they were in the backyard, if they had been out front the block militia may have fired back.
Living in a city with a high homocide rate kinda takes the fun out of gun.
DeleteThe we-don't-need-a-standing-army-because-we-have-a-citizen-militia argument completely fell apart with the War of 1812. That was the war where we got beaten by Canada. Canada handed our ass to us. CANADA!
ReplyDeleteThe working concept dissolved completely into absurd lunacy with the Mexican War, with the execrable and hindering performance of volunteer units. After that, even Congress realized the US of A needed a standing army. So, that whole justification before the comma in the 2nd Amendment went the way of buggy whips and wooden shoes. The part since then, the horse-shit justification that we need our arms against an imaginary tyrannical government seems to be more of a self-fulfilling prophecy for getting yourself killed - witness the Alabama gunman in the bunker. That arsenal and bunker worked out so well for him, against 21st century methods and tactics. Meanwhile, the really important guarantees - the ones allow for peaceful resolution of grievances, like the 4th, 5th, and 8th amendments - are steadily eroded. Not much a gun is gonna do you after those are all gone.
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DeleteThat's pretty much what Bill Maher said when he contended the 2nd Amendment was eroding all of the rest of them.
DeleteMatt Dillon shot somebody every week??? Damn! I knew he could be obnoxious, especially when he played that high school bully in "My Bodyguard," but jeez, this is news to me.
ReplyDeleteYeah! And Kitty encouraged him. Often saying "When are you gonna shoot that guy?" Having some time on my hands I've been watching a lot of Gunsmoke. It's funny in retrospect how the marshal threatened to run people out of town or lock them up because he didn't like their looks. I guess thing haven't changed all that much.
DeleteI've been saying this for years..no one listens..
ReplyDeleteWell-said, and a great picture, to boot! But I probably saw every episode of "Gunsmoke", and I don't remember Matt Dillon being depicted as killing a lot of bad guys. (Of course, my rememberer doesn't remember as well as it used to.)
ReplyDeleteBe safe.
A bad guy a week might be a slight exaggeration but not by much. The thing is, in the movies people are killed with abandon and forgotten as quickly as it happened. No big deal. Happens all the time. Move on.
DeleteI actually think the insanity of gun culture partly comes from the glamorization of assault weapons in action movies. Not only are the gun-making corporation greedy the idiots have come to believe their manhood comes from a AR-15/Bushmaster with a couple of thousand rounds of ammo sitting in the closet because Norris, Governor Arnold, and Rambo dude solve all their problems with them.
ReplyDeleteI believe that as well, aided and abetted by the action games where wholesale slaughter is the object.
DeleteAccording to the second amendment interpretation that is so popular, I should be able to keep a small thermonuclear device handy in case the gubmint wants to take any of my stuff. Or if someone knocks on my door in a threatening manner.
ReplyDeleteYou got me to thinking. I wonder if there is some other kind of nuclear device? You know,like a ray gun, so you wouldn't even have to leave the house.
DeleteMy dream is to someday live in a world without guns. I know it's but a dream, but that's what dreams are for...
ReplyDeleteNice dream. I'm reminded of the opening scene in 2001 Space Oddyssey.
DeleteSomeone on our listserve at work posted a joke about a professor at Wyoming who wanted to make sure that the damn faculty didn't get in the way of his right to own guns. Someone took it seriously and wrote about all the students being armed, and what if you are teaching in a lecture hall and some student opens fire. It is her right to be able to protect herself and the university wasn't going to get in her way.
ReplyDeleteI had to stop myself from writing so many rude things like: 1. So the student has a gun and starts shooting. Are you going to calmly go to your bag and whip out your 22 to stop him while he or she is killing everyone with an armor piercing automatic weapon designed for one thing only?
2. Is it your right to make sure others die with you as you exercise your right?
In short, stupidity about weapons is everyone and fear keeps it alive.
Good article about the NRA in the recent Rolling Stone, by the way.
I meant to say stupidity about weapons is everywhere, but maybe the error was Freudian.
DeleteI don't even know what I think anymore about gun ownership--I don't own one for a variety of reasons: the two most important are 1. I don't like them--they are noisy and 2. I have trouble opening jars, so I can't imagine any real finesse with guns, even with training. My husband says I have made the world a safer place. He doesn't own guns because he would rather just kick someone's ass the old fashioned way. I don't mention that I have children because that doesn't seem to be a factor for gun ownership these days.
Good to see you posting, Mr. C. Love ya, man!
1. I do own a gun, a pistol I keep in the bedside drawer. I have owned it for nearly 30 years now and fired it only once a few years ago just to see if it worked. It did. And you are right, it was noisy.
Delete2. Most people couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a pistol so the thing we really need is more people in a crowded school firing weapons, right?
To us here, on this side of the pond, the thought of guns, from pistols to assault rifles in every home is terrifying. Whenever we hear of the next atrocity in the States we shake our heads in disbelief. “Don’t they connect guns and . . . . . . "
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed unbelievable. Too many cowboy movies.
Delete