08-12-2022, 12:58 PM
(08-11-2022, 06:16 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: A Story on how gun companies advertize to young men was broadcast today on PBS Newshour with Paul Solmon. Opinions on both sides were interviewed. Is getting an AR-15 "getting your man card" and boosting your machismo if you are a young man, as the ads say?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/firear...-consumers
But it brings up the issue for folks like Jason Black and Classic Xer to consider.
What does it mean to be a man? Is manhood really increased by owning and using a military weapon?
What is it to be a man? To be aggressive, and a good fighter? To be strong physically? To be brave?
To be able to defend your family or yourself against criminals? If you need a gun to do that, what does that say about the USA that has ten or a hundred times more guns than other societies? Does the USA have more crime? Do rural red states have more crime? Is that why they have more guns and oppose gun control so obsessively? Or vice-versa? Do we have more guns because we have more crime? Or vice versa? Do we have more crime because we have more mental illness (which we don't)? Or do we have more guns because we have a second amendment? Or more gun advertising? Or because conservatives (or liberals) are making guns a political issue? Can we minimize the number, the horror and the deaths caused by mass shootings? (in fact there are now thousands of them every year now, and even one is too many) "How many deaths does it take 'till he knows, that too many people have died?" -- Bob Dylan
Are ammosexuals concerned about their manhood? Is this because they are homosexual? Or are they anti-homosexual or homophobic? Afraid they may be gay? And is there really anything wrong with that?
Do insecure men feel the need to identify with a larger group and its success, to substitute for ones own manhood? A sports team? A nation and its army?
Are there better ways to develop manhood than owning weapons? What about taking testosterone pills? Exercize? Martial arts or other training? Viewing porno or otherwise arousing libido?
What is it to be a man? Is it really so different from being a woman? To have integrity, and willingness to stand and defend your ideas? To be considerate about more than yourself and your own needs and desires? To be able to defend yourself? How is all of that any different from being a woman? Or non-binary?
I can think of more valid rites of passage. Some have nothing to do with gender -- like voting, getting a college degree (even if 'only' a vocational certificate), getting credit approval, completing a full year on even a menial job, getting one's first pay raise, getting married, joining the Armed Services, etc.
Knocking someone up or getting knocked up out of wedlock, getting busted for DUI or drugs, going to jail, or getting an STD isn't. Neither is smoking a cancerette or getting drunk.
Getting a firearm isn't unless one has a legitimate reason to have one, such as being a sport hunter or "light infantry".
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.