05-05-2018, 10:14 AM
(05-04-2018, 07:03 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(05-04-2018, 07:47 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(05-03-2018, 10:42 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Meanwhile, the reds (and especially the NRA leadership and all who support their policies) DO want to stop people who live in cities awash in guns from regulating them.
From my perspective, the phrase "awash in guns" is a values statement that the situation is unacceptable, and must change. The desire to regulate is a desire to use the force of government to change the culture. Thus, the point stands. Both cultures desire to change the other, and must to get their goals? They just don't see their own culture's infringements.
Certainly, in many urban areas, being awash with guns is indeed unacceptable. Those in rural areas seem resigned to accept it, although they too experience heightened gun violence as a direct result.
Except perhaps in such places as Detroit, which is becoming rural due to depopulation, the only legitimate uses for the common man for firearms are sport-hunting, target-shooting, or self-defense. If I had to live in bear country or cougar country I would keep a high-power weapon.
Much of the gun-related violence is criminal in nature, associated with drug activity, armed robberies, and domestic violence. Of course it is arguable that the pistol that an 80-pound woman has might put an end to beatings by a 200-pound man... and of course the 200-pound man. (The four most common circumstances in which murder occurs are domestic violence, liquor-fueled brawls, armed robberies, and drug activity). But if an 80-pound woman needs a pistol to protect herself from a beating from a 200-pound man, then other solutions might be appropriate. Divorce free of charge to a victim on the principle of 'abuser pays'?
I don't know what it will take to stop the bar-room brawls (with high-functioning autism I know that I am particularly vulnerable because I am utterly incompetent at reading non-verbal communication). Of course we need a crackdown on violent drug gangs; Michigan's policy of 25-to-life for armed robberies is good for making recidivism a rarity for armed robberies (go into prison for armed robbery as a young tough punk and leave prison a broken old man because parole eligibility begins after 25 years and is anything but automatic). Domestic violence becomes rare when the culture makes it intolerable much as the crackdown on child sexual abuse is scaring the Hell out of people who used to think that they could get away with it.
Quote:Guns are not in any sense positive. It is only to be admitted that many Americans today think that they are. Fine. We have to accept the different values that exist in our culture, within some limit of decency.
Concession for firearms for sport hunting and target-shooting, but otherwise fine. I know sport hunters who use their firearms for legitimate game hunting; those people are generally well-behaved. Steal their expensive guns, and they will get the cops on the gun thief's tail.
Quote:But if people in rural areas, who accept guns as part of their culture, seek to stop urban areas from having the regulation they need, then it is the reds who are imposing their culture on the blues, by insisting on opposing the national gun regulations that alone can deal with the situation of cities awash in guns, and insisting that people in urban areas should look upon guns in the same way that rural folks do.
The rural culture and the urban culture are not the same. Of course there are urban dwellers who do sport hunting in a well-planned hunting trip that begins with a drive on Interstate 75 from greater Detroit to the backwoods of northern Michigan....
Quote:And the red rural culture has only recently been awash with military weapons like the AR-15. This is not an acceptable situation, regardless of the distorted "values" that may uphold it. The national gun regulations being proposed (and likely to be approved in the 2020s) would not affect the rural gun culture as it was before the recent acceleration which David alluded to--- the expansion of military weapons with large magazines, open and conceal carry laws, repeal of existing regulations, concentration of gun ownership, etc., all propped up by the criminal institution called the current NRA leadership, otherwise simply and correctly called the gun lobby, and all who back it. This is a 4T delusional culture quite similar to that of Dixie on the eve of the Civil War; a mad and demonic defense of outdated and dangerous civil attitudes, and now making violent threats to the civil order.
Such weapons as the AR-15 and AK-47 have no valid use as sporting weapons. Self-defense? At really-lose range (the 80-pound woman being beaten by her 200-pound not-much-of-a-man), a smaller weapon might be a necessity -- but a good divorce lawyer is even better.
The idea that one needs weapons as a defense against the usurpation of dictatorial power ignores that militias armed with rifles are defenseless against such an organization as the United States Marine Corps -- and that despite the proliferation of privately-owned massacre weapons we have seen the clearest steps toward dictatorship in American history, and this with the connivance of the 'gun rights' people. The threats of the 'gun culture' are not made against Donald Trump or against the effective 'government by lobbyist' that have been gutting democracy in America.
Quote:The current obsession with guns in rural and red America is thus not based on any cultural or social value that deserves any respect. It is a distortion of the gun and rural value system that existed before, which blues recognize, even if some folks like me still think that too is illegitimate in the long run.
Rural America is beginning to hurt due to the trade wars that hurt farm producers in some 'Red' states... as the People's Republic of China retaliates. Economic distress in rural areas, we must remember, made possible the New Deal coalition in the last 4T.
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.