L
Lost_Sheep
Guest
ShrodingersCat, I’m not sure where you are from but I sense that you are not from the USA, so I suppose you could be excused for not understanding America’s fascination with guns. But in order to understand that fascination, one must understand than guns are, as you say, very deeply rooted in the American culture. Guns are part of our heritage and part of our history and help make up, for better or worse, who we are as a people. Asking Americans to give up guns would be like asking the French to give up wine.
When the European explorers first came to America 600 years ago, they all had guns. They used them to hunt for food and, when necessary, defend themselves against hostile natives. As time went on, a gun became an essential part of a man’s everyday life; much like a cell phone is today.
When the American colonies fought its war for independence against the Crown, who was it do did the fighting? It was untrained citizen soldiers all carrying privately owned guns (and who, by the way, defeated the most powerful military empire on Earth at the time!) In an encore thirty years later, the sons and grandsons of these citizen soldiers did it all over again in the War of 1812.
Resolving to never live under a tyrannical government again, it was specifically written into the U.S. Constitution that the right of the people to keep and bear arms would not be infringed. This right hunting but it was to provide a check and balance against the government overstepping its bounds. In effect it was the people telling the government, "If you overstep your bounds, we will kill you.
This was actually tested during the American Civil War of 1861-1865 when the southern states, feeling oppressed by their northern counterparts, attempted to break away from the rest of the country by taking up arms against it. As it turned out the South failed in their attempt to secede but it illustrates what the U.S. Constitution was provisioned for.
As the westward expansion started in the 1870s guns were again a part of everyday for survival; again for food and protecting against hostile Indians. And since Law Enforcement was virtually nonexistent on the frontier, people had to fend for themselves for personal defense. Guns have been part of America ever since. I remember my father telling me that when he was in high school, sometimes he would go out small game hunting early in the morning early in the morning before heading for classes. A lot of the boys did this and sometimes the principal would even come out to the parking lot at look at the boys’ guns with them, talk about the guns and swap stories. No ever gave it a second thought.
Today many Americans own guns for a variety of reasons including personal defense, sporting, shooting competitions or simply collecting. And that is never going to change; especially now when fewer and fewer Americans are trusting their government every day. It is also important to remember that criminals do not care about gun laws any more than they care about any other laws. That’s why they are criminals. You can pass all the anti-gun laws you want but criminals will still pay no attention to them and continue to commit gun crimes. All these laws do is put more burdens on law-abiding gun owner who are not the ones anyone needs to be afraid of.
