US gun culture is 'corrupting the world,' Australia ex-deputy PM says after Okla. slaying

[krispos42]

102. And thus it's a "culture war"

And when people wage a cultural war, they pass laws designed to punish those of a particular culture, regardless whether the laws are effective or reasonable.

The fact is that gun technology, like all technologies, changes and evolves over time. As hunting waned with the urbanization of America, gun ownership became more focused on self-defense and related recreational shooting (such as pistol competitions that emphasized tactical shooting) and less on hunting. So guns, particularly long guns, became more optimized for self-defense, taking on ergonomic features the military adopted during the post-WW2 era.

The long-barreled bolt-action rifle firing a powerful cartridge, or the lever-action rifle firing a moderate-powered cartridge, was replaced by semi-automatic rifles firing moderate cartridges from detachable magazines. Naturally, many of these rifles were simply civilian-legal versions of existing military guns like the M-16 and the AK-47.

This scared people, who at the time were dealing with the peak of the crime wave of the 20th century and the related violence and mayhem. These people, worried because people were buying more and more "assault weapons" instead of Elmer-Fudd-looking guns, and they started a cultural war against them.

Of course, this sent sales of the guns they wanted to ban to record numbers, and the conversation went mainstream. And a curious thing happened. It turns out that people that own guns get really unhappy and politically motivated when politicians move against things they own, and that people that don't own guns don't get correspondingly motivated to keep NOT owning guns.

You can poke fun at the people that are worried that "gubmint's comin' fer our gunz", but the fact is that there is a constant and non-inconsiderable movement out there to arbitrarily outlaw broad types of guns and accessories, and that wants to make buying and owning a gun considerably more expensive and difficult. And they want to do it through the power of the various levels of government in the U.S.

Now, obviously, there is a reaction to this. The RWers have adopted the nonsensical line about needing to overthrow a government that has become unresponsive to the public; yet these are the same people that vote for corporatist Republicans and Democrats that do NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, to curtail the political power of organized money that is corrupting our political system and INSURING that they are not heard!

Or they're worried about societal/economic collapse (a valid fear) or a race war (a stupid white-man's fear) or a UN invasion ( ). There are perfectly valid, and reasonable, reasons for owning an AR-15 that don't involve black UN helicopters or space aliens.

But to counter the hysteria of mass shootings played endlessly by the MSM, and the (usually) irrational gun laws that have stemmed from those tragedies, they've adapted a counter-hysterical stance. Death panels and secret UN arms treaties, of course. And the FEMA camps all ready to be filled with prisoners taken by ACORN stormtroopers.

But despite the potential of all the AR-15s and AK-47s and M-1 Carbines and Mini-14s and the like, with all their high-capacity magazines and protruding pistol grips and lasers and tactical lights and camo finishes, rifles are a minor player in murder, robbery, etc. High-profile shooting asides (yeah, I know, it's a big aside, but bear with me), they simply are not a significant factor. Something like 5% of all murders (when the weapon was identifiable) are with rifles of all stripes.

So you can worry all you want; your odds of being killed with a muscle-driven weapon are significantly higher than being killed with a rifle. Oh, and accidental shooting deaths are at a low, after declining steadily for decades. MSM strikes again, eh?

But attempts to wage a culture war are only empowering the other side. This is in part because many of the laws proposed are ineffective, ridiculous, shameless pandering that only works on gun-ignorant people ("assault weapon" bans) and deflects attention from the root causes of violence and crime (War on Drugs, anyone?). But it also highlights this simple fact: gun owners will get politically organized and spend their money to continue to keep their guns (or their options on future guns), and non-gun-owners will NOT get politically organized and will NOT spend their money to continue to NOT own guns.

I agree with you that guns should look like guns, and toys should look like toys. None of my guns will ever look like anything but a serious chunk of metal and plastic and wood. And some of those "family portraits" make me shudder; I think there's one (1) picture of me holding a gun, and that's with two other people while out deer hunting on the prairie.