Umm - was it this kind of elk
or this kind of Elk (apologies to the subject, only decent pic I could find)
I think when people trot out the 2nd amendment argument, our first response should be, " Oh? What militia do you serve in? Iād like to learn about it."
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I am in. We need an organized effort, and $$$ to start the campaign. Forget the legislature, go for the people.
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Letās have movies where the taking out happens offstage, the way it did in the Greek tragedies. The only scenes with guns should be where the guy (ahem) with the gun demonstrates that heās a complete asshle. Then sometime later there would be some dialog about the asshle being in prison or having accidentally shot himself or been shot by some other assh*le.
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Well, I think itās worth a shot.
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āWhatās a milisha?ā
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Unfortunately, this case has nothing to do with the gun but with hunting. His reaction would undoubtedly have been exactly the same if she had been bow hunting. The sad irony is that there is much greater societal disapproval of dead animals than of dead kids. THAT is what needs to change.
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You havenāt bought a new car lately, have you? My last two cars (going back to 2001) came with neither, though both can still be ordered as options.
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Please excuse my English, since it is not my first languageā¦ What about if we advocate to make responsible the parents/guardian of the person who commit a mass shooter if he or she live with them? If you serve a drink to a friend and he/she gets into an accident, you are considered responsible. Maybe parents or guardians are going to think about it twice before leaving unattended or worse promote the use of guns to trouble children. Or parents might decide against giving a gun to a child.
A thoughtā¦ I remember coming to the States years ago and be very surprised at the discussions around personal responsibility and drinking. These days we wonāt have anyone leave our parties visibly intoxicated because of fear of been chargedā¦
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One angle that Iād push: gun nuts get their āfreedoms,ā but itās almost always others that pay the (lethal) cost of their freedom.
Weād have nothing to do with someone who managed to have a meal at a restaurant, but walked out and forced the restaurant to eat the bill. Here the bill isnāt money, but blood and lives - and the NRA and its fellow travelers are sticking the rest of us with the bill.
How can that possibly be moral? How can anyone even think that it might be so?
Fine idea in theory, but it will take a long time. It took decades of PSAs, warnings on cigarette ads and advocacy for smoking to become very taboo in this country. And the tobacco industry fought that almost as hard as the NRA and gun industry have fought gun control measures.
Another thing to keep in mind is that guns are explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights, where as smoking tobacco isnāt. While the NRA and their ilk clearly have a rather perverted interpretation of what the 2nd amendment means, the fact that āthe right to bear armsā is explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights gives gun rights advocates a more powerful argument than smoking advocates.
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After thinking about your post, you are right. Especially if the animal has a name, like Cecil.
I noticed the same phenomenon with the drug war. You can raid peopleās homes in the middle of the night for minor drug possession, failure to appear in court for some little petty misdemeanor, throwing flash bang grenades, tossing half asleep people around like rag dolls, often resulting in injuries to innocent people. Most likely, it will end up as an episode on āCopsā.
But if you shoot the dog, boy do people go crazy.
So bad example, so here is another.
I do have a friend I grew up with that owns probably 25-30 firearms.
When he moved into a new house, he moved his guns in the middle of the night, so as not to alarm his new neighbors.
There is a feeling that among gun owners they are under siege. Totally irrational feeling, but I think they do feel it. Although this is mostly from fear mongering by the NRA, rather than gun shaming by liberals.
Ten years ago, back when there was Blockbuster, I used to point out to friends the staggering number of videos that had a gun on the cover. If you had replaced those guns with cigarettes some people would have had fit about how terrible it was that we glorified smoking. Seriously, guns were featured on at least 10% of the videos.
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The interesting notion here is that the ārightā doesnāt really matter. People have a ārightā to do many things that they wouldnāt dream of doing because of social censure. As for taking a long timeā¦ how long have we taken so far with ZERO progress against the rampant encroachment of the gun culture in this nation? We canāt start yesterday but we can start today. I agree we need to do whatever we can as a society to change our society for the better, even while politicians try to change/not change the status quo. Let the gun owners believe theyāre under seige. Smokers certainly thought so, and some still do. So what? Reasonable people wonāt react with that level of paranoia, even if they feel beleagered; unreasonable people will find an excuse to act with paranoia no matter what we do or donāt do. It may possibly not be that distant a goalā¦ remember how rapidly gay marriage happened after decades of seemingly unchanging censure? There are other examples in our history.
Maybe we need something like āOccupy Gunsā as a mantra/call to action, and some sensible pooled suggestions as to how individuals can take those small social actions that may eventually add up to real change either directly or by influencing political decisions. It canāt hurt; some of the actions, such as avoiding gun-occupied places, can keep one safer. It beats privately fuming while the massacres accelerate.
I remember in my smallish KS town growing up guns were all aroundā¦ for hunting, target shooting, and ā especially with rock salt ā for protection on isolated farms. Anyone like todayās open carry groups toting around AKās would have been considered complete a-holes and treated with contempt. Soā¦ attitudes changed onceā¦ they can change again.
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I am not holding my breath.
What if we had even less propaganda in our lives?
Hahahahahahahahahaha! In America? Hahahahaha!
are always causing trouble.
Agreed.
I think people really underestimate the power of this. As we all know, propaganda advertising does work.
And thereās plenty of precedent for it - google frown power campaign thereās some interesting history behind that.
Iāve felt the same way as you for years - if weāre not at a gun range, keep it in your damn pants (or wherever). I just donāt want to be around them, and as a law-abiding citizen I resent that there may be armed yahoos all around me when Iām out and about.
Thereās just no reason for it - I grew up on wild west movies, itās been a long time since Iāve wanted to live like that.
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By any means necessary!
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