![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tonithegreatThat old cowboy hat again. Couldn’t we give it a rest? I like cows. I like boys. But country people are not a monolith, not any more than any other group is. They’re gonna expect you to walk the walk if you talk the talk, sure. But doesn’t everyone?
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been struggling when it comes to writing for social media. The time I spend online seems meaningless compared to more important things. I feel like I need to speak up, because things are happening in the world, even though my audience is limited and consists almost entirely of people who are going to think for themselves, regardless of anything I have to say. Also, is blogging just talking without walking? Wouldn’t real life discourse count for more? But who wants to listen to me, and what can I even bring to the discourse?
Look, I was raised in gun culture. I had a youth membership in the NRA, even. My dad thought that the insurance that came with membership was worthwhile. We lived on a big piece of property and we always had guns around the house. I was comfortable enough using them that it was no big deal to me to fire into the air to get someone’s attention or scare a predator off. If I had to defend myself or my family with a firearm, I’m sure I could do it.
I had my hunter’s education certificate and my bow hunter’s certificate before I went to high school. I never shot a deer, but that was only because my busy life pulled me away from the deer woods just as I was getting old enough to potentially hunt effectively. I have spent some time in tree stands, though. When I was my daughters’ age, I spent a fair amount of time in tree stands. I still love the pine flatwoods. And we ate so much venison and wild pig and turkey and elk. I could write a parallel essay to this one about how I think the world would be a better place if more people were more directly involved, or at least more directly understood how to process their own food as meat eaters. I think it is a particularly ethical thing to eat meat that lived on beautiful property that was managed as a tree farm and a hunt lease.
I wish I could say that my youth was before the NRA was overtly political, but I don’t think there is such a time as “before the NRA was overtly political.” What people sometimes choose to ignore is that everything has always been political. But I do think that in recent years the NRA has been used by political forces that I disagree with strongly on many fronts, to do things that have nothing to do with responsible gun owner rights. On balance, I don’t think that Marion Hammer and her ilk have been a good thing for responsible gun owners. The idea that the big bad government is coming for our gun rights is as distasteful as it is nonsensical.
I was raised in a tiny town in Florida where my parents comprised almost half of the faculty of the middle school. Most kids’ families back home hunted, not just because they might love getting out into the woods, but because venison and wild hogs were an important part of peoples’ food supply. My dad taught history and coached at our school, and when he got to teach an elective, he often taught hunter education classes.
Have there been tragedies in that small town due to accidents with firearms? There have. There have also been tragedies due to farm equipment and automobiles. There was also a shooting incident some years back wherein a domestic dispute escalated into something that qualified as a mass/multi-party shooting.
I don’t think the answer lies in the direction of outright banning guns. We all already have so many of them.
I believe that there is a middle ground where people own guns for hunting or even just because they want to, but where we would still have more safeguards in place to prevent mass shooting tragedies. I think that safeguards like bans on semi-automatics and bans on certain types of weapons and magazines would help. We know already that in the United States there were fewer of these mass shootings during the years when there was an assault weapons ban. But we repealed that ban anyway and haven’t reinstated it. I think that waiting periods would help. I think that restrictions regarding ages and mental health warning signs would be a good thing. Would that kind of legislation prevent all mass shootings? No, it probably wouldn’t. But I think that even preventing some mass shootings is a worthwhile goal.
In the end, I think this issue is like climate change: We’ve got to do something more than what we’re doing now, but we’re going to have to agree to do some things that are imperfect solutions and some things that make it harder for some people who are making a lot of money now to continue easily making money. Unfortunately, solutions like that are very hard to implement these days.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been struggling when it comes to writing for social media. The time I spend online seems meaningless compared to more important things. I feel like I need to speak up, because things are happening in the world, even though my audience is limited and consists almost entirely of people who are going to think for themselves, regardless of anything I have to say. Also, is blogging just talking without walking? Wouldn’t real life discourse count for more? But who wants to listen to me, and what can I even bring to the discourse?
Look, I was raised in gun culture. I had a youth membership in the NRA, even. My dad thought that the insurance that came with membership was worthwhile. We lived on a big piece of property and we always had guns around the house. I was comfortable enough using them that it was no big deal to me to fire into the air to get someone’s attention or scare a predator off. If I had to defend myself or my family with a firearm, I’m sure I could do it.
I had my hunter’s education certificate and my bow hunter’s certificate before I went to high school. I never shot a deer, but that was only because my busy life pulled me away from the deer woods just as I was getting old enough to potentially hunt effectively. I have spent some time in tree stands, though. When I was my daughters’ age, I spent a fair amount of time in tree stands. I still love the pine flatwoods. And we ate so much venison and wild pig and turkey and elk. I could write a parallel essay to this one about how I think the world would be a better place if more people were more directly involved, or at least more directly understood how to process their own food as meat eaters. I think it is a particularly ethical thing to eat meat that lived on beautiful property that was managed as a tree farm and a hunt lease.
I wish I could say that my youth was before the NRA was overtly political, but I don’t think there is such a time as “before the NRA was overtly political.” What people sometimes choose to ignore is that everything has always been political. But I do think that in recent years the NRA has been used by political forces that I disagree with strongly on many fronts, to do things that have nothing to do with responsible gun owner rights. On balance, I don’t think that Marion Hammer and her ilk have been a good thing for responsible gun owners. The idea that the big bad government is coming for our gun rights is as distasteful as it is nonsensical.
I was raised in a tiny town in Florida where my parents comprised almost half of the faculty of the middle school. Most kids’ families back home hunted, not just because they might love getting out into the woods, but because venison and wild hogs were an important part of peoples’ food supply. My dad taught history and coached at our school, and when he got to teach an elective, he often taught hunter education classes.
Have there been tragedies in that small town due to accidents with firearms? There have. There have also been tragedies due to farm equipment and automobiles. There was also a shooting incident some years back wherein a domestic dispute escalated into something that qualified as a mass/multi-party shooting.
I don’t think the answer lies in the direction of outright banning guns. We all already have so many of them.
I believe that there is a middle ground where people own guns for hunting or even just because they want to, but where we would still have more safeguards in place to prevent mass shooting tragedies. I think that safeguards like bans on semi-automatics and bans on certain types of weapons and magazines would help. We know already that in the United States there were fewer of these mass shootings during the years when there was an assault weapons ban. But we repealed that ban anyway and haven’t reinstated it. I think that waiting periods would help. I think that restrictions regarding ages and mental health warning signs would be a good thing. Would that kind of legislation prevent all mass shootings? No, it probably wouldn’t. But I think that even preventing some mass shootings is a worthwhile goal.
In the end, I think this issue is like climate change: We’ve got to do something more than what we’re doing now, but we’re going to have to agree to do some things that are imperfect solutions and some things that make it harder for some people who are making a lot of money now to continue easily making money. Unfortunately, solutions like that are very hard to implement these days.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2022-06-04 11:33 pm (UTC)I wish more Americans were able to see the success Australia had, and bring more reform like that here.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-09 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-09 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-15 12:32 am (UTC)