h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I saw Bowling for Columbine tonight and was totally devastated. It's the new film by comedian/social activist Michael Moore. It was a very good film, but very very depressing. I don't mean to imply that it was all bleak, because parts of it were funny. But it really got to me. It is about guns in America, and about how Americans can't seem to help killing one another with guns. The statistics were staggering; while gun deaths number in the low hundreds or even lower in places like Japan and Canada, in the US they number in the thousands each year. The film was very thought provoking and very powerful.

Food for thought.

Hi Greta. Yes, indeed. I didn't agree with everything in the movie (some of the political assumptions Moore was making), but it made me think. I'm rather pro-gun control, so I'm rather biased on the side of the filmmaker. Ironically I live with my parents, and my Dad is an NRA member. I tried to find some pro-gun control advocates to vote for in the last election, but there weren't any. Tennessee is big on gun rights I guess.

That has always puzzled me about the US, the contradiction: at 16, you can drive a car but not drink beer; and you can easily obtain a gun and shoot your schoolmates to the ground.

All in the name of personal safety and freedom? What freedom?

I believe guns should be strictly regulated. Of course. I think there is a macho, frontier-man flavour to the obsession with guns... some sort of "Me man, me own big gun, me shoot deer and bandits" way of thinking.

Less guns, more talking, more love.

Unfortunately, there is also a phallic association with guns. And it is glamorized by the hollywood myth.
You know.....
"My gun is bigger than your gun"

For people like , it is always a huge debate. Law enforcement is of the opinion that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. They look at it the same way as others look at the topic of marijuana, or alcohol.
If you think of it, in countries where there is prohibition of alcohol, it has become an underground society where only the very rich can afford it.
I speak of places like Pakistan. It is totally against the law there to drink, as well as being against the Muslim faith. However, I know more Pakistani males that are alcoholic, simply because their families are rich, and they have the ability to purchase alcohol in hiding. Women are, of course, forbidden to drink alcohol at all. Ever. They can be put to death for doing so.
You may be right about the "big man get gun, big man shoot food" syndrome. For some, like and I, getting that extra meat on the table is a necessity, as we have such a large family. It is also a time when we are able to get away from everyday life, and spend some time communing with nature. It really isn't about the gun.
Anyway, you are sure correct in the duplicitous aspects of such things. Children that are allowed behind a wheel of a car are capable of killing many people just as easily.

Well....
I can see I've been ranting again.
I'm gonna go now....
Karen
What a dilema!?!

I don't really have any problem with hunters having rifles. It's mainly handguns that bug me. Let me tell y'all a little about my personal experience with handguns, and you'll see why I'm so against them.

Story One. My niece was shot in a drive by shooting when she was 12. Some kids were playing in my sister's front yard, when a truck drove by. One of the kids threw a dirt clod at the truck. The driver drove down the street, then stopped, drove back, and shot into the group of children. He used a hollow point bullet, the kind designed to kill. My niece was hit in the hip. Luckily the bullet fragments went mostly into bone. I was at my sister's house at the time, and it took nearly an hour for the ambulance to arrive. My niece very nearly bleed to death. The driver was caught, but wound up only serving a couple months in jail.

Story Two. When I was 27 I moved into an apartment in a not so great area of town. One of my brothers strongly suggested that I buy a gun to protect myself. I decided not to. I didn't think I had it in me to shoot another person, even if they did break into my apartment. I figured I would hesitate in a crisis, and the intruder would probably get the gun away from me and turn it on me. So no gun. This decision wound up saving my life. In May of 1993, a few months after moving, I had a nervous breakdown. I became very delusional and suicidal. If I had had a gun, I would have become a great danger to myself.

Karen, do you feel safer living in Canada than you would here? Part of me thinks that a stricter gun policy in America might indeed just lead to more illegal gun trafficking. After all, Prohibition didn't work. But I envy those countries who seem able to live more peaceably than we do.

I live in England (rainy but pretty), and I've never seen a gun in my life, apart from a paint gun, an antique unuseable rifle and a laserquest gun. I have no need for them, the likelyhood is that if it came to it the people attacking would have had a lot more practise with them than me so it wouldn't even help if I had one. I'm vege so I have no need to hunt. The impression I get (being a foreigner) is that Americans identify guns very much with their masculinity, and they assossiate it with their freedom.

Yup, I agree, it's that frontier psychology at work again: when men were men and women were women, and so forth.

I personally don't object to hunting for food. I'm not a veggie, and can see Karen's point when she says that extra meat on the table for a family of eight or nine is essential. I object to hunting and killing only to have a house full of trophies, though. That is just stupid. Lionesses don't hunt antelopes to hang their heads in the living room.

Owning a gun won't make you any safer, unless you spent a lot of time practicing in a safe environment; and even then, could you shoot a human being point-blank? And could you live with the guilt if you did? And more to the point, could you live with the guilt if your children picked it up and used it on themselves or on other people?

In Italy, Klebold and Harris would likely have been the school's misfits, possibly have joined a Neo-Nazi movement and shaved their heads, and maybe would've been dangerous in some other way. Or they might've grown out of it. They would've been less likely to shoot 15 people dead, just like that, because of limited gun access. One good thing about my country, at last!

I agree. Completely...

I know what you mean about handguns.
I will tell you something I've not told anyone here yet.....
I have a .22 shell in my foot. It couldn't be removed at the time, because it would have caused permanant crippling, and countless surgeries......
But, you know, I don't think it's guns that are the problem. I think it can be safely presumed that man would make a weapon out of a pointed stick, if a banana wasn't present. (Or a bowl of cherries)
I'd like to lay a whooping on myself, right this minute. He's been non-communicative again. I hate that! I would hold back, however, as his sidearm is right beside the bed in a locker. (The weapon scares me.)
I don't know what to say about guncontrol. I simply don't think that forcing people into restrictions like the ones being proposed right now, is going to help. I think it's more of a societal issue than anything. When people stop being so violent, perhaps talking about proper teaching of gun handling would be a solution.
Or, if it is proposed to allow free access to firearms, perhaps firearm safety should be taught in schools, as driver's education is.
If you want to drive, you have to take the class. Perhaps if you want to own a gun, you should have to take the class in school????

Maybe I'm just nuts

KAren

Power is intoxicating and desirable - quite often it is power that causes violence. If anyones ever read men at arms by terry pratchett you'll get the idea.
All power corrupts

Would like your kids to know how a gun works?
I know I wouldn't... and I wouldn't like to have one around the house.

Because of who Clayton is (), the kids are all getting the firearm safety course, and being taught extreme respect for guns. David (my blind son) was the first one to get his firearm safety course, as well as hunter's safety course.
wants the kids to be as safe as possible with a gun around, and to be able to have knowledge of, and respect for, how to use a gun in times of emergency. (Like if chased by a bear in the forest.)
I had to learn the firearm safety stuff when I worked building houses as a young adult. It was a pre-requisite for the powder-activated tools we needed for the job. If we ever had to bolt a steel beam to concrete, the tools needed some power behind them. People could die operating one of those Hilti guns
We learned respect for weapons of all sorts when I was growing up. Our family has always supplemented our food supply with wild game, and amazingly enough never had the desire to use a firearm for any other purpose.
I think that has more to do with being properly taught respect for people, as well as firearms, rather than simple luck.
Maybe THAT is the problem?!
People aren't taught respect anymore?
Karen

It's very interesting to hear everyone's take on this. I've stirred up a bit of a teapot tempest, haven't I? Dreamer, I can't imagine never seeing a gun in real life. I envy you that. Karen, I agree that lack of respect, for human life really, is part of the problem here. I'm not a vegetarian, I do eat meat, so I have no room to complain about hunters. Greta, are you from Italy? Your English is perfect. One of the things I respected about Michael Moore's film (BfC) was that it acknowledged that there are no easy answers. And no absolute answers at all, not when it comes to guns. I could tell from the movie that Moore has a big heart, and I admire him for it. In the movie, Moore said he had toyed with the idea of running for President of the National Rifle Association, to turn it back into a gun safety and educational group it once was, instead of a rather radical gun rights political entity. (Ah, my bias is showing again! ) Anyway, I guess what I mean to say is that I haven't been so challenged by a film in a long time. This was way above your usual popcorn crunching escapist fare.

PS Karen, it makes a lot more sense to have guns where you are -- where there actually are wild animals like bears.

Gee, thanks JEllen

I can see Karen's point; I just don't think a whole nation can be expected to have respect for firearms, or other human beings for that matter. I'm just glad there is strict gun regulation over here, because I'm sure that de-regulation wouldn't change anything in terms of personal self-defence.

I can still see your point, K, because of course you see it from another perspective, one of a person who has to have firearms around the house, and therefore follows the road to safety. I just wish there were more respect; it's true that people aren't taught respect anymore.

I guess also in England there is nothing to hurt me but other people, the only animal I've seen not in a cage or tame that could really hurt me is an adder, and we just picked that up on a long stick and moved it, I guess you couldn't do that with a coyote or a mountain lion or a bear!

Haven't you ever seen Monty Python?
What about a banana? Or a bowl of cherries?
Or a pointed stick?

Karen

Yes, and an ex-parrot!

You know, everyone, being shot didn't hurt as much as some of the words that have been flung at me. Especially lately.
I still don't agree with the irresponsible use of firearms, but words have the ability to scar more than guns do. St least with a physical injury, there is proof, and one's mind doesn't have room to deny the reality of a situation like that. Words leave deep scars that can be questioned, minimized, or denied at any time, by anyone. And wounds like that are harder to heal from, in my opinion.
I am not minimizing shooting, killing, or irresponsible gun use. I am simply saying that everything is relative in different situations.
Karen