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

So, what did you see in that little documentary that scared the sh*t out of you?

I live in that world and I've been scared for a long time.
Didn't take a movie.

I also read and watch about other parts of the world and I find them frightening, too.

How much of what one person tells us about another place should be taken seriously?

I was talking to someone in Britain the other day who was simply amazed at the amount of rolling tonnage the average person in this small burg in Texas owns.
I couldn't imagine a place where cars are tiny and trucks are only owned by companies.
It's all a matter of perspective.
And sometimes our glasses need to be cleaned.

Hmm, I suppose the fact that _you_ are scared is what worried me...

The sort of media induced fear which was shown to pervade the US... now I'm well aware this was one man's impression of the US, but it does tie in with impressions I'd received from other sources.

One thing that particularly struck me was the difference shown between Detroit and Windsor - maybe MM was very selective with his interviewees, but it did give the impression of the US being a country under seige...

I too watch the TV and am subjected to media brainwashing (different media nevertheless), but I'm not scared.... Why?

I found the whole thing particularly enlightening on the subject of American attitudes to Gun Control - If the fear shown in the film is a reality then it goes a long way to explaining why Americans need guns...
Even taking into consideration the incredible number of gun related murders, accidents, etc in the US - I'm sure that the average american would be far more at risk of dying in a road traffic accident than to a bullet - but the film shows an incredible level of what seems to be paranoia.

It actually pushed me away from my previous impression of gun-toting americans being militaristic warmongers to them being simply very scared people.

I guess what scared me the most was an impression of an entire country suffering from what looks like an acute case of paranoia, not just on a domestic, but also on a political level - and when that country is as powerful as the US is - it's kind of worrying.

Take the Waco seige... since day one I'd been convinced that operation had been completely mis-handled by the FBI/ATF... but what struck me most was the kind of hysteria exhibited by the authorities to what seemed to be a bunch of "hippies".

Having said that...

I still think Charlton Heston is a complete moron

While I have my own doubts about the leadership of the NRA and the usefulness of Charlton in any "political" position, having been a member of the NRA on and off over the years, I find people who pursue and active knowledge of firearm's safety a bit less terrifying than the redneck weasels who believe they were born to hunt and daddy taught them all they know...

The truly frightening things to me about the Branch Davidian affair
were the ignorance of the Governor at that time, Ann Richards, the ignorance of the Attorney General, and the complete inability of the horde of media flacks to realize that they could have broken the barrier and overwhelmed the Feebies. That the media flacks just stood there obediently behind their rope and filmed the whole thing without a thought that they could have made a difference, that peeves me to this day.

I was in Austin when it happened. I still have radio tapes from that day.

The paranoia is much less prevalent than might be assumed.
Folks go about their daily lives and ignore whatever they don't really want to think about.

I am scared myself because I don't understand the way people think.
That probably extends to all people.

The only seige is one of stupidity.
People wig one way and wag another, based on whatever is popular at the time.
What's truly popular among many Americans is the "Left Behind" series of books, movies and comic books, a poorly-written account of what could happen if the Rapture occurs.
Of course, the Rapture occurs in the first couple of chapters of the first book.
The rest of the series, I think up to 11 books, now, is what happens afterward, Antichrist and Multinational corporations and One World Order and all that.
This junk is very popular.

Also frightening is the number of middle class people that I've encountered who believe in a 6000 year earth. A Sunday School class across the hall from ours is taking a course in that and the "Canopy Theory" of Genesis meteorology.
It is taught by a "Doctor" who actually has degrees in computer technology and is an independantly wealthy fellow with several patents in his name.

When educated and capable people believe in nonsense, that is a good reason for me to be paranoid, I think.

One dig at the NRA which I thought was a little below the belt was the point at which it was stated that the NRA was founded just as the KKK was made an illegal organisation.

It may have had some connection at the time but I suspect it quickly outgrew that (or at least I hope it did)

Personally I've no problems with firearms... I'm ex-military, I've an entire family who regularly shoot (Smallbore target rifle and, up until they were made illegal in the UK, smallbore pistol).

However, what amazes me is the level of fear in the US, "I need a firearm to protect myself"... I live in a country with just as many racial problems as the US, but no-one I know feels the need to have a firearm to protect themselves with... It's just not in the mindframe of the average European... so what is so different with the US ?

It can't be terrorism... the UK has been subjected to terrorist attacks for decades from certain sectors of the irish, France has had Red Brigade attacks, ETA attacks, muslim extremist attacks...

Crime? Well logically speaking extended gun ownership would increase the risk of increased gun crime... but there again, the Swiss guns coming out of their ears, the Canadians too... so that one's out.

Personally I think the problem comes from your politicians and media... as stated in the film... are Americans being 'brainwashed' into believing they are in such danger that they shoot first and think later?

I haven't seen the film.
At the moment I don't intend to.
The conservatives at the moment are endearing him further to the socialists as a media darling by roasting him thoroughly.

I am unaware of any connection between the NRA and the KKK.

The KKK was at it's greatest numbers in the '20s.
It actually had control of several state's legislatures and a couple of governors.
It was never specifically declared "illegal", although after it's political abilities were diminished, an effort was made to criminalize it's leaders and followers, most notably under Bobby Kennedy in the sixties.

The NRA tootled along for many years as a proponent of civilian marksmanship and hunter camaraderie. It took the silly activities in Congress in 1968 to get it up in arms and politically active.
It's strong connection to arms manufacturers, arms dealers and collectors were a factor in this.
Oddly enough, they were complicit in one of the harbingers of the modern troubles, the laws regarding the importation of surplus military weapons from other countries. It was supposed to protect the makers of new rifles and pistols from cheaper, older and, in many cases, better manufactured, firearms.

It is hard to tell what the prevailing mood or thoughts of a country are.
In my experience, the number of people who own firearms is far greater than the number of those who actually use them. Some individuals own dozens of firearms. I know of one gentleman, who is not in the retail trade, who has hundreds. I used to work for him.
Some people, like me, are just fascinated by the mechanisms and the appearance of the weapons. Others are fascinated by the power to drill a hole at long distance and some of them collect rifles and pistols that would make an elephant nervous. Self-defense is a secondary or tertiary concern.
And one would have to wonder about the sanity of anyone who would threaten or attack these folks, too!

The media and the politicians are addicted to themselves and their own polls and perceptions.

The concept of home-owned firearms for "self-defense" is an ancient one and many of the folks I know have never really given it much thought, it's just something they do. Their parents did it.
It's not so much paranoia as just a way of life.
They're not so much afraid as just mindful that there are far fewer police than one would like to believe.

Not sure where the "shoot first and think later" comes from.
I have heard many discussions of what one might do, from my school days to today, when a former police officer in my Sunday School class is often asked questions about home security.
See, Texas has a strange penal code. It has a retreat clause.
It says that you cannot use force, let alone deadly force, as long as the option to retreat exists.
Thus, if you shoot or hit someone who just came in your front door, and you had the option to retreat further into the house or out the back door, then the law says that you should not have harmed that fellow. The local police's attitude is likely to rest on the actual circumstances, your criminal record, and whether the DA is in a good mood or not.
On the other hand, the prevailing mood that I've encountered is that it is "better to be judged by twelve than carried by six."

I think you would probably be amazed by the "mindset of the average European". I don't have the numbers right here, but Belgium, Germany, France and Spain alone produced and sold almost a billion semi-automatic pocket pistols, most of them in the .32 and .380 calibers, during the last century. A few thousand were purchased by governments and police departments, but the rest went to the shops.
There is a very big black market and legal trade in "obsolete" Russian pistols, like the Tokarev.

Something that is almost never addressed is the number of personal firearms in South America. In Mexico alone, Colt sold enough .38 Super M1911 pistols and ammunition to arm a small army.

No, it is the media that lives in fear.
It has watched it's own programming and it believes itself.

I wouldn't be too sure about the racial problems in the U.S.
They are far fewer than one would expect.
I live in Redneckville and the cultural mix here is tremendous.
Mexicans, Indios, Columbians, Guatamaleans, Filipinos, Germans, Austrians, Vietnamese, Chinese, not to mention the Scots, Croats, Lats, Norwegians, Irish, Czechs, and Poles!
Most of the problems are caused by idiots who are just plain criminals, regardless of race, who are pooping in their own nests.

Hmm, so is the extremely violent culture portrayed in your own media a reality or is it just scaremongering?

And are the figures published for gun crime in the US correct or are they (as some people have said on this site) falsly high due to statistical methods used to count them?

As to Europeans and gun ownership... I must admit I don't know a single person over here (I now live in France by the way) who owns a handgun... I know lots who own rifles and shotguns, simply because of the tradition of hunting anything and everything that moves in this country (there are whole areas of the countryside it's not safe to walk through 'in season').

I think most brits are anti-gun simply because in the UK in modern times there has never been a culture of gun ownership outside of sporting or hunting circles, and as the most common impression they have of what happens to a country with lots of guns comes from the American media it's hardly surprising they don't want to head down the same route.

PS. I'm away from my internet connection for a week after this evening, so please don't worry if I don't reply to any of your postings - it's not coz I'm ignoring you - I'm just not here

And I must say it makes a change to have a cool-headed discussion on firearms on this site

Great! I agree.

The running gag in American media is "if it bleeds, it leads".
365 nights a week, the local and national news have to have something to get people to stay awake after dinner.

The data used to compile national statistics is usually flawed beyond rational explanation. The FBI and various special interest groups depend upon statistics to justify their existence or their budgets.

Most of the prohibitive "laundry lists" of firearms that have been banned in various states since the mid-eighties are unknown to the legistlators outside of movies and TV.
The danger of those weapons is mostly in the minds of the scriptwriters, the special effects people and the gullible goons who take movies for a depiction of reality.
The scaremongering is a political thing that it's proponents, in many cases, have actually forgotten the original reasons for.

In the past two months alone, I have known of fourteen people who were seriously injured or killed in highway incidents. The fifty or so people that I know who own firearms haven't had any incidents.

You might be surprised at how many of your acquaintances have at least one "night stand" pistol that they haven't gotten out in years.
It is a matter of simple sanity not to discuss or talk about such a thing.

It could also be an "older generation" thing.

France is one of the few countries in which it is legal to own a sound suppressor. It is actually required in the case of .22 bird rifles designed to keep pest birds out of the back garden trees and stray cats off the property.
On the other hand, the US government has a mortal fear of "silencers".
It is legal to own the parts for one, but it is illegal to make one or sell one without a Class III license, which is Dealer-grade.
They also have mortal fear of "switchblades" and "potato guns".

The British history of "gun ownership" is a strange one.
Like the automobile, the "government" has always had a class distinction in mind with regard to the upper classes and the under classes. The fear of anarchy led to the general disarming of GB over time, but there is a strong "gun" culture in the UK that doesn't get much play in the press and they don't want much in the way of publicity.

While the fear of anarchy and socialism is what spurred the "government" and "academia's" wish to disarm the average Brit, it is socialism in action and the twilight years of the monarchy that have advanced the stigmatism of firearms to the point that the incidents that led to the current prohibitive legislation were welcomed by the proponents of a "proper, violence-less" society.

This is where the major flaw in Micheal Moore's new thesis comes in.
In his first few films and TV projects, he stood up, it seems, for the little guy, the laid-off worker who had put so much of his life into propping up the corporation, only to be essentially fired in order to save money while the bosses got bonuses.
What Micheal has avoided thinking about is that the little guy wants to be armed, while the corporate bosses really would rather not have the people they fired be able to fire back.
So, the people he was essentially speaking for in his early days now think that he has turned his back on them in exchange for a more, um, esoteric agenda. A socialist one.

Sorry for ignoring you for so long...

One thing this thread has shown me I suppose is that I really aught to view the rest of MM's films - to get a better idea of what his agenda is...

You've confused me a little when you start talking about a strong gun culture in the UK... Are you talking specifically about an 'underground' criminal culture or are you talking about legal gun ownership.

In my experience (as having been a member of a gun club) The vast majority of the British population have never touched a gun.

I'm not so sure there is a class divide in gun ownership... I suspect the percentage of legal hunting weapons currently in circulation that are actually owned by upperclass game hunters (grouse, pheasant, etc.) is probably quite low.

Also, the UK's current gun control laws tend to bear witness to the fact that owners of legal firearms are too few and far between to be much of a political force... The current system has come about simply because of a series of knee-jerk reactions by various governments to tabloid media pressure.

So, just what is the solution to the US's media-fed fascination with fire-arms? Shoot all the journalists?

To me the whole thing seems to be locked into some kind of self-destructive cycle
The world is a dangerous place & we need firearms to protect us...
The moment these firearms are used the media use it as an excuse to run the same old story...
The world is a dangerous place & we need firearms to protect us...
Ad infinitum...

If you change the media message in the middle to
Firearms are dangerous....
then surely the circle could be broken?

There was a Reuter's report the other day on a WHO report or two that claimed that in some parts of the world, the vehicle accident death rate is higher than the suicide rate which is higher than the murder rate....

The fact of the matter is, even in Austin, I knew of far more people who owned firearms than I did people who had been shot. In fact, I would put the ratio at somewhere around 50/2 and the two were military veterans.

As I said, the gun culture of the UK doesn't want much attention. Some of them are law-abiding. Some aren't law-abiding, but they try to avoid any criminal activity.

Firearms are everywhere, whether you know it or not.
Almost everyone who has served in the military has at least one hanging around somewhere.
In areas of heavy IRA activity, the acquisition of personal weapons had a tendency to increase. Some of them were zip-guns, .22 caliber weapons made from car aerials.

The Media is full of it. It doesn't know anything about anything.
Any time a newspaper or a magazine prints something about firearms, you can rest assured that the writer doens't know his butt from a hole in the ground.

Yep, knee-jerk!

Here's an odd bit or two of information from Norway...

http://www.cybersurf.co.uk/johnny/dunblane/norway.html

Sometimes you have to ask a question to get an answer.

I also learned that the Uk NRA has 5,000 odd paying members.

Yup, I knew about the pistol thing...

Basically what happened was that after the Dunblane massacre, the government banned the use of pistols (even single shot .22 pistols), thus - in a single move, they managed to completely destroy the sport of target pistol shooting. (We used to have a pretty good Olympic team who suddenly found themselves to be criminals).

Basically, sports shooters who'd put thousands of pounds into very expensive, customised hardware and spent years practicing had to stand by and watch their equipment being destroyed... as you can imagine they weren't too pleased about it.

5,O00 odd people in the NRA? Is that all? In that case I must have met at least 10% of their members at a shoot in Bisley (_The_ major shooting competition in the UK)

Sorry. You got pushed down my list. Had some RL to take care of and wasn't on much for days.

Well, the UK Nra number is not counting the folks in the pellet gun clubs, the folks in the black powder clubs and the folks in the skeet shooting and small bore clubs.

Apparently there is a small contigent of Practical Shooting folks who, under very strict auspices, get to use shotguns and revolvers and semi-auto pistols for tactical practice, along with the police and military and retired or demobbed members of both. It is hard to get details, I assume because of the paranoia.

I went to one of the police sites and looked at the reasons for which one could get a firearm permit for a specific weapon and purpose.
While you can get a permit for a rifle to shoot farm pests, you cannot request a permit for personal protection. We, the site says, the police, will do that for you...

Now I read that the number of armed police officers has gone down because many of the certified don't want to be.

This is not a good sign.

I've also read that there are a number of, um, quasi-military and security businesses in GB who are, for lack of a better word, mercenaries. They operate with government oversight, if not approval, and have access to most of the normal military equipment, including fully automatic personal and squad weapons and mortars and rocket launchers. Some of these gentlemen function as bodyguards in various parts of the world, including the Isles, although the laws regarding them are supposed to be quite specific and prohibitive.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=420842

This just in: 67 million registered firearms in Europe, the majority of the handguns in France.