Posted on 09/26/2016 5:11:12 AM PDT by rellimpank
I grew up with guns. Along with my boyhood pals, I grew up coveting, collecting and running wild with guns. "Let's play guns!" was our sham battle cry during those innocent years, the 1940s and '50s. While girls were jumping rope and playing jacks, we boys were shooting up the neighborhood. Depending on the season, we were just as likely to have been playing baseball, basketball or football. But "guns" was our sport for all seasons, fair weather and foul, indoors and out.
From prekindergarten years until adolescence, guns had a powerful grip on our imaginations and our sporting lives, mostly through the movies of that era, with comic books in a seductive supporting role. And while I eventually outgrew my physical attachment to guns, I was left with a retro affection for what are euphemistically called "action movies," ancient and modern — an unwholesome habit that's been harder to break than tobacco products.
Thanks to our precocious diet of action movies, my grade school buddies and I also acquired an encyclopedic fixation on guns — their makes and models, the advantages of revolvers vs. automatics, double- vs. single-action. We mainlined on their mechanisms, their ergonomics, their metallic luster, the length of their barrels, while adding as many specimens to our home arsenals as our parents would allow.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Because inner city youths watch soooooo many westerns. Or something like that.
Same here; I see they still make plastic helmets for the kids as well (though it probably doesn’t look too cool or “Audie Murphy” with a goofy neon orange gun). I remember the plastic M-16s which made the rattling sound as you pulled the trigger; a couple of kids had the Winchester-type(?) pop-guns.
The article starts with a lie and some people feel obligated to argue the point based on accepting that the bedwetter has some valid point.
“Gun violence” came from the left’s failed attempt at “gun shaming”. The left was losing the argument of ideas. They need to conduct guerrilla warfare against the populous to bring them back. They taught our children not to respect life or authority. They taught them to accept violence as the only alternative to argument.
When children played guns, people didn’t shoot up Theaters, Schools, malls or campi. That fact simply shows that his initial premise is nothing more than a manufactured lie based on a false narrative.
Well he get the timing wrong on that. A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More preceded Bonnie and Clyde. The Good The Bad and the Ugly was released a few months after Bonnie and Clyde in the US.
The comments will restore your faith in humanity.
The author feels guilt, has never owned a gun, never served. he is a wuss..
“Let’s play guns!”
Nobody said that...it was cops and robbers, cowboys and indians or army.
Just tipped his hand he’s a liar.
Listen up, Blades, you freaking MORON. I was born in 1941. Along with every boy I grew up with, we played “gun” games probably thousands of times. Soldiers, cowboys, hunters and hoodlums, you name it. We had cap guns, BB guns, and .22s. When we got old enough we had bigger guns, shotguns, etc. And we shot at tin cans, dumpster rats, rabbits, squirrels, opossums, and other critters. And later we shot at North Koreans, Chinese, Vietcong and other enemies of America. And more recently some of us became law officers and shot at violet criminals. But, of the 30+/- guys I’m referring to, NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM EVER COMMITTED A FELONY WITH OR WITHOUT THE USE OF A FIREARM. So I have request for you: FUC OFF!
Much later I think Mattel came out with very realistic looking gear called “Monkey Division” which was very high end warfare and expensive. I think it was based on the Vietnam genre.
We never fought the Cold War, just WWII. It was cool because our father’s were WWII vets and kept us in check. As to Nuclear weapons, we never didn’t even know there was such a thing as DEFCON III...
My point was simply that spaghetti westerns are an Italian genre having almost nothing to do with America, the making of America, the opening of the west, or American values. In Europe, Klaus Kinski was a western star! And when I once saw a dubbed actor eating an apple with a knife and fork, the whole genre (which I personally feel is putrid) cratered into satire-ville.
***but we did not have the massive gore that exists today.***
How true! Back in 1968, Bobby Kennedy was murdered and the news media lead the anti-gun anti-violence hysteria. Adult TV shows were dumbed down to kiddie shows. Pulp fiction changed their covers to have less blood and sex. Movies on TV were butchered to remove even the remote hint of violence.
Movies on the screen? Well, the industry said they would police themselves with a joke of a “ratings system”. This unleashed the most vile bloody sexually explicit movies ever made to audiences. The spurting blood, exploding heads, bodies torn apart became the normal from that day forward.
How many times can we see New York or LA destroyed by:
1) Martians
2) The fog
3) The cold
4) Airborne sharks
5) Robots
6) Earthquakes
7) Godzilla
8) Nature rebelling against mankind
9) Apes
10) Dinosaurs
11) Etc.
Spaghetti Westerns are near verbatim copies of Japanese movies. They depict the conflicts of the samurai code in a changing world.
And they still stink.
Same here. We played cowboys and Indians or the good guys guys and the bad guys. I remember having one of those pirate shaped smooth bore pistol which I found in a ditch. It was nothing more than part of a tree branch that looked like a pistol. I felt like taking on the world with that thing stuck in my pants. We were an odd bunch. In the summer our attire was a pair of blue jeans. That’s it, no shoes or shirts. And of course, we supplied our own sound effects even down to the sound of a ricocheting bullet. The whole experience was enchantment personified.
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