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Why Gun Culture Is So Strong in Rural America
New York Times ^ | March 16, 2018 | ROBERT LEONARD

Posted on 03/16/2018 2:16:31 PM PDT by reaganaut1

KNOXVILLE, Iowa — As Democrats have fled rural America — or rural America has fled Democrats — many of them, living in cities, are left without an understanding of rural culture and its core values. If it isn’t on abortion, our deepest cultural divide might be on guns. The guns issue also has a profound political dimension, reliably driving rural Americans into Republican arms.

It’s been many years since I hunted squirrels and rabbits with my Grandpa Leonard. I grew up around guns and remember the pride I had when I completed my N.R.A.-sponsored gun safety training in Boy Scouts, back when the N.R.A. was a group primarily known for teaching gun appreciation and safety rather than lobbying.

I have come to understand and appreciate arguments for more gun control. But guns are important to the culture in my conservative community in Iowa, and people around here reject most gun control legislation. So I do my best to understand where they are coming from.

One morning after the mass shootings in Parkland, Fla., I spoke about them with a police-officer friend. He has led active-shooter trainings in our schools. He believes that better background checks might help prevent some gun violence, and that people need to do a better job securing their firearms (especially from suicidal teenagers).

But he doesn’t believe that significant gun control measures will ever meet approval in rural America, including a ban on AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles. He confided that many conservative police officers do not want more gun control and that other officers have told him that should they ever have to start taking guns away from people, they will quit their jobs. Like most rural conservatives, he truly believes that taking guns away from law-abiding citizens will never solve America’s gun problems, including mass shootings.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; US: Iowa
KEYWORDS: banglist; bitterclingers; democrats; fakenews; guncontrol; guns
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1 posted on 03/16/2018 2:16:31 PM PDT by reaganaut1
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To: reaganaut1

So the NYT is going to tell its urban readers why gun culture is so strong in rural America? Let me guess - it has something to do with the fact that rural Americans are ignorant racists who want to use guns to shoot gays, blacks and women who get out of line.


2 posted on 03/16/2018 2:20:00 PM PDT by Opinionated Blowhard ("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")
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To: reaganaut1

What a steaming pile of patronizing horse hockey.


3 posted on 03/16/2018 2:20:28 PM PDT by TTFlyer
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To: reaganaut1

"...New York Times..."


Sorry, not giving them the web clicks that they crave so much.

4 posted on 03/16/2018 2:21:01 PM PDT by Blue Jays ( Rock hard ~ Ride free)
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To: reaganaut1
I have come to understand and appreciate arguments for more gun control.

In order for this to happen you would have to be a completely emotion driven irrational drone with a IQ lower then room temperature. There are no rational sane arguments "for gun control". It is a wholly irrational emotional poltical postion based on a total ignorance of the topic.

5 posted on 03/16/2018 2:23:25 PM PDT by MNJohnnie ("The political class is a bureaucracy designed to perpetuate itself" Rush Limbaugh)
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To: reaganaut1

A truth ... most media, all liberals, all criminals and all moslems hate Americans because Americans refuse to be stupid !!!


6 posted on 03/16/2018 2:23:56 PM PDT by no-to-illegals (..There is no difference between liberals/rinos/moslems/illegals/lamestream media ...)
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To: reaganaut1

So the Sauvé uber cool Times sends a reporter out to Lard Bucketville, Sticks and Hicks County to see why mouth breathing rednecks like them thar guns?

Oh I so want to read more. Yes I do.

/s


7 posted on 03/16/2018 2:23:59 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
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To: reaganaut1

“I worry that the ready availability of guns contributes to the number of suicides in rural America. Nothing crushes a small town like a suicide, as nearly everyone knows the victim or a family member.”

Maybe Mr. Leonard could be enlightened by googling “youth suicide Japan” and learn that on average, 4600 youths between 10 and 21 kill themselves annually, particularly around the time when the school year is about to start and also during the high school national exam period. It is also not a particularly uncommon thing for Japanese men to come home and tragically discover that the wife has killed herself and their children. And yet, the NYT people like to lecture about how strict Japanese gun control laws are and how they are accompanied by far lower homicide rates.


8 posted on 03/16/2018 2:24:18 PM PDT by OttawaFreeper ("If I had to go to war again, I'd bring lacrosse players" Conn Smythe)
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To: Opinionated Blowhard

When in facts it’s Liberals in Democrat run areas that kill gays and Blacks and Women when they “get out of line” of the liberal ideals


9 posted on 03/16/2018 2:25:50 PM PDT by realcleanguy
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To: reaganaut1

Because there’s a lot of s#it that needs shooting!


10 posted on 03/16/2018 2:27:10 PM PDT by bigbob (Trust Trump. Trust Sessions. The Great Awakening is at hand...MAGA!)
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To: reaganaut1
“Pro-Second Amendment,” I said. “All in favor of rifles, shotguns and handguns. Concealed carry makes me nervous, but I guess I’m for it, and I want AR-15s and their kin banned.”

So even though the dire warnings about expanded concealed carry never came to pass, and even though the Scary Looking Guns ban accomplished nothing regarding crime and murder rates, you have concerns. Liberals run with emotions, not facts, and that is why I have given up even bothering to present facts to them. Might as well be presenting facts to a raccoon for all the good it does.

11 posted on 03/16/2018 2:27:47 PM PDT by dirtboy
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To: reaganaut1

Anyone who calls it “gun culture” doesn’t understand American culture. They only understand their big city hive culture. We want guns, more horsepower, 5 different sizes of soft drinks at 7-11, a choice of jobs, the home that we like, etc. This is because we are Americans and we can have all that if our skills, talents, and work ethic permits.

Of all those things, only the gun permits us to tell Progressive Communists who want us to have no guns, no horsepower, no soft drinks, no 7-11, the job they want us to do, and the apartment they assign to us.

Screw them! Give them their cities and we’ll keep our productive red counties.


12 posted on 03/16/2018 2:28:11 PM PDT by Bryanw92 (Asking a pro athlete for political advice is like asking a cavalry horse for tactical advice.)
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To: reaganaut1

The World’s Happiest Countries Take The Most Antidepressants

https://www.opposingviews.com/health/worlds-happiest-countries-take-most-antidepressants


13 posted on 03/16/2018 2:29:45 PM PDT by ameribbean expat
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To: no-to-illegals

I would not include criminals. Most love it here.


14 posted on 03/16/2018 2:30:09 PM PDT by BBell (calm down and eat your sandwiches)
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To: TTFlyer

Totally agree.


15 posted on 03/16/2018 2:31:30 PM PDT by Bodleian_Girl (Standing on the edges of a thousand burning bridges)
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To: reaganaut1

This is by no means the kind of article I would have written. But I will give the author points for at least making an attempt at getting people who live outside the large population centers and their values. All in all it’s not great or even especially good. But it is not horrible. And the mere fact that the Times actually published it is surprising.


16 posted on 03/16/2018 2:31:42 PM PDT by NRx (A man of integrity passes his father's civilization to his son, without selling it off to strangers.)
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To: reaganaut1
p07

You needum guide, bwana?

Me best guide and interpreter, keep safe.

17 posted on 03/16/2018 2:31:45 PM PDT by Snickering Hound
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To: OttawaFreeper

Good point. I lost my father to a gun suicide. NEVER ONCE did I think about gun control. He would’ve just picked another way.


18 posted on 03/16/2018 2:32:08 PM PDT by RushIsMyTeddyBear (Screw The NFL!!!!!! My family fought for the flag!)
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To: reaganaut1
Maybe one of the reasons is that the police are not minutes away but longer. Obama agrees.

“At one point Michelle turned to me and said, ‘You know, if I was living in a farmhouse where the sheriff’s department is pretty far away and somebody can just turn off the highway and come up to the farm,’” he said during a CNN town hall on guns in America. “‘I would want to have a shotgun or a rifle to make sure I was protected and to make sure my family was protected.’”

19 posted on 03/16/2018 2:33:27 PM PDT by BBell (calm down and eat your sandwiches)
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To: BBell

Only when they can kill as liberals, media and moslems


20 posted on 03/16/2018 2:33:45 PM PDT by no-to-illegals (..There is no difference between liberals/rinos/moslems/illegals/lamestream media ...)
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