Why Gun Culture Is So Strong in Rural America

New York Times ^ | March 16, 2018 | ROBERT LEONARD

[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.

[Jolla]

N.R.A. was a group primarily known for teaching gun appreciation and safety rather than lobbying

wonder why they had to go into the lobbying bidness -grandpa leonards boy is a dumaz

[Lexington Green]

In 1776 the British demanded that we surrender our guns. We shot them.

[dforest]

That be cuz weez backards rednecks like ole Snuffy has to shoot up them thar revenooers and perteck our stills and stuff.

[Carriage Hill]

I went to HS in a northwest Chicago suburb, and we had a rifle team, 1963-1967. I still have that Mossberg 144-LS my Dad bought me while in the BSA, in the late 50s. I made Eagle Scout in Nov 1963.

http://s1048.photobucket.com/user/carriage_hill/media/Mossberg-144LS-22LR_zpshxivbt3n.jpg.html

[cranked]

NYT, etc. please keep it up, cause we know exactly who is going to win the next civil war....and it will not be your lame arses.....

[shanover]

I don’t accept the premise nor even give any merit to what these a-holes have an opinion about. We should ask them why is gun culture/killing culture so strong in’da Hood.

[GenXteacher]

If you support banning AR-15s, you are for gun control. The author has yet to come to that realization. And the NFA is just like the rest of the New Deal- Marxist rubbish that is bankrupting our nation and flushing a great republic down the totalitarian toilet.

[familyop]

“Gun culture?” Some of those northeastern metropolitan folks are way out there in their conveyed thoughts. They should get out more.

But yes, firearms are common tools in small towns and rural parts of the Midwest. And we don’t fear our neighborly neighbors, who also have firearms.

Maybe some of those big city folks in anti-second-amendment states should avoid firearms, though, until they’re sure that they have healthier perspectives. Some of them apparently suffer from their imaginations and impulses running a little wild. Maybe it’s the recycled water. Or maybe the rats in those cities are carrying some kind of brain parasite.

[tschatski]

Spot on.

[sergeantdave]

ROBERT LEONARD believes the world revolves around him and his leftist buddies. He has no idea how hard his nuts will be stomped into the concrete should they dare try the confiscation of firearms.

[goldstategop]

I love it when liberals tell us we’re the problem and we need to compromise.

That’s coming from the folks who refuse to compromise on abortion and it isn’t even mentioned in the Constitution.

Abortion that takes far more lives than guns do.

Our RKBA are protected by the Constitution and we’re not going to allow any one to usurp them. We’ll let our guns fall only from our cold, dead hands.

Freedom is indivisible and we won’t bargain it away for a little temporary safety. Period.

[elcid1970]

“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 make it happen, b!tch.

Go to a firing range and the first person you see with an AR-15, go up to him and say, “You can’t have that, citizen, you must give it to the state. Hand it over so I can turn it in to the authorities. Now!”

;^)

[Inyo-Mono]

Good comments, my thoughts exactly.

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[Dusty Road]

Here’s why the gun culture is so strong, my buddy did it right with this song. Tommy Conners, give him a listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwgCXC3dsZw

Here’s another of his songs appropriate for the state we’re in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M1rWdObsxQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5myKIbt7sAI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC7GCJFDVpg

[WayneS]

Mr. Watts said Democrats think people were born basically good

Mr. Watts was wrong. Democrats think “the people” are basically bad (and stupid) and that only a powerful government run by good and smart people like themselves can control us.

[dinodino]

This article reads like it was written by a low-IQ anthropologist from Mars. I couldn’t make it all the way through. F*** the NYT.

[FreedomNotSafety]

He wants to frame the 2nd as sport, hunting, self defense, and tradition. Anything but enforcing Jeffersonian style republic renewal in the face of tyrannical government.

[buwaya]

Interesting that everyone - left or right - in all these arguments ignores the constitutional purpose, which was well understood in its day though rather understated in the text of the Second Amendment. They never mention it.

It certainly has nothing to do with hunting or even personal protection, or even community protection. It is there simply to facilitate a revolt against a government turned despotic.

That business of a license, if you will, to at least make an attempt at revolution, is apparently very “I do not want to go there” scary.

[gspurlock]

Ok, I’m so sick of all of this nonsense, how ‘bout the only sort of gun control that would work: universal mandatory gun training and the citizen’s expense? That is gun control, ensuring everyone knows how to control a gun.