One of the deepest divisions in contemporary America is that between urban and rural society. There is really no getting around this: the typical life experiences associated with these two subcultures are quite different, and people from one subculture often look at people from the other with incomprehension, or even hostility.
It is not my purpose here to summarize the differences between the two, but I do want to set out a minor prescription for improving understanding, and to explore one particular issue where these two subcultures are at odds with one another.
My prescription is simple: people should spend a significant amount of time living the life of the other subculture. Here I do not mean playing the tourist, but instead trying to find a way to truly live within the other community long enough to understand and be influenced by its values. I recognize that this is not an easy prescription, and I don't have any great ideas how to implement it generally, I just know that my life has provided me this opportunity, and with it a valuable perspective.
I should be clear here, that although I identify more strongly with the urban side of this divide, I think it is more common for rural folks to have some experience of city ways than conversely.
The issue I want to address is guns.
From an urban perspective, guns bring death. The urban experience involves a fair amount of potential friction each day, but also help fairly close at hand. The problem is that potential friction can become real friction fairly quickly, and that guns act on much shorter time scales than police response.
From the rural perspective, guns are part of the culture. They can be a means to obtaining food, as well as a significant and satisfying challenge to master. Guns can be a basis for friendly competition (as is often witnessed by road markers). Also, in an area where family is often near, but other help is often far away, guns can be a significant contributor to both perceived and real security.
We tend to approach matters as if the law for one must be the law for all. In general, I agree with this precept, but misapplication of this principle in the case of guns is making life more difficult. We would all be better served with stronger gun control in urban areas, and more flexibility in rural areas. And indeed the law is still the same for all, for each can chose to live in one environment or the other. This is not a issue where we should be counting votes, but instead we should be showing proper consideration to one another, and to the real differences between city and country life, rather than trying to impose an artificial uniformity that serves neither well.
Peace
12 comments:
Perhaps cities should be gun-free, but it's still against the 2nd Amendment in both places.
In Switzerland by law everyone has guns, but there are few shootings of other people. It has to have something to do with the character of urban people in America. They are rotten.
Country people go to churches I suppose more often, plus they also haven't got much else to do the rest of the week, so the experience remains a more lastin' part of the week.
I've never fired a gun, and do live in the country, but also spent twenty years in Seattle, which I think qualifies as urban experience.
There are things to like about both cultures.
I really like the food stores in the big cities. And the art museums.
In the country, I like the churches and all the people who go in them. I don't go into the woods much. Afraid to get shot, or mauled by a cougar, or assassinated by a tick with Lyme.
The people in the cities use all the CDC money to treat their sexual diseases so there isn't any money left for Lyme Research. I don't think the government spends any money at all on Lyme's. It's a terrible disease.
But not as bad as AIDS, yet.
It's like having the flu for about twenty years, people say.
But it doesn't kill you.
Perhaps cities should be gun-free, but it's still against the 2nd Amendment in both places.
The US has been understandably reluctant to tamper with the Bill of Rights, but it is important to understand in this debate that the Constitution can be amended, including the Bill of Rights. The capabilities of modern personal arms are not simple extrapolations from the capabilities of late 18th century personal arms; any more than twenty dollars today has the same value that twenty dollars had then.
In Switzerland by law everyone has guns, but there are few shootings of other people.
Yes. Switzerland also has compulsory military training (so everyone knows how to use those guns), and indeed, they have to have guns because they remain in militia. Likewise, Switzerland is much more homogeneous than US cities, there is a high level of general education, and viable economic opportunities for all. The state of our cities reflect choices that we've made as a society, choices we would do well to reflect on.
I've never fired a gun, and do live in the country, but also spent twenty years in Seattle, which I think qualifies as urban experience.
You've never fired a gun?! Are you a commie? Heck, I've fired guns, and have enjoyed doing so. Part of what is so silly about the gun debate is that there are so many righteous people out there talking about how bad guns are, when anyone with experience knows that they can be a heck of a lot of fun. Kind of like sex, except that the righteous and sinners have generally changed places :-).
Standard joke among my gun loving friends: Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms? Sounds like a party store to me! or, Just add women, and call it a party!
The people in the cities use all the CDC money to treat their sexual diseases so there isn't any money left for Lyme Research.
Lyme disease sucks. There are deer in the suburbs, and where there are deer, there are deer ticks, and where there are deer ticks, there is the possibility of Lyme. I know people with Lyme, and it's no fun, no matter where you caught it.
I don't think the government spends any money at all on Lyme's. It's a terrible disease.
I'm sure you'll be glad to know that the FY '10 budget recommendations from HHS include an increase from $5.37M to $8.93M through the CDC, attempting to reverse the recent trend of decreasing appropriations in this cause. Of course, there's a long path from recommendations to actual appropriations, but we'll see. But evidently there has been significant ongoing funding for Lyme (if a drop in the bucket next to AIDS), so you'll have to find something else that we city folk are doing to be upset about.
Stu,
Yes, guns are fun.
The problem, however, isn't with gun laws. Most of your city gun crime is committed by folks who own illegal weapons or shouldn't have weapons in the first place (they are felons, etc.).
If our penal system actually worked to keep the criminals off the street in the first place (for instance, no plea deals -- or no reduced sentence for plea deals -- or no bail for violent offenders, etc.) we'd have a great reduction in violence.
Unfortunately, we tend to let criminals run loose in our fair cities.
Stu -- Kirby also doesn't drink. Poor guy.
If our penal system actually worked to keep the criminals off the street in the first place (for instance, no plea deals -- or no reduced sentence for plea deals -- or no bail for violent offenders, etc.) we'd have a great reduction in violence.
We already incarcerate people at the highest rate in the world (I'll grant that China may be an exception) -- 5x the rate of Europe as a whole, 7x the rate of Canada, and can scarcely claim that we're safer. It seems to me that we've gone pretty far down the "just build more jails" path without finding anything like the end of it. So put me down as skeptical that simply taking another three or four steps deeper into the thicket is going to get us out of the woods.
Look, I'm not saying that we should simply give violent criminals a pat on the head, and say, "bad boy!," then let them back on the street. I am saying, however, that we need to look seriously at our society, and figure out why so many people are drawn into criminal activity. Also, to be perfectly blunt about it, if you're going to keep these people in jail, you have to be willing to say who you're going to let out.
Kirby also doesn't drink. Poor guy.
Figures. I've brewed. And the last time I inventoried my cellar, I had 107 bottles of wine. When my doctor asks me if I'm a social drinker, I say, no, a German drinker -- seldom more than a beer or two (or its equivalent) a day, but seldom less.
And I'm beginning to think that our box of tubes needs its own FAQ.
I'm making bum wine right now -- I left a pitcher of pink lemonade out and it started to ferment so I poured it in an empty and put a balloon over it. Tee hee.
Most of our "criminals" are drug offenders which, as Portugal shows is, is a waste. Honestly, though I'm anti-death penalty as it currently exists, part of me wishes we would make the penalty for all laws death with one chance at appeal. That way we'd have to re-examine what is and is not a crime.
how about saying
we have enough guns already
there will be no more guns made or sold in USA
no more gun training for single mothers
no more guns
get rid of them
melt them down
acknowledge there's no use for them
make it a crime to own a gun
or
if in the event of a crime a gun is used and the person is caught make the use of the gun the really big crime
even if the shots missed
do you have to be a headshot victim in a wheel chair to get this
only soldiers should have guns
for military games and they should shoot blanks
we've romanticized the gun beyond the degree of ludicrousness
i think the well equiped militia is a given now
enough of the guns cowboys
time to learn how to read
say goodnight to the OK corral
yeah gangsta rap is fun
should be a required part of every elementary school curriculum
boys and girls we are pleased to introduce LUDAKRIZ and his special friends
they have a message everyone needs to hear
so pay attention
wam bam thankyou mam
if we take as truth that all are capable of great evil than either no one should have guns (a fairly difficult task) or everyone should have access to them -- giving them to one group only gives that group instant and irrevocable power over others -- which, given the nature of fallen man, is egregiously dangerous.
I don't drink because I can't moderate myself. If I started to drink a beer every day, pretty soon I'd be doing nothing else. It's a slippery slope.
I have to pretty much stay on the straight and narrow for everything or else I'd become the Yosemite Sam of just about every vice.
Kirby—
One of the insidious things about alcohol is the extent to which individuals vary in their response. You have to know yourself, and live accordingly. Evidently you do.
My experience is different, although I will note this: I drank more during the last three years as chairman than I did before, or have since. I don't believe I drank to excess, but there is no denying that stress caused me to drink more.
I still like the Lyme's cause because it dramatizes the CDC's values sytems. Those who have a big voice through a giant lobby get funding. Children suffer disproportionately from Lyme's, and haven't done anything PC in order to get the disease, so their funding remains a token.
Meanwhile, PWAs get the lions share, even though they could have easily done something else than share needles (illegal) or do something that will kill you no matter, eventually (anal sex I think will always kill the receiver, eventually, or at least shorten the lifespan of the recipient, whether it's a male or a female on the receiving end).
People shouldn't do it, and the CDC shouldn't enable those who do.
Meanwhile, the children playing outside get the short end of the stick. What are they supposed to do, stay inside year around?
th eother option is to send out the helicopter gunships and wipe out all the deer. In lieu of other options, that one is probably fairly inexpensive, and might help with this cause, but it would be difficult to implement because the Sierra Club and Gary snyder would care more for the deer than for our dear children.
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