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Boston Globe article

nitrovic

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Unreal. First off, why is her father just sitting his duty weapon in a drawer where a four year old could reach? I think the problem may be with her dad, not the gun....


'Open carry' guns at our children's risk
Email|Print|Single Page| Text size – + By James Carroll
June 16, 2008
IMAGINE A child barely tall enough to reach the top drawer of the bedroom dresser. Imagine the child on tip-toes opening the drawer because the forbidden object is hidden there. The naughty thrill of reaching under the socks, the shock of actually touching the thing, finding it cold, as if on ice. Such is my memory of furtive encounters with my father's handgun. At the time, Dad was an FBI agent. Where he stowed his weapon when off-duty was absolutely out-of-bounds, which defined its appeal. Invading that drawer is my first remembered act of disobedience.

Even at age 4, I was hypnotized by a gun. The gun was a mystical object, with significance that far transcended any imagined use. Fear, but also consolation. Awe. Trembling. That the gun was my father's was a first clue to potency. Hidden away, yet the gun sent a pulse through the whole apartment, a psychological electromagnet around which my awareness swirled. Long before I tasted the temptations of sex, I yielded to an irresistible prurience by opening that drawer. Initiation into obscenity. Because primal disobedience is so defining, I found a sense of independent selfhood in relationship to a gun. Only later would I realize how very American that makes me.

What is it with Americans and guns? "The right to bear arms" is the constitutional dynamo sparking an electromagnetic pulse through every corner of politics. Meanwhile, in the nation's cities, a slow-motion massacre unfolds, with gunshots mercilessly cutting down a legion of the young. Yet in legislatures, bills designed to reduce gun violence are routinely killed by the all-powerful lobbying of the National Rifle Association. Presidential candidates are universally required to worship at the altar of the Second Amendment.

Now an "open carry" movement encourages gun owners to wear their weapons ostentatiously on their belts, "to make a firearm," in the words of a Los Angeles Times story last week, "as common an accessory as an iPod." Or, as one open carrier said, "Hey, we're normal people who carry guns."

Get used to it. In most states, there is no law against license-holders cradling a rifle on the street, or holstering a firearm on a hip, like Wyatt Earp. But since the close of the last frontier, gun display, except in movies, has been culturally taboo. The power of that prohibition is what stirred me at my father's dresser. "Open carry" aims to remove such visceral negativity, though the taboo amounts, in fact, to last ditch gun control. The "normalizing" of guns will inevitably normalize their use. From movies to legislation to political rhetoric - and now to "accessory" fashion: guns galore. And who, pray tell, will bear, not the arms, but the consequences?

In despair over unchecked gun-carnage in Chicago schools, Mayor Richard Daley asked, "Why is America turning its back on its children when it comes to gun violence?" The answer is buried deep in the national psyche, and I am a case in point. The gun is a totemic object, with meanings that drill far below surface arguments about self-defense, the sport of hunting, standing militias, or the intent of the Framers. Children die because these deeper meanings of the gun go unreckoned with.

Anthropologists suggest that the evolutionary mutation separating primates from humans was the invention of the weapon. Instead of merely gathering food, our forebears began to hunt for it, and "culture" followed. The hunt organized around a weapon, whether a wedge-shaped stone or a sharpened stick, led to cooperation, planning, sharing, communication, and even upright posture. But the use of weapons against fellow animals seems also to have imbued humans with a sense of shame, which spawned post-hunt rituals of sacrificial atonement, the genesis of religion. Only the weapon made it possible for humans to better beasts, but only shame enabled humans to moderate the weapon's use. Otherwise, the human species would have plunged quickly into self-eliminating extinction.

In the great American gun debate, some would forgo the primordial shame the weapon still generates. Hence the "open carry" movement. But given the gun-deaths of children, and the sponsoring gun-paralysis of politics, Americans should have more shame, not less. A gun is no iPod. Shame is the children's last protection.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
 

compmanio365

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"Think of the children!" Apparently now it's not just easily excitable ladies saying this, it's pussy whipped little men wearing wool sweaters while petting their little rat dogs, probably at the same time writing this farce of a news article. Real men are a dying breed, unfortunately, and way too many think exactly as this one does.

Children used to grow up learning that guns weren't something to fear....rather they are a useful tool that one simply needs to have a certain respect for the power they wield when they have one. Children used to be taught this, hence why Jimmy could go to school with a gun in his truck and nobody was shot, by accident or otherwise, nobody screamed bloody murder and called the gestapo, it was an accepted part of being a young American. To be a real "man" any longer is to be viewed by many asa "neanderthal". Self sufficiency, honor, and determination are things lost in the past, except by the few that still ascribe to such ideals today.
 

KansasMustang

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Well said Compmanio, to add to that. I was raised with weapons. Gramps taught me first that a gun was not a toy, treat all guns as if they are loaded. Never point a gun at anything or anyone you do not intend to kill. Then he showed me what a .45 Colt will do to a steel can with water inside. Put the respect of firearms right where it should be. I did the same for my two daughters at the same age.
There are people in this country that do not know that those nice little plastic wrapped packages of meat come from cattle, hogs, chickens ETC. How the hell you expect them to know what a firearm can do? But IF there were armed peolpe in the streets of Chicago (besides the thugs) I'd just bet that the crime rate would drop sooooooo fast!
 

nitrovic

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KansasMustang wrote:
Well said Compmanio, to add to that. I was raised with weapons. Gramps taught me first that a gun was not a toy, treat all guns as if they are loaded. Never point a gun at anything or anyone you do not intend to kill. Then he showed me what a .45 Colt will do to a steel can with water inside. Put the respect of firearms right where it should be. I did the same for my two daughters at the same age.
There are people in this country that do not know that those nice little plastic wrapped packages of meat come from cattle, hogs, chickens ETC. How the hell you expect them to know what a firearm can do? But IF there were armed peolpe in the streets of Chicago (besides the thugs) I'd just bet that the crime rate would drop sooooooo fast!

I was raised the same way. My father had a wide array of weapons. He took me shooting as a little kid and taught me the right way to handle/care for weapons. This story is the typical liberal drivel that some of the media outlets put out. Really sucks most are going out of business....
 

TFred

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Another predictable attempt to ascribe moral value and "mystical" qualities to an inanimate object. With a little thought and creative effort one could write a similarly animated and heart-tuggy sap story about another invention made by humans... the wheel!

Especially if you include its use in the transportation of invading armies, I would suppose the wheel has killed far many more people than the gun.

TFred
 

Thundar

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TFred wrote:
Another predictable attempt to ascribe moral value and "mystical" qualities to an inanimate object. With a little thought and creative effort one could write a similarly animated and heart-tuggy sap story about another invention made by humans... the wheel!

Especially if you include its use in the transportation of invading armies, I would suppose the wheel has killed far many more people than the gun.

TFred

The analogy I was thinking about was the pen and the sword.

Sad how so many actually accept the brainwashing given by the media and the schools.
 

streetdoc

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When I was growing up in the 60's, my father was a cop, every gun we had in the house was loaded. Not just treat every gun as it is loaded, they really were loaded. When I went off in to the Marines and had my own family my personal guns were always loaded as they are now. My children were thought from a very age how to handle guns, and, not to touch them unless their mother or I got them out for them. I told them that anytime that they wanted to see them to just me know and we would go through the process of unloaded them, making sure that they were clear and after they were finished looking and handling the guns were would reload it and put it away. We had a hammerless semi-auto, one of the things that I would do was to cock the gun with the magazine out so I could engage the safety and then put the magazine in. This was my process of keeping them safe, they would have to disengage the safety, pull the slide back and chamber a round, when they were smaller they would not have either the strength or memory to do all of this. When they got a little older all they had to do was to say that they wanted to go shoot the gun and we would shooting. We took away the idea that you can't touch this, we took away the idea that you can't shoot this and replaced it when ever you want to handle the gun or shoot it, we will. We instilled safety and proper training. For the kids this was an non-event because they could do it anytime they wanted, they didn't crave something that they were told they couldn't do. We must have done something right since they are now 29 and 26 years old.
 

spawnbringer

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nitrovic wrote:
Unreal. First off, why is her father just sitting his duty weapon in a drawer where a four year old could reach? I think the problem may be with her dad, not the gun....


'Open carry' guns at our children's risk
Email|Print|Single Page| Text size – + By James Carroll
June 16, 2008
IMAGINE A child barely tall enough to reach the top drawer of the bedroom dresser. Imagine the child on tip-toes opening the drawer because the forbidden object is hidden there. The naughty thrill of reaching under the socks, the shock of actually touching the thing, finding it cold, as if on ice. Such is my memory of furtive encounters with my father's handgun. At the time, Dad was an FBI agent. Where he stowed his weapon when off-duty was absolutely out-of-bounds, which defined its appeal. Invading that drawer is my first remembered act of disobedience.

Even at age 4, I was hypnotized by a gun. The gun was a mystical object, with significance that far transcended any imagined use. Fear, but also consolation. Awe. Trembling. That the gun was my father's was a first clue to potency. Hidden away, yet the gun sent a pulse through the whole apartment, a psychological electromagnet around which my awareness swirled. Long before I tasted the temptations of sex, I yielded to an irresistible prurience by opening that drawer. Initiation into obscenity. Because primal disobedience is so defining, I found a sense of independent selfhood in relationship to a gun. Only later would I realize how very American that makes me.

What is it with Americans and guns? "The right to bear arms" is the constitutional dynamo sparking an electromagnetic pulse through every corner of politics. Meanwhile, in the nation's cities, a slow-motion massacre unfolds, with gunshots mercilessly cutting down a legion of the young. Yet in legislatures, bills designed to reduce gun violence are routinely killed by the all-powerful lobbying of the National Rifle Association. Presidential candidates are universally required to worship at the altar of the Second Amendment.

Now an "open carry" movement encourages gun owners to wear their weapons ostentatiously on their belts, "to make a firearm," in the words of a Los Angeles Times story last week, "as common an accessory as an iPod." Or, as one open carrier said, "Hey, we're normal people who carry guns."

Get used to it. In most states, there is no law against license-holders cradling a rifle on the street, or holstering a firearm on a hip, like Wyatt Earp. But since the close of the last frontier, gun display, except in movies, has been culturally taboo. The power of that prohibition is what stirred me at my father's dresser. "Open carry" aims to remove such visceral negativity, though the taboo amounts, in fact, to last ditch gun control. The "normalizing" of guns will inevitably normalize their use. From movies to legislation to political rhetoric - and now to "accessory" fashion: guns galore. And who, pray tell, will bear, not the arms, but the consequences?

In despair over unchecked gun-carnage in Chicago schools, Mayor Richard Daley asked, "Why is America turning its back on its children when it comes to gun violence?" The answer is buried deep in the national psyche, and I am a case in point. The gun is a totemic object, with meanings that drill far below surface arguments about self-defense, the sport of hunting, standing militias, or the intent of the Framers. Children die because these deeper meanings of the gun go unreckoned with.

Anthropologists suggest that the evolutionary mutation separating primates from humans was the invention of the weapon. Instead of merely gathering food, our forebears began to hunt for it, and "culture" followed. The hunt organized around a weapon, whether a wedge-shaped stone or a sharpened stick, led to cooperation, planning, sharing, communication, and even upright posture. But the use of weapons against fellow animals seems also to have imbued humans with a sense of shame, which spawned post-hunt rituals of sacrificial atonement, the genesis of religion. Only the weapon made it possible for humans to better beasts, but only shame enabled humans to moderate the weapon's use. Otherwise, the human species would have plunged quickly into self-eliminating extinction.

In the great American gun debate, some would forgo the primordial shame the weapon still generates. Hence the "open carry" movement. But given the gun-deaths of children, and the sponsoring gun-paralysis of politics, Americans should have more shame, not less. A gun is no iPod. Shame is the children's last protection.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.

Wow... Well, not that I'm dismissing theexperiences ofJames Carroll's youth or even his assessment of more possibly inherent humantraits but jezz. I like to keep it a bit more simplistic myself. Let's use the old standard, you know... Occam's Razor.

The world is violent. BG's have guns and will continue to have them regardless ofwhatever laws are passed banning guns. Police are not obligated to protect the individual citizen, and even if they were it would be an impossible task for them to perform.

The bottom line is the citizenhas a valid and even dire NEED forguns, just asour militaryhas a need for guns to defend us fromforeign aggressors. With that in mind, Open Carry can be viewed as a deterrent, just ascountriesuse and maintaintheir armies and nuclear weapons, often just for that purpose.

I'm not falling for that "think of thechildren" crap.It's misdirected and intellectually dishonest. Ido thinkof my children, as wellas other children, which is why I've decided tocarry a gun. It's the responsible thing to do.
 

bcr229

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My three year old daughter is also being raised to accept firearms as commonplace. Whenever she shows an interest in them she's allowed to handle them (unloaded) as much as she wants. As a result they're now as interesting as the sofa.

Unfortunately I can't do the same with the cutlery, and so she tries to get into the knife drawer at every opportunity. Ah, the attraction of forbidden fruit...
 

opusd2

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I grew up in a household of guns of all kinds, calibers, and makes with the ammunition within arms reach of them all. I respected what I knew about firearms; the tools they were and how dangerous they could be if I messed around with with in an unsafe manner. Hell, my dad was even happy when I became a proficient cleaner of those magnificent (in my mind) objects without even asking, sometimes without telling him. I just did it because I knew that was right.

I never shot anyone because "I didn't know better" and GOD help me if I used the BS line and put a hole in the roof of the house. I got a good spanking for shooting the glass balls off of the lightning rods on the barn, and I damn well remembered it.

So for all of the wimpy people out there claiming that guns are autonomous and have as their only function to harm or kill others, especially children and politicians, I say these ill informed-head in the sand-ignorant wastes of upper education need to realize that this country is great because we were allowed to handle ourselves in responsible fashion without prompting to wipe our asses every time we did our duty.

And I say this without any reservation at all; my son and any future children will not only respect the firearms they will grow up with but they will be allowed to use them as soon as they prove that respect to me. Just as I did to my dad.
 

Gordie

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This guy needs therapy.
Even at age 4, I was hypnotized by a gun. The gun was a mystical object, with significance that far transcended any imagined use. Fear, but also consolation. Awe. Trembling. That the gun was my father's was a first clue to potency. Hidden away, yet the gun sent a pulse through the whole apartment, a psychological electromagnet around which my awareness swirled. Long before I tasted the temptations of sex, I yielded to an irresistible prurience by opening that drawer. Initiation into obscenity. Because primal disobedience is so defining, I found a sense of independent selfhood in relationship to a gun. Only later would I realize how very American that makes me.

What in the world is he talking about. It sounds almost sexual,or maybe likea religious experience. I love my guns, but for crying out loud, there is a limit.:shock:
 

opusd2

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I wonder. I do have to admit that I do have some very deep feelings for my .45 Colt. Are they unhealthy? Only when I decide to bathe in oil with it, I guess... But I SURE do like to rub it clean and make it warm, and protect it form those thunderstorms at night and... Nope, I can't say I have unhealthy feelings either.
 

cccook

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TFred wrote:
Gun-proof your kids, don't try to kid-proof your guns! :)

Just as we teach them to swim, instead of draining all swimming pools, lakes and rivers. During the summer in DFW, not a week goes by without a drowning in some local swimming hole. Almost invariably the drowning victims are members of the same ethnic group. And yet there is no outrage from the MSM, the public at large nor the aforementioned group.

By exposing our children to firearms and educating them asto the inherent risks of firearms use, we remove the mystique of something that is taboo. It sounds as if James Carroll'sdad did him a disservice concerning firearms. I wonder how he likes having this pointed out to the world by his son.
 

opusd2

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See, now you're just trying to interject logic into a BS system. Of course we need to have personal belongings like firearms regulated, after all they are also a great source of revenue - just like all the fines imposed for being responsible for yourself. If you can't fine someone for doing something, like swimming in a public waterhole, then the monies need to come from somewhere. It's like the bully who needs to flex their muscles somewhere in order to get that cute miniscule erection from depriving someone from their rights by calling them privileges and then regulating them.

I'm sorry, was I too harsh?
 

Gordie

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opusd2 wrote:
See, now you're just trying to interject logic into a BS system. Of course we need to have personal belongings like firearms regulated, after all they are also a great source of revenue - just like all the fines imposed for being responsible for yourself. If you can't fine someone for doing something, like swimming in a public waterhole, then the monies need to come from somewhere. It's like the bully who needs to flex their muscles somewhere in order to get that cute miniscule erection from depriving someone from their rights by calling them privileges and then regulating them.

I'm sorry, was I too harsh?
No!:celebrate
 

Slayer of Paper

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"Think of the children!”

Yes, think of the children. Think of the grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, too. What kind of world will they grow up in when all the guns are gone, and there is no one to stop the government from becoming an oppressive, tyrannical totalitarian regime. Paranoid? Not hardly. History is replete with countless examples of exactly that result when citizens of a once free culture are stripped of the means to defend themselves. Please, think of the children.
 

opusd2

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That's exactly it, if not for us then we must consider the coming generations. We can see through history how our rights have magically become "privileges" and only the corrupt will succeed with such.

There are so many campaigns on TV, radio, newspaper, and every other media imaginable that push for a "Green" society but nobody ever talks about how we should preserve rights and the freedoms of future generations. Everytime I turn on the TV or radio all I hear about is how there is a need for more law enforcement to be posted here and there and how they will be "Cracking Down" on this and that, but never anything about how we should work on developing ways of ensuring our kids will have the freedoms we do.

I can understand how we should respect the people who work for our safety sake, but what distinguishes the truly caring people from the power hungry bullies is becoming more and more unclear. If it wasn't so unclear, there wouldn't be these forums where people like us discuss how we plan on changing all of the laws and understanding all of the legal and moral inconsistencies we encounter daily.

So think of the children, whether you have them or not because every step we take today to ensure that they will be free of (or at least able to defend themselves against) tyranny and oppression in all forms. Crime is a fact of life, and it is our INALIENABLE right to defend ourselves. How hard is it to understand that criminals who will deprive you of your livelihood and perhaps life, don't respect life itself or the very foundation our country was built on.

We aren't criminals just because we choose to defend ourselves agains such garbage as dirty politics or heartless thugs. And sometimes it just gets so hard to distinguish one from the other, and that's why we need to be prepared.
 
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