What If We Made Gun Culture Uncool Like We Did Cigarettes?
“Sorry, I can’t bring my kids to your place if there are unsecured guns in the house.”
“Thanks for coming over. Do you mind leaving your shoes in the hallways and your pistol off my property?”
“I can’t stay over if you keep a gun in the bedroom, especially if we’ve been drinking. Guns make things less safe when the lights go out.”
It’s surprisingly easy to imagine a society where gun ownership is looked down upon, if not scorned outright. This already happened with smoking, at least partly as a result of a public education campaign aimed at young people, and it happened when polite society finally came down against people flying the Confederate flag after the Charleston church shootings this year. Sometimes, when legislative action is difficult or downright impossible, a cultural approach works to curtail dangerous behaviors.
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Like cigarettes, guns are big business. Smith & Wesson has a $1 billion market capitalization and a CEO who made $1.9 million last year, Sturm, Ruger & Co. has a $1.1 billion market cap and a CEO who made more than $1.1 million in the latest fiscal year. The National Rifle Association boasts 4.5 million members and regularly takes in contributions approaching $100 million a year, in addition to its program revenues. In short, guns are part of the establishment and people who spend money on them are no more iconoclasts than people who fork over money to Phillip Morris on a daily basis.
Like the tobacco industry, the gun industry has obfuscated about the safety dangers of its products. It has sold a fantasy of self- and home-protection that is out of touch with reality. And like tobacco companies, the industry aggressively markets to young people. A presentation by Smith & Wesson from March 2015 says that two thirds of new shooters are 18-34 years old, that a quarter of first time purchases by a second gun within a year, and that 60 percent of new shooters are buying for personal defense or security.
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MORE:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/guns-cigarettes-cultural-shift
= new reply since forum marked as read
Yeah, good luck with that, just keep on stigmatizing firearm owners, it's worked out so wonderfully so far.
In addition, I don't' think you know what gerrymandering is because it makes no sense in the sentence you wrote.
If loosened gun laws are mostly in 'red states', there aren't many 'blue states' left.
Your posts get more bizarre every day.
No, I'm quite solid, but thank you for your concern.
Have you heard of unenumerated rights? The ninth amendment ring a bell?
Here's one for you, where is the right to travel enumerated?
Don't go throwing food in momma's face while she's feeding you.
What if gun products had warning labels like tobacco procucts?
!CAUTION! IMAGE IS VERY GRAPHIC!
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An examination into the theory of how political movements die off with age, and criticisms of this theory, focusing on both the assumptions of non-transference of ideas during transition, and the social construction of fixed socialization processes from one generation to the next. Only one section offered. Joint registration with Dept. of Myth and Religion. Lower Division.
The damage is done when the functional lung surface, called the parenchyma, is finally burned away. The structures that facilitate gas exchange, called alveoli and look like bunches of grapes, collapse, and don't grow back. Once that happens, you've got COPD, which is irreversible. By quitting, you've help prevent further damage to your lungs. Whether or not you develop carcinoma down the line is kind of up in the air.
But at least you quit. Thank you. 
and I looked soooo cool when I was 16!
I miss them so.
plus,big tobacco getting a little less money.
Thanks!
Lead is hell on our local California Condor population.
On a shooting range why would anyone use lead?
What distance do you shoot? Maybe you should try golf. Hitting little balls with a stick. I've one brother who is a champion at that.
Modern 2000+ psi airguns with no-lead ammo are very fine target shooting machines.
But maybe not so good to keep in a purse as a security blanket, I guess.
So what pleases you again? You like the "smell" of those nitrites and nitrates? Buy some poppers.
--Best wishes, Hunter
P.S. This is the 100% science Hunter who has played with things like very big hand guns, rail guns, high explosives, and dangerous rockets, but never any personal safety issues, even frolicking in the surf naked in great white shark territory. The secret of a good life is to be fearless, even if you have to occasionally ask some trusted friend or family to pick shrapnel out of your butt and tell lies to your mother.
P.S.S., this is a photo of my very most sweetest gentle great grandma:
Her autistic spectrum husband was always more fond of engineering math. She'd passed away before I was born, maybe because she wasn't mean enough and hadn't shot dead or emasculated any bad Mormons or other religious fanatics. (Though she did write many harsh words about religious extremists of many flavors. Especially Mormons.)
My other three great grandmas were more the-call-the-county sheriff-coroner-to-clean-up-the-mess sort. Strong silent types. I'd frequently watch one of my great grandmas in awe as she cut up freshly dead fish, birds, or small mammals for dinner. Too fast to see her hands moving. Knife magic. The same grandma who once threatened my dad with a knife. He wisely decided not to press his opinion further.
I've always felt a little sad about this great grandma, she didn't quite believe the Apollo Project, that landing men on the moon was real, even though my dad's dad was one of the many engineers. And she was still complaining about her dead dreamer worthless husband who had signed onto rural electrification for the homestead simply to feed his radio habit. She'd also scolded my mom's cousin, her firstborn grandchild of the homestead, for indoor plumbing in the second house. According to my great grandma electric pumps and indoor plumbing would be the ruin of the family, so better discard the wife who demanded such luxuries. My mom's cousin stood his ground and kept his wife. There was water from the kitchen tap in his bigger house, and later an indoor toilet, bath, and a septic tank. No more bathing in the kitchen in a tub of water heated on the wood stove, women and girls first, men and boys in the cooler leftovers.
Whenever we visited my great grandma we slept in her house, used her outhouse, and bathed in her kitchen in water heated on her wood stove. I witnessed great grandmother boobs, house in the wilderness, Scandinavian style. We'd have been much more comfortable in my mom's cousin's house, but my great grandma ruled all, so much as she could. She could shoot you or cut you if you dared press.
My wife and I are both of matriarchal Western North American families. One of my wife's grandmas was the strongest women I've ever met. (Her other grandma had passed away before we married. A Gaelic Catholic Fuck-this-Shit sort.)
My wife's Southwestern Native American ancestors survived the U.S.A. genocide by fleeing to Mexico and her grandma then birthed her own children back to the U.S.A. when it was a safer, but she refused U.S.A. citizenship until she died, which sometimes made border crossings awkward.
My wife's dad was born in a Mexican farm labor camp within two hundred yards of a small farm my parents later owned. That's among the weirdest coincidences of my life. My wife and I met as commuter school teachers in urban Los Angeles.
and illegal in all 50 states for waterfowl. On the range, it is mined periodically out of the berms, and poses little threat to the environment. But if an affordable substitute is developed, then it lead may go the way of other substances. On gun-love, I heard someone (Tom Robbins?) say 80% of sex is odor. 
Not interested in golf; airguns are of passing interest. I do like hunting, however, and most my shots are below 180 yds (my limit, not the rifle).
Enjoyed your family history. My Mom's folks are old Florida Crackers who came to the state just before the Civil War (most folks saw what was going to happen, and if you didn't want to get caught up in anything, you cut out to Florida. Same as it ever was. They farmed their own place, my Mom and Aunt picked strawberries for $1/day during the Depression, and the uncles worked in saw mills and trucking. He t they had a used Model T and gas lighting and a pump well in the kitchen; i.e., the house was built around the well. When things got rough, Pappy would hire out to the state, and drive a mule-drawn wagon to prospect for the State (lime, phosphate, and other minerals), camping in the sticks for a week or two at a time. But he preferred farming, and did not hunt.
In the 50s he would visit our family in G'ville where we had the usual modern conveniences. But he would disappear into the woods after the big family meal. Once my brother trailed him, only to discover that he had taken a dump. He asked Pappy why he did that when we had a full bathroom and running well water, and he answered that he brought up not to crap where you got fresh water. Heh. Maybe due to his mining experience, he had less faith in limestone and clay filtration.
Lots of tales from that time; some good, some bad. He died in '56 and was eulogized as a pioneer in the Bartow area. Mamma died at 99 yoa. My Mom will be 96 next mo.
Peace.
My dad can beat up your dad too!
(That's where this sort of argument always goes.)
Nitrous oxide is an oxidizer, silly. Makes good rockets too.
So what's the utilitarian purpose of shooting targets at 1000 yards?
Confess, it's a power trip, an itch an air gun doesn't quite satisfy. The smell of that smokeless powder makes you imagine yourself as some Simo Häyhä shooting "bad" guys, guys who are in truth not much different than yourself, but caught up in the same bad circumstances.
Yep, I do hate guns. I've lived most of my life now in the sorts of urban wilderness where the cops and gangsters are always shooting at someone, and I've seen too many suicides by gun.
Gun fetishes are entirely unappealing to me, but I do have some respect for fine machines and hobbies that require excellent hand-eye coordination.
A question way above your pay grade.
Please explain to the next rapist killed by a woman via firearm, that the rapist was in truth not much different than the woman herself, but caught up in the same bad circumstances.
I haven't fired a gun in a few months now, and haven't bought one in over ten years, though I have to admit that a crossbow is interesting to me.
As I suspected.
That's nice. Straw men are entirely unappealing to me, but I do occasionally gain respect for those who can debate honestly.
(Well actually, I'm more a "Q"
Gun talk is so sweet.
We're dealing with the moran culture here.
The push over Drinking and driving laws, largely make sense, it punishes BEHAVIOR and MISUSE of a legal product, while allowing adults to do "what ever" with the booze as they wish... That is the way gun laws should largely be.
Most of today's gun control laws, wish to take away even the ability to own a gun regardless of how you plan to use it.
You thought they would have learned from prohibition, but they did not...
