Firearms have been around since the Middle Ages. The potential of this type of weapon soon registered with military leaders as it required little or no training; just load and point in the right direction, preferably towards the enemy. This allowed for larger armies when soldiers were easier to train compared to the longbow or the crossbow. Just like any mass assault with projectile weaponry, if enough bullets are flying in the air, some will hit their targets. In the United States alone, an estimated 30.000 deaths annually are caused by firearms. These deaths are not casualties of war, but the result of criminal actions or accidents. This is a significantly higher death rate than in any other comparable country. (Hahn et al. Fig.1) Why a significantly
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Meltzer has studied the members of this organization, a very vocal group advocating gun rights, according to Meltzer numbering 4 million members. The stereotype described by Meltzer is a white man, wearing clothing associated with poor or working class rural gun owners (p5) ”tight blue jeans, cowboy boots, big belt buckles or suspenders and flannel shirts”. Meltzer conducted interviews and concludes that most are in fact middle class in terms of formal education, employment and income. Members of the NRA, according to Meltzer, believe that the right to own a gun is threatened. They believe that ”threats to guns are threats to all individual rights and freedoms. Take away gun rights, they say, and all other rights are sure to follow. An unarmed population will be unable to defend itself against a tyrannical government.” (p1) The NRA vehemently oppose any gun control legislation and has according to researchers like Scott Meltser and Katherine Gregory become one of the most visible and powerful gun rights lobby groups in the US. According to Katherine Gregory in her article "Drawing a Virtual Gun" the NRA considers itself to be a civil rights organization, as they see gun-ownership as a civil right (Gregory,107). Charles Fruehling Springwood, in his book Open Fire, …show more content…
A society built upon slave labor, for instance, swiftly develops a self-justifying slaveholder culture with its own racist laws, science, mythology, and religious preachments.(Parenti, 16)
Returning to Squires, we can find the origins of the American gun culture and its propensity for violence in the colonial past and in the Constitution. He further describes how firearms projected a sense of safety in dangerous surroundings. Wilson similarly describes the background to gun culture in the US which ”arises from the presence and proliferation of firearms throughout the country’s history, the link between gun ownership and the struggle for independence and westward expansion, and a mythology that has been perpetuated in popular culture. ”(Squires,
Meltzer has studied the members of this organization, a very vocal group advocating gun rights, according to Meltzer numbering 4 million members. The stereotype described by Meltzer is a white man, wearing clothing associated with poor or working class rural gun owners (p5) ”tight blue jeans, cowboy boots, big belt buckles or suspenders and flannel shirts”. Meltzer conducted interviews and concludes that most are in fact middle class in terms of formal education, employment and income. Members of the NRA, according to Meltzer, believe that the right to own a gun is threatened. They believe that ”threats to guns are threats to all individual rights and freedoms. Take away gun rights, they say, and all other rights are sure to follow. An unarmed population will be unable to defend itself against a tyrannical government.” (p1) The NRA vehemently oppose any gun control legislation and has according to researchers like Scott Meltser and Katherine Gregory become one of the most visible and powerful gun rights lobby groups in the US. According to Katherine Gregory in her article "Drawing a Virtual Gun" the NRA considers itself to be a civil rights organization, as they see gun-ownership as a civil right (Gregory,107). Charles Fruehling Springwood, in his book Open Fire, …show more content…
A society built upon slave labor, for instance, swiftly develops a self-justifying slaveholder culture with its own racist laws, science, mythology, and religious preachments.(Parenti, 16)
Returning to Squires, we can find the origins of the American gun culture and its propensity for violence in the colonial past and in the Constitution. He further describes how firearms projected a sense of safety in dangerous surroundings. Wilson similarly describes the background to gun culture in the US which ”arises from the presence and proliferation of firearms throughout the country’s history, the link between gun ownership and the struggle for independence and westward expansion, and a mythology that has been perpetuated in popular culture. ”(Squires,