On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Marvin Long, Jr. wrote:
> re guns
>
> Guns are no longer tools (except in some rural areas). People don't
> need to hunt, and when they do it's for sport. Using guns for defense
> is problematic at best. There's not much call for shooting coyotes,
> say, if you live in the city or the suburbs. Guns aren't taken for
> granted because their use today is largely symbolic, their meaning a
> product of movies, TV shows, and political rhetoric. Owning a gun
> isn't like owning a shovel anymore, so it presents a greater symbolic
> attraction to the young mind.
When I think "rural", I'm thinking a lot more rural than the areas where
I've heard of 2 different families actually using a gun to get rid of a
pesky critter digging up the garden.
Unless you have a dog like the one we had (there's the dog thing again!),
it can be difficult to do in the woodchuck that's digging up your garden.
Our neighbor shot the woodchuck who was giving her grief. (She left the
body out for her husband to dispose of properly when he got back from the
trip he was on, and before he got back, the woodchuck disappeared. About
the same time, our dog showed up with a woodchuck and was praised for
having killed the critter. But she hadn't killed it -- she'd stolen the
neighbor's woodchuck carcass....)
And it's also not easy to get rid of an armadillo. The shot taken at
*that* thing was a little high and didn't hit the thing, but it didn't
come back, either. Then again, that was in a neighborhood that had seen
some awfully big rattlers less than 10 years before (and from the sounds
of it, I'd much rather be armed with a handgun of some sort than a hoe for
taking care of one of those, not that I'd really want a gun in the first
place; maybe some sort of polearm would be a better weapon for the
purpose, at least in my hands?).
So, depending on how you define "rural", I'd agree with Marvin's
statement, but my definition of "rural" doesn't quite cover all the sorts
of situations where a gun is still a tool on occasion. Maybe I should
rethink my definition.
Julia
