Looking at my Country in a Funhouse Mirror

[steepholm]

I drew an analogy in a recent post between the gun lobby in the USA and the foxhunting lobby in the UK. Seems I wasn't the first to do so...

This was presumably made by the same people who like to warn Americans about the evils of the NHS Death Panels, and their shadowy leader, Dr D. Vader.

Comments

[jadelennox]

...I'll be sitting over here with our homicide rate 3.5 times higher than yours, boggling at the anguish of the privileged.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

I'm going to live blog this: "Age old"! What! Come ON! I live in the middle of the bloody countryside and my cousin's FIL is a MFH. Most of my relatives hunt but fox hunting dates to perhaps 250 years max - it's hardly ancient. Trevor has gone hunting with the Mendip and is not, I can reassure you, about to start campaigning for more Uzis in Stokes Croft. Plus the data is rubbish. Frank Cook died in January. The police have refused to carry arms; gun crime is going down.

I have a lot of sympathy with Tony Martin, although I think there may be more to the case than meets the eye. I would be up for killing anyone who invades my house, but very few burglars carry guns. I thought Martin was out, already? A moment later: in 2003, so how old is this report? Nearly a decade old, from the look of it?

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Really the Countryside Alliance deserve a massive slap for this. But it seems to be an old report, so let's hope we've all moved on.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It was uploaded to Youtube last year, but from internal references ("the ban on handguns six years ago", etc) I'd say this was made in 2003, and uses footage of the big Countryside Alliance march from the previous year. I was interested in the rhetorical links it was trying to make more than in its up-to-dateness; having said which, I came across it today it on the FB page of a rightwing ex-pat college friend (now living in the States), who linked to it in the context of the gun debate, with the comment, "This was one of the reasons I left Britain". So I suppose it still has a constituency of sorts!

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. But the CA have calmed down perforce a bit since then, due to entirely reasonable ridicule about describing themselves as "a persecuted minority." I've never actually met anyone in rural Britain who called for the free use of semi automatic weapons, so feel free to put your friend onto me (or to Trevor - right wing, supports the NHS, despises the gun nut mentality. They might not be able to cope with the cognitive dissonance, however).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think I'll spare you that! I'm fond of him, but he's not the kind of person you'd seriously want to talk politics with. (He's a convinced birther, for example.)

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

::eek::

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Just in case it's useful, I've had a modicum of success with appearing to agree with these right-wing gun nuts. If, rather than arguing, you post absolutely dead pan that you are now terrified of going to the US because, as a tourist, you obviously won't have the arsenal of weapons that these people feel is essential to keep them safe, you can occasionally get them to back-peddle frantically as they realise what sort of picture they are painting of their beloved country.

Another tactic I've tried is saying that I had always thought that the US was a democracy but that now I've realised I've been wrong all these years. Obviously, if they feel they need weapons to "defend themselves against a tyrannical government", then they're not actually a free and democratic First World country after all. That is so sad. :( Here in the UK if we want to get rid of a government, we vote them out.

Do it dead pan and avoid appearing to be sarcastic and see what happens. :)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent plan. :) But I don't think it would work in this case, as the chap is British himself and has known me for thirty years. Something tells me he wouldn't be fooled...

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

For most of us in North America, 250 years is indeed ancient, so we would have no trouble taking that comment at face value.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

That's just last week for us'ns though.

My local castle had been standing for 750 years at that point. :o)