If you have read any of my political or football (a.k.a. soccer in the USA) related blogs over the last few years, you can understand where I am coming from in terms of the power of fear.
On my drive home earlier this month, I listened to an NPR story about Texans and their fears about gun control. If you want to hear the entire piece, please check it out here. There were some parts where I sympathized with the Texas gentlemen and their desire to continue to exercise their second amendment rights, and then there were the parts where I spoke to the radio in the car and asked it, "why do they need AR-15s and night vision scopes to hunt wild pigs? Are the pigs THAT much smarter than them?????" The radio had no answer......
The AR-15, for those not in the know, is basically the commercially available version of the M-16 I learned to shoot when I joined the military. Since then I have mostly used pistols and the dreaded shotgun. [ I am left eye dominant but right handed, so I have to shoot long guns left handed. This situation and my relatively small frame (and even smaller brain) which had to figure out how to position the shotgun on my shoulder while wearing a life preserver vest which was too large for me, resulted in a HUGE bruise from burst blood vessels that stretched from my left armpit all the way to the back of my hand. It was painful during the experience, but only scary looking for the next few weeks, and I did qualify on the course of fire, even though I could barely see the target by the time the final whistle blew.]
Here is a schematic of the AR-15:
Even better, here is the lovely Hello Kitty model with the much larger banana shaped magazine, which can hold many more rounds. Hello Kitty needs the additional rounds to take care of all the bad folks she might encounter on a daily basis. You can see how happy she is by her smile on the butt of the assault rifle pictured below:
To be perfectly honest, I think she always has a bit of a smile or smirk on her little kitty face, so maybe I have misconstrued her affection for this firearm.....
I don't have a problem with guns. I would actually like to own one, but my husband doesn't think that is a good idea. I don't normally take that as a comment on my mental stability or judgement, but more as a comment on the fact that we already have WAY TOO MUCH sporting equipment in the house (and the storage space up north, I am afraid to admit).
If we lived in Canada, he would be able to veto my application for permission to own a gun. Here in the USA, I don't need his permission, but I would not purchase one if he did not agree to it.
I was struck by the statement that FDR made during his first inaugural address in 1933, which I mistakenly thought was related to the famous address to congress after the attack on Pearl Harbor. You can listen to an excerpt from the speech here.
Of course the quote is, "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself." He is referring to the Great Depression and the challenges that face the entire country and his new administration to climb out of the financial crisis gripping the world economy.
It struck me that these days, we fear what people MIGHT do, even if they have given no indication that they intend to attempt to accomplish this particular scary feat that the reptilian parts of our brains imagine could happen. These two gentlemen from Texas being interviewed for the NPR story I mentioned at the beginning of this blog were worried that the Obama administration was going to restrict gun rights, even though there have been no attempts to do so to date. OK, the second part of that sentence is my opinion, not something that they said during the interview.
They also believed that President Obama was kowtowing to United Nations (UN) attempts to restrict the amount of ammunition (ammo) that people could purchase at one time. The journalist pointed out in their commentary that the UN resolution they were referring to was designed to limit the purchasing power of African warlords, not US citizens, and the US delegation did not support the resolution.
So their big fear was based on a misunderstanding of the goals of a UN resolution that the dreaded Obama administration did not even support! That's fear for you......
On my drive home earlier this month, I listened to an NPR story about Texans and their fears about gun control. If you want to hear the entire piece, please check it out here. There were some parts where I sympathized with the Texas gentlemen and their desire to continue to exercise their second amendment rights, and then there were the parts where I spoke to the radio in the car and asked it, "why do they need AR-15s and night vision scopes to hunt wild pigs? Are the pigs THAT much smarter than them?????" The radio had no answer......
The AR-15, for those not in the know, is basically the commercially available version of the M-16 I learned to shoot when I joined the military. Since then I have mostly used pistols and the dreaded shotgun. [ I am left eye dominant but right handed, so I have to shoot long guns left handed. This situation and my relatively small frame (and even smaller brain) which had to figure out how to position the shotgun on my shoulder while wearing a life preserver vest which was too large for me, resulted in a HUGE bruise from burst blood vessels that stretched from my left armpit all the way to the back of my hand. It was painful during the experience, but only scary looking for the next few weeks, and I did qualify on the course of fire, even though I could barely see the target by the time the final whistle blew.]
Here is a schematic of the AR-15:
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| [borrowed from http://survivalblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ar-15-parts.gif] |
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| [borrowed from http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NNJ_93KS4Hw/SNQb4Pex24I/AAAAAAAAAYs/ZOKKYWqoIlg/s320/HELLO-KITTY_AR15RIFLE.jpg] |
I don't have a problem with guns. I would actually like to own one, but my husband doesn't think that is a good idea. I don't normally take that as a comment on my mental stability or judgement, but more as a comment on the fact that we already have WAY TOO MUCH sporting equipment in the house (and the storage space up north, I am afraid to admit).
If we lived in Canada, he would be able to veto my application for permission to own a gun. Here in the USA, I don't need his permission, but I would not purchase one if he did not agree to it.
I was struck by the statement that FDR made during his first inaugural address in 1933, which I mistakenly thought was related to the famous address to congress after the attack on Pearl Harbor. You can listen to an excerpt from the speech here.
Of course the quote is, "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself." He is referring to the Great Depression and the challenges that face the entire country and his new administration to climb out of the financial crisis gripping the world economy.
It struck me that these days, we fear what people MIGHT do, even if they have given no indication that they intend to attempt to accomplish this particular scary feat that the reptilian parts of our brains imagine could happen. These two gentlemen from Texas being interviewed for the NPR story I mentioned at the beginning of this blog were worried that the Obama administration was going to restrict gun rights, even though there have been no attempts to do so to date. OK, the second part of that sentence is my opinion, not something that they said during the interview.
They also believed that President Obama was kowtowing to United Nations (UN) attempts to restrict the amount of ammunition (ammo) that people could purchase at one time. The journalist pointed out in their commentary that the UN resolution they were referring to was designed to limit the purchasing power of African warlords, not US citizens, and the US delegation did not support the resolution.
So their big fear was based on a misunderstanding of the goals of a UN resolution that the dreaded Obama administration did not even support! That's fear for you......
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