Yankee Prejudice and Gun Control

The Right Stuff
November 26, 2013

I recently watched Ken Burn’s documentary on Prohibition, and somewhere between the story of Carrie Nation and George Remus I realized something about the modern gun control debate: The pro-gun control side is acting on cultural sensibilities expressed as moralistic outrage. How  you feel about guns is self-evidently related to the culture that you grew up in, with the typical Southerner or rural American seeing a gun as another everyday household object, while the city dwelling northerner seems to view them more as a dangerous weapon usually owned only by thugs and drug dealers.  To a rural Southerner a shotgun leaned up against a corner is no more noteworthy than a blender sitting on a counter-top.

To the gun control crowd though, that openly displayed, unsecured shotgun Grandpa uses to blast crows in the garden represents a primitive moral vice of unsophisticated southern white rubes. The opposition doesn’t usually own firearms, don’t find them useful in any sort of day to day situation, and cannot understand WHY anyone would really want to own them. Much like the Teetotalers during Prohibition, they cannot relate to the gun owning culture and see them more or less as reckless moral degenerates with a dangerous and wholly unnecessary past time. “Why would anyone NEED an AR-15?” they cry, telegraphing their hidden sentiment that gun ownership couldn’t possibly be based on personal pleasure and that owning a firearm is something done only out of sober necessity in dire circumstances. The sight of a gun in the hands of a child is even more alarming to them, surely this recklessness is child endangerment on par with hiring Jeffery Dahmer as a baby sitter? Just look at those inbred hicks teaching their kids how to operate such a dangerous weapon!

Rather than accept this “cultural diversity” the modern progressive Yankee liberal has instead chosen a somewhat less tactful approach:

Naturally the enemy is always portrayed as some fat, ignorant white redneck desperately clutching his Assault Rifle. Articles are written about the “white epidemic of mass shooting”, the NRA is demonized, and in general the pro gun side is put on display as criminally negligent possibly psychotic white rural folk. Interestingly enough, while gun death statistics are quoted endlessly, not a single peep from the modern progressive is heard over who’s actually doing most of the killing. When Obama talked about inner city violence in Chicago being responsible for more deaths than the typical white psychopathic spree killer, doubtlessly the liberal audience squirmed uncomfortably in their chairs and wondered if he was allowed to say such things, even as a black president. We cannot under any circumstances mention the Inconvenient Truth that America’s high rate of gun violence is associated almost entirely with its black communities. That would be Punching Down, and the poor black community just doesn’t deserve any more bad publicity.

Of course, when the liberals do actually use a Person of Color in one of their cute little rhetorical exercises it ends up going something like this:

Naturally the enemy is always portrayed as some fat, ignorant white redneck desperately clutching his Assault Rifle. Articles are written about the “white epidemic of mass shooting”, the NRA is demonized, and in general the pro gun side is put on display as criminally negligent possibly psychotic white rural folk. Interestingly enough, while gun death statistics are quoted endlessly, not a single peep from the modern progressive is heard over who’s actually doing most of the killing. When Obama talked about inner city violence in Chicago being responsible for more deaths than the typical white psychopathic spree killer, doubtlessly the liberal audience squirmed uncomfortably in their chairs and wondered if he was allowed to say such things, even as a black president. We cannot under any circumstances mention the Inconvenient Truth that America’s high rate of gun violence is associated almost entirely with its black communities. That would be Punching Down, and the poor black community just doesn’t deserve any more bad publicity.

Of course, when the liberals do actually use a Person of Color in one of their cute little rhetorical exercises it ends up going something like this:

Let’s just show those backwards Texan rednecks how dumb and uncivilized they are by comparing them to this Negro child from the Dark Continent. 

So instead we’ll just go right on attacking those dumb ignorant white boys and the NRA since they’re a safe political target. To be honest I don’t begrudge the progressive liberal for having a different culture, but I do hold them accountable for such zealous hypocrisy and total snobbery. If gun violence is the issue, why continue to focus your efforts on the population segment responsible for the least of it? Statistically speaking those AR-15 owning white “gun nuts” are the least of your problems. Of course the idea here is to shame those evil white folk, perhaps since you can argue with them without getting a .40 caliber “cap” busted in your ass. Maybe those gun nuts are a little more civilized than they seem since the progressives certainly don’t shy away from attempting to agitate them.  As usual the supposedly “socially conscious liberal” has yet again decided to feign interest in minority issues only to drop them entirely in favor of browbeating other white folk with a smug campaign of moral superiority. Just like in Prohibition, it’s morally upright white folk fighting to stop the excesses of those deviants with no sense of social responsibility.

I’ll just be over here reloading and muttering about government conspiracies since I’d hate to waste a good stereotype.