When/how did guns become "evil"?

F

FUD

Moderator
Growing up, I remember playing with toy guns that looked much more realistic than the toy guns that are around today. They were made out of metal and at a quick glance looked very much like a real gun (well, maybe not really, as back then there weren't too many stainless, nickel or chrome guns around). I recall running around the neighborhood playing cops 'n robbers, cowboy & indians, war, and a few others; and our parents (and other neighbors) saw nothing wrong with it as they did the same thing when they were our age and if they couldn't afford toy guns (or if they weren't around), they used a broom as a make-believe rifle. This was all part of 'normal' growing up in America as it had been for a century or more.

Now, I'm reading in the paper, hearing on the radio, seeing on the television and reading here on TFL that kids who point a finger at each other in the form of a make-believe gun are being kicked out of schools, sent in for psychological examinations, being charged with crimes under 'zero tolerance' laws, etc.

What's going on here? Exactly when and how did a gun become so "evil"?

Share what you know, learn what you don't -- FUD
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[This message has been edited by FUD (edited June 19, 2000).]
 
I've been thinking a lot about this of late myself. I believe it has a great deal to do with the media.
At one time watching the nightly news was a common ritual in most American homes. There were basically three television stations and they all carried the news at the same time every evening. Then the advent of cable allowed America to "tune in" to other programing instead of the news. The meida wanting to increase their own market began sensationalizing anything that would draw America back to the nightly news. We all know that it has essentally became a big budget, televised version of the National Enquirer. O.J., Joey Budafucco, Tanya Harding, Bobbit and the list goes on. You see I don't think the media cares one way or the other if we have guns. They simply wish to draw viewers and the best way to do that is dramatize emotion stirring topics. Right now it is guns. Next year it may be something else. Many Americans lack the ability to think for themselves and readily believe anything they hear on the news as gospel. If the "talking head" tells them guns are bad they tend to believe that. America is being lead around by the media.

------------------
Gunslinger
 
Kinda like sheep, huh Gunslinger?

When I was in HS a friend and I would bring our shotguns to school, kept them in our lockers until the Principal caught us taking them out of our lockers one day. He asked us why we had brought our guns to school and we explained that we went hunting after school he then said "Boys please don't keep your guns in your lockers...next time leave them with the secretary.
So the next time we brought our shotguns to school we walked into the secretary's office and she said hi fellows...just leave 'em in the corner they'll be here when you come back after class.

Yes....time's have changed. :(

------------------
"Lead, follow or get the HELL out of the way."
 
Last week at the shop, we stunned a teenage daughter of one of our pistol instructors by telling her about how we used to be able to bring rifles and shotguns to school, and the only thing any faculty member said about it was "Be safe."

Well... perhaps "stunned" isn't entirely correct. More like "gasping in shock and horror, looking like a gaffed trout."

Sad. Gotta have a talk with that instructor...
 
I think guns became evil when:

1. We saw an increased urbanziation of society that removed firearms from the normal educational environment of many.

2. The increase in gun related crimes related to the drug culture. Folks saw guns just as tools related to the destruction of segments of the population and the inner cities.
No redeeming social value - only trouble making instrumentalities. Note that's how
fully auto weapons got controlled - because of their association with gangsters.

Part of this is also the racism in implying that guns are used by the minorities for crime.

3. Increased graphic realism in the media highlighted the death dealing potential of guns leading to crazed copycats and showing us the hideous outcomes of such. No more sanitary violence like Gunsmoke.

4. Now this one is a stretch for the Academic. It used to be the case that both the Republican and Democratic parties contained liberal and conservative elements.
Thus each party wasn't necessarily identified as being against the RKBA. Many in both were for it.

When the 1960's great realignment of conservative forces to the GOP and liberals to the Dems occurred - guns became identified with the GOP. Many folks concerned with the RKBA left the Dems and even the liberals who supported it, turned away.

Now guns are part of the totemic identity of the GOP and have to be attacked by the Dems as a symbol of power - independent of the issue. Seize the enemy's mascot and you have their soul. Dems can't support guns unless they are from very strange local regions.

4. Within the GOP, the power of economic conservatives rise, who are just concerned with their tax rates and are happy to exploit the working classes. These folks live in gated communities and have guards. Armed force is the province of the state, as long as the state gives them low taxes and the ability to pillage the poor and rape the environment for the profits. Certainly, they don't want the poor working schmuck to have an instrumentality of force - thus these folks also demonize guns. Look at Pataki and
other GOP anti governors.

That's my two cents on this.

Glenn
 
The famous photo of Lee Harvey Oswald started it. The assasinations of RFK and Martin Luther King helped it along. When the Black Panthers discovered California was an open carry state, well that had to be changed. The liberal media has been biased toward portraying guns as evil since these events.
Fast forward to today. Guns are now portrayed and viewed as objects of aggression instead of tools for recreation, hunting or defense. Even to be interested in guns is to be associated with these perceptions.
 
Glenn, that was well said.

I'll add another thing... at least half of the population (chicks) never played with guns. It's a guy thing for some reason, and not all guys were really into that either. So, we're outgunned from birth.

People also fear what they don't understand. Most people don't understand guns and don't want to. They oversimplify the case down to "guns are made to kill," and villify them based on that.
 
I'm 49 and I'll give you one of the reasons some of my non-gun-owning(not anti) friends offered. It started when the guns stopped looking like those in the cowboy movies and tv shows and started looking black, boxy and mean and would hold more bullets(cartridges) than any guy in a white hat ever needed. John
 
Oleg, I think that what johnbt was trying to say was that in the 1930's, 40's, 50's & 60's, a majority (not all but most) of criminals used revolvers for crime -- usually a .38 special. I remember when I was going to buy my first gun. I went to a local library and looked through some "Gun Digest" books (which were about a decade old) and most of the guns in there were revolvers. Yes, there were some 1911's and a few other pistols but the majority were revolvers and that's what a majority of Americans (criminals, police officiers and law-abidding citizens owned and used). Then, in the 70's, the pistol started to become more popular and by the late 80's, the pistol was out selling the revolver by a factor of 2-to-1 (or more).

I'm not saying that I agree with this reason but I also don't disagree with it either -- I just don't know. Regards,
FUD
fudeagle.gif

Share what you know, learn what you don't.
 
Maybe when movies started showing criminals with bazookas, machine guns and the like *and* grossly exxagerated effects? I recall seeing some 1960s films and was surprised at how little weaponry was shown...and what was there was rather mild.
 
True. Originally, guns on TV and the movies didn't look as "cool" or attractive as they do now with a nice shine to them. I saw a Charles Bronson movie from the 1960's and even though there was a lot of killing, the gun wasn't the star of the show and you hardly even saw it. Unlike today, where you get to see it from every angle all polished with a lot of shine.
 
I was recently driving down a rural american highway in the backhills of the alleghenys when I was ambushed from the left on a hillock by two youngsters armed one with
a piece of sideing held much like a
LAW the other with a battered hypersquirt
assault-type squirtgun with a shortened
barrel and extended pistol grip,

I extended my left arm out the window
and *almost* returned suppressive fire
with my finger, and thought "What if
someone sees me shooting at children
with my finger and reports my tag
number?"

I dodged the fire and yelled, Oh! ya
got me! as I drove by.

Seriously, what is this world comming
to?
 
dog3, sad the way things are going. Twenty/thirty years ago you could have returned "fire" and I'll bet they would happier to have a stranger acknowledge their little fantsy world.
 
I think the public perception of guns began to change most strongly with the rise in the number of handguns sold after World War II. Most people thought of guns as hunting weapons before that, which was of course wrong, but that's what they thought. It's a lot easier to demonize handguns than deer rifles, though the antis are working on the deer rifles now, too.
 
I think some blame lies with the New Left and the anti-war movement of the '60s. They were the ones who started the "no war toys" idea. The idea was that toy guns lead to violent though and play, which in turn lead to the Vietnam War. War itself was a result of improper socializing, so the answer was to raise children from an early age to be a bunch of pacifists. So little boys were told toy guns were bad and given dolls to play with. As Christina Hoff Sommers shows in her new book, "The War Against Boys", this backfired badly. The Left thinks you can re-educate human nature away, hence the prevalence of concentration camps in Communist nations.

Of course, these fools were a bunch of hypocrites (IMHO, hippie is short for hypocrite). They preached non-violence, but swooned over thugs like the Panthers. Then as now, guns are bad, unless the right (ie., Left) people have them.

---hemlock0013
 
Hemlock, you have a point. While I had long hair at that time, I couldn't stomach the ideas some of those people were espousing. All of their philosphy was encapsulated in bumper sticker slogans, and still is. "One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day," that kind of mindless pap. We're now being challenged by that same bumper-sticker mentality. They form their political opinions
in the same amount of time that they take to nuke a Poptart.

As for the Panthers, if you ever read "Radical Chic and Mau-mauing the Flakcatchers," you'd have a good idea of just how far these folks heads are up the digestive tract. Holding cocktail parties for
a group that's vowed to kill you is, at the very least, insane.

Dick
 
Lotsa good theories and explanations here, I tihnk it could be all of the above. What struck me though, is that all the games we played as kids - cowboys, war, cops & robbers - all had an element of good guys vs. bad guys. Both sides had guns/weapons, but it was what you stood for that counted. I was then struck by something that (I think) Ghandi said. it was to the effect that when confronted by evil, if you are unarmed, your only option is to flee, and evil is not vanquished by runing away.

Forgive my rambling, but the point I'm driving up on is that all this PC crap and denial of the existance of good and evil in society today is symptomatic of a whimpy, valuless society that is so afraid of offending somebody (see The Bill of No Rights), that'll they'll make no judgments and tolerate all kinds of foolishness in the name of 'diversity' to the detriment of society as a whole.

The fact of the matter is that leading a moral, ethical life is hard (requires hard work, critical self-examination, personal honesty, and sacrifice) and people are lazy. The 'good guys' make them look bad and hurts their 'self esteem' and are therefore subject to scorn and ridicule, lest they feel bad about themselves. It's a cultural sickness that is ruining our country and society, and I'm scared sh*tless about the long term prospects for America, because I don't have any good answers beyond 'keeping my own leaf green'.
M2
 
Everyone! Guns have always been evil! Duh. It just took us a while to realize it.

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Who is he? What has he done with Erik?
 
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