Piers “Muskets” Morgan liked to shoot his stupid mouth off about the Second Amendment an America’s love of guns, much to the love the Progressives who watch CNN and much to the disdain of the rest of America.
I don’t understand it, but Progressives have this masochistic desire to have foreigners tell us how much they don’t understand and don’t like America’s gun culture. Nothing gets a Progressive off more than having someone with an accent telling them how much America sucks.
Guns are not a part of the culture of my homeland, except perhaps for the occasional Bollywood movie in which the bad guy meets his demise staring down the wrong end of a barrel.
It’s no wonder then that every time I visit India, my friends and family want to know more about America’s “love affair” with guns.
I get the same questions when I visit my brother in Canada or on my business travels to other countries, where many people remain perplexed, maybe even downright mystified, by Americans’ defense of gun rights.
…
I walk around with some trepidation, but I’m determined to strike up conversations. I begin with this question: “Why do you want to own an object that can kill another human being?”
The answers are varied, but they center on three main themes: freedom, self-defense and sport. The first type of response is rooted in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which allows for the ownership of more than 300 million guns in America. How many other countries have the right to bear arms written into their very foundation? It’s unique and because of that, foreigners often have trouble grasping it.
…
I ask what the Second Amendment means to [Brickell “Brooke” Clark, otherwise known as the American Gun Chic].
“It means I can live my life without anyone overpowering me,” she says. “It makes me equal with everyone else.”
The great equalizer. I never thought of the Second Amendment in that way. Self-protection, I discover, is a huge reason many Americans own firearms.
When it comes to guns and self defense, you think that a woman from the rape and acid attack capital of the world would want to be able to defend herself.
Take Chloe Morris. She was born in Atlanta to Filipino parents; on this day, she’s brought her mother along to hear Trump, the first sitting President to speak at an NRA convention since Ronald Reagan.
Morris is 35, petite and soft-spoken, but she’s fierce about her opinions on guns.
“I’m 5 feet tall and 100 pounds,” she tells me. “I cannot wait for a cop to come save me when I am threatened with rape or death.”
Like I said.
So what did she find at NRAAM. The same thing that most Progressive SJWs find.
Few people here look like me. Most appear to be white and male.
Many view the media, including my employer, with disdain — and they do not hesitate to let me know.
No shit, I wonder why?
I meet Chris Styskal at a booth set up by the NRA Wine Club. Yes, a wine club for the almost 5 million members of the organization.
She sounds surprised that NRA members like to be classier than drinking a case of Keystone Lite and smacking their wives around.
“George Washington’s army fought off the British with rifles,” he says. “They overthrew an oppressive government.”
His statement gives me pause. The gun laws in India stem from colonial rule, when the British aimed to quell their subjects by disarming them. Perhaps my Indian compatriots should consider the right to own guns from this perspective.
This is the first intelligent thing this woman says, and I think she was being sarcastic about it.
Styskal, 41, earned a degree in psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson University, and tells me the prevailing belief that gun owners are not educated is simply wrong.
I have a PhD in engineering and work in the firearms industry. My existence might actually make a CNN reporter shit themselves if they ever met me.
I hear gun proponents express a dislike for big government. They stress individual liberties over the collective. For people who live in more socialist countries, it’s another obstacle to understanding American gun culture.
Freedom, it’s a hell of a drug. Once you get a taste of it, it’s hard to quit.
After interviewing a bunch of people who explain their love of guns comes from a love of freedom, she says this.
Rubeck’s words remind me of a friend from Iraq who wished she could own a gun during Saddam Hussein’s rule. After he was overthrown, she slept with an AK-47 under her pillow at the height of the insurgency. She has always spoken of her love-hate relationship with guns. She wants to protect her family, but she is tired of the eternal violence plaguing her land. She wishes now that every gun would disappear from Iraq.
Again, how guns are treated in America versus a non-Western shit-hole steeped in sectarian violence.
It’s not just gun rights. It is a culture of peace and tolerance that makes gun rights possible. The majority Americans own guns without the faintest desire to kill everybody of a different race, ethnicity, or religion as themselves.
She finally ends her “gorillas in the mist” foray into the NRA.
What I hear from speakers at the NRA convention, though, is that a peaceful world is a utopian fantasy — and that the need for guns will always exist.
Very, very true.
I leave the convention trying to reconcile what I’ve gathered on this day with the philosophy of nonviolence with which I was raised. I am not certain that vast cultural differences can be bridged in a few hours, but I am glad I got a glimpse into the world of guns. I have much to consider.
While her incredulity is plainly on display and her leading question is loaded (no pun intended), I’m quite pleasantly surprised that many of her interactions seem to have elicited some valid introspection and perhaps a bit of consideration from her. It’s also surprising that CNN would run this piece — it contains a lot more pro-firearm content than one would expect from them.
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I saw this article over the weekend, before I read it with your commentary. I didn’t see it as slanted as you apparently thought it was, and in fact, I thought it was more supportive of our Second Amendment rights than we can typically expect from CNN. Sure, the comparisons between different jurisdictions didn’t factor in overall crime, but I have no reason to question the facts cited for *gun* crime.
I don’t think she was being sarcastic with any of the things she wrote. I think she started seeing things from a slightly different perspective. I have hope for her yet.
Given the source, I understand your reluctance to really trust this reporting, and if you’re looking for some reason to find bias in the tone or content of the article, you’ll always find it.
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After Piers Morgan, Fareed Zakaria, and Martin Bashir, I don’t give much benefit of the doubt when it comes to foreign reporters commenting on our American freedoms.
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I came to many of the same thoughts and conclusions as you jkb but overall I thought this was a very positive look in from the outside that wasn’t really muh feelings and preconceived notions but more like this is what I saw and it was not what I expected in a good way and was pretty factual.
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“Why do you want to own an object that can kill another human being?” That’s such a strange viewpoint. It’s as if a gun is the only thing that can kill; as if they don’t have even the remotest clue of how easy it is to get killed.
Our recently-departed fellow blogger Weapons Man used to run a feature called, “When Guns are Outlawed Only Outlaws Will Have _____” and filled in the blank with everything from the obvious (like knives) to cars to golf clubs to really bizarre things.
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Going by the rational of Piers Morgan I guess that freedom of the press only applies to quill pens and Gutenberg presses.
While her incredulity is plainly on display and her leading question is loaded (no pun intended), I’m quite pleasantly surprised that many of her interactions seem to have elicited some valid introspection and perhaps a bit of consideration from her. It’s also surprising that CNN would run this piece — it contains a lot more pro-firearm content than one would expect from them.
I saw this article over the weekend, before I read it with your commentary. I didn’t see it as slanted as you apparently thought it was, and in fact, I thought it was more supportive of our Second Amendment rights than we can typically expect from CNN. Sure, the comparisons between different jurisdictions didn’t factor in overall crime, but I have no reason to question the facts cited for *gun* crime.
I don’t think she was being sarcastic with any of the things she wrote. I think she started seeing things from a slightly different perspective. I have hope for her yet.
Given the source, I understand your reluctance to really trust this reporting, and if you’re looking for some reason to find bias in the tone or content of the article, you’ll always find it.
After Piers Morgan, Fareed Zakaria, and Martin Bashir, I don’t give much benefit of the doubt when it comes to foreign reporters commenting on our American freedoms.
I came to many of the same thoughts and conclusions as you jkb but overall I thought this was a very positive look in from the outside that wasn’t really muh feelings and preconceived notions but more like this is what I saw and it was not what I expected in a good way and was pretty factual.
“Why do you want to own an object that can kill another human being?” That’s such a strange viewpoint. It’s as if a gun is the only thing that can kill; as if they don’t have even the remotest clue of how easy it is to get killed.
Our recently-departed fellow blogger Weapons Man used to run a feature called, “When Guns are Outlawed Only Outlaws Will Have _____” and filled in the blank with everything from the obvious (like knives) to cars to golf clubs to really bizarre things.
Going by the rational of Piers Morgan I guess that freedom of the press only applies to quill pens and Gutenberg presses.