What I mind about movies in which every protagonist has a weapon is that there is no accountability. Big shootouts, in the middle of big cities, numerous times throughout the 2 hours...and the viewer never sees any cops arriving, any arrests..nothing. The shooters, both good and bad guys, continue on with their day. That's skewed.
Short, actionable goals is how I started keeping myself out of deep depression. Sometimes you just have to shorten your timeline and focus on what's directly in front of you.
You're right. I wouldn't know that stuff either. Why would that change my arguments? You say my attempt at refuting it is bad but provide nothing in the way of persuasive arguments, or any arguments at all really. In short, your comment is nothing at all.
1. The first piece. Clearly the author went out to demonize the people who had guns. He didn’t take pictures of people in the south who have antique tool collections. Secondly, “can own bazzokas legally,”…uh, no.
And funny how - despite their arsenals broke no laws and didn’t go shoot up the town.
2. Replace NRA/guns with gay/homosexuals and that price could have been written by Rush L/Falwell/any right wing culture warrior of the past 50 years. Not a good look.
I question the entire premise of the piece, because Mr. Last has no way to judge who made guns "central to their identity" and who just collects guns like Leno collects cars. Last said right off the bat that Leno collects many, many cars but that's not a fetish. I agree. Why do you tar gun owners with the same hobby as having a fetish?
Yes, there are lots of photos of people showing off their large collections. But none of the photographed were crazy; the photographer says they were normal and nice. And none of them used their guns against innocent people. So why do you describe them as fetishists?
Who says you have to be crazy to have a fetish? "Normal and nice" people have fetishes, too. One of my fellow college students, a brilliant and friendly person, just happened to have a foot fetish. The question is what your particular fetish says about your attitudes and motivations. Perhaps Leno does have a "car fetish" -- it's impossible to tell what his real motives are. But the people in the photographs, unlike Leno, don't seem to be particularly wealthy. Their "hobby" must mean even more to them than Leno's hobby means to him. People don't just decide to have a fetish and then flip a coin to see what that fetish will be. These "collectors" have apparently spent thousands and thousands of dollars amassing huge numbers of objects meant to do nothing but kill people. That's only circumstantial evidence of their underlying attitudes, but it's very strong circumstantial evidence. As Henry David Thoreau once said, "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk. The question is not what you look at—but how you look and whether you see."
There's nothing wrong with a fetish. We all have them about something, me included.
My objection is this writer uses the term as a pejorative, to imply there is something wrong, something odd, about people who collect firearms.
So do you, Dave: "These 'collectors' have apparently spent thousands and thousands of dollars amassing huge numbers of objects meant to do nothing but kill people." Do you know if any gun in any collection shown here was used to harm anyone? No? Then guns have uses other than "objects meant to do nothing but kill people."
Sorry, William, but you're attacking a straw man. I never claimed that any of the guns in the collectors' photos had been used to kill anyone. I DID mean that the objective purpose of those firearms was to kill someone. I didn't see any guns that would be used exclusively to hunt animals or shoot at targets. Of course guns have other uses than killing people: you could use one as a doorstop, a paperweight, or in place of a hammer to drive a nail. But they are undeniably manufactured to kill people. You've also conveniently forgotten the theme of the article: that these photos are strong evidence for a state of mind -- namely a fetishistic worship of guns all too common in the US today. We're talking attitudes, not actions here.
That is hair-splitting. The express purpose of a gun is to kill, wound, or at least intimidate with the threat of death or injury. Nobody uses a gun to stake their roses. Whether any particular gun was used to harm anyone is immaterial.
It's not remotely hair-splitting. It's central to the gun control argument: If owning a gun means you will use it criminally, then guns bans are justified. If if doesn't, then bans are not justified.
Data prove beyond ALL doubt that guns are NOT "used only to kill, wound, or intimidate." If they were, we would all be dead by now. We aren't.
Enough with the back and forth. You don't want to own guns, then don't own them. I do, so I will. I use them lawfully and responsibly, so you don't get to dictate.
No one is arguing that owning a gun necessarily means you will use it criminally. What is hairsplitting is your implication that since not every gun is used for killing somebody, they have other purposes besides killing somebody. That is prima facie a logical fallacy, as is your second paragraph, especially since you added a word to my statement to create your strawman fallacy. A can opener's function is to open cans. The fact that I haven't used the can opener in my RV for a long time does not change the function of its design. Also at no point have I argued against your possession of guns.
Also when you see Facebook "tacticool" photos, there is a pretty clear indication there of an identity problem, as opposed to guns being merely a tool. No one poses brandishing their pliers.
I see more people posing with their cars then I do with their guns. Identity problem there too?
I get that you don't like guns. That's fine. But there's no need to belittle or demean people who do. Since they're not hurting you with their collections, why do you care what they do?
Enough. As I said a minute ago, you don't like guns, then don't own any. I do, and I will. I use them lawfully and responsibly, I do not accept blame for militia creeps and school shooters, and so you get no veto over my decisions.
Liking is beside the point. The fact you keep bringing it up as a last resort means you are unable to objectively think about guns. I am rated an expert marksman. Liking or not liking guns has nothing to with it. I don't "like" wrenches either, but I use them. It is merely a tool, designed to kill, injure or intimidate. Usually if they are not being used precisely for one of those purposes, they are being used for a tangential purpose such as target shooting, or they are not being used at all like the extra can opener in my RV.
The Japanese watch a ton of violent movies and play violent videos games, etc. They don’t have the same gun problem we have in the US. Although I agree Hollywood glorifies violence, we can’t lay the blame for mass shootings on their shoulders.
Good point, Sheri. Could it be that the reason the Japanese don't have the same gun problem we have in the U.S. is because (by a data point I just googled) the rate of guns in Japan in 2019 was 0.25 per 100 people, while a 2018 piece found that in the U.S., it was 120.5 per 100 people?
I don’t see how the gun issue isn’t a crime/public safety issue. Please, democratic legislators, grab these issues by the horns and save our democracy.
I'm not inclined to accept the argument that Hollywood is partially to blame, and I think the idea to approach gun control with a PR campaign based on anti-smoking efforts is a bit of a stretch. That said, the gun violence problem is plainly complex to analyze, and I'm certainly not opposed to efforts to identify and treat its causes. What I think folks who argue about other causes and how to deal with them miss is one huge factor, however: TIME. All of the suggestions in this article and numerous others take a lot of it. The simple things--raise age, ban high capacity magazines, cooling-off periods. Could be done tomorrow. That's what makes them more impactful.
"Or we could just pound on the table and feel good about ourselves by pointing fingers at others."
This is basically what I think is wrong with modern progressivism. We used to focus on real, practical things like "economic disadvantage", "equal opportunity", quality of education, etc. Now we've oriented all of our politics around the cartoon villains of racism, sexism, homo/trans-phobia, etc. because it's easier to indulge in playing the hero in an imagined morality tale than to actually make progress in improving people's lives. Which was acceptable when these two things supported the same basic goals, but not so when the latter now works toward unhelpful or even harmful ends, like defunding police, eliminating standardized tests, or suppressing constructive discussion of important issues.
We would be wise to learn that same lesson in approaching gun control. Pushing back against the NRA and the gun lobbyists is important, but so is looking for incremental but real progress where we can find it. Speak to the concerns of Republican moms. Talk to supposedly "responsible" gun owners about how their rights are actually being endangered by extremists who've made guns more dangerous. Engage with this issue outside the parameters of our culture wars, because culture wars are how we got here in the first place.
In defense of the modern progs, we have a fairly unprecedented logjam at the federal legislative level. There is no incremental approach to be had in congress, which leaves EOs and regulatory guidance as the only methods that allow for anything to be done.
Re culture and 50 years ago, that was the beginning of the Dirty Harry movies, lots of violence on TV. Adam-12 had already aired its 'let's dress in bullet-proof gear and point M-16s at bad guys' episode, Police Story had either already begun or was about to do so, the WW2 TV shows were winding down, and there were still plenty of Westerns on TV. That doesn't include all the WW2 theme movies on TV afternoons and weekends.
My own cultural divide occurred upon the unexpected death of the actor Michael Conrad, so the end of 'Phil Esterhaus' on Hill Street Blues warning his police "Let's be careful out there." to Robert Prosky's 'Stan Jablonski' admonishing them 'Let's do it to them before they do it to us.'
It wasn't the 1970s which changed the US, it was the 1980s. And the TV show which was the better measure of the US cultural atrophy was the McLaughlin Group which made Robert Novak and Patrick Buchanan household names. To be fair, I still believe that when one's confronted with an adversary like the Soviet Union, it's good to have Novaks and Buchanans on your side. By 1992, not so much.
Thanks for the excellent newsletter. For awhile I have been saying that we should use the anti smoking campaign on guns. Back in the 70's and 80's ot was cool to smoke. Everyone smoked. In high school you couldn't see the sink in the bathroom during lunch break for all the smoke. Then non smokers said enough when it came out that cigarettes caused cancer. We knew they weren't good for you, but the nonsmokers had a wedge. We went from a couple non tables in restaurant, a law that smoking wasn't in restaurants. Then advertising was banned. And the smoking on tv shows and movies was controled. We could ban gun advertisement. Then anti smoking ads. One had Brook Shields with a cigarette in her nostril "smoking is sexy". Finally, it became so socially unacceptable to smoke that smokers looked sick. I remember a few of us huddled in an alley behind the bar like drug addicts, freezing our buns off in the middle of a Chicago winter.
Society can be made to see that guns are a stupid disgusting habit that makes the owner of one a pariah.
Old runners - me - tend to get hurt more. I’m much more careful with my goals now. More ‘can I run 8 miles’ and ‘can I run 10’ than ‘let’s try 6.50 mile repeats today’
Off topic: I don’t hear anyone saying, perhaps repubs can’t face another of their
Own, first being Nixon, being removed From office, this the craziness.
What I mind about movies in which every protagonist has a weapon is that there is no accountability. Big shootouts, in the middle of big cities, numerous times throughout the 2 hours...and the viewer never sees any cops arriving, any arrests..nothing. The shooters, both good and bad guys, continue on with their day. That's skewed.
https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/794950/private/6b832fb6-215b-40d6-a9ef-52f8f6cc5909.rss
Short, actionable goals is how I started keeping myself out of deep depression. Sometimes you just have to shorten your timeline and focus on what's directly in front of you.
You're right. I wouldn't know that stuff either. Why would that change my arguments? You say my attempt at refuting it is bad but provide nothing in the way of persuasive arguments, or any arguments at all really. In short, your comment is nothing at all.
1. The first piece. Clearly the author went out to demonize the people who had guns. He didn’t take pictures of people in the south who have antique tool collections. Secondly, “can own bazzokas legally,”…uh, no.
And funny how - despite their arsenals broke no laws and didn’t go shoot up the town.
2. Replace NRA/guns with gay/homosexuals and that price could have been written by Rush L/Falwell/any right wing culture warrior of the past 50 years. Not a good look.
I question the entire premise of the piece, because Mr. Last has no way to judge who made guns "central to their identity" and who just collects guns like Leno collects cars. Last said right off the bat that Leno collects many, many cars but that's not a fetish. I agree. Why do you tar gun owners with the same hobby as having a fetish?
Yes, there are lots of photos of people showing off their large collections. But none of the photographed were crazy; the photographer says they were normal and nice. And none of them used their guns against innocent people. So why do you describe them as fetishists?
They aren't.
Who says you have to be crazy to have a fetish? "Normal and nice" people have fetishes, too. One of my fellow college students, a brilliant and friendly person, just happened to have a foot fetish. The question is what your particular fetish says about your attitudes and motivations. Perhaps Leno does have a "car fetish" -- it's impossible to tell what his real motives are. But the people in the photographs, unlike Leno, don't seem to be particularly wealthy. Their "hobby" must mean even more to them than Leno's hobby means to him. People don't just decide to have a fetish and then flip a coin to see what that fetish will be. These "collectors" have apparently spent thousands and thousands of dollars amassing huge numbers of objects meant to do nothing but kill people. That's only circumstantial evidence of their underlying attitudes, but it's very strong circumstantial evidence. As Henry David Thoreau once said, "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk. The question is not what you look at—but how you look and whether you see."
There's nothing wrong with a fetish. We all have them about something, me included.
My objection is this writer uses the term as a pejorative, to imply there is something wrong, something odd, about people who collect firearms.
So do you, Dave: "These 'collectors' have apparently spent thousands and thousands of dollars amassing huge numbers of objects meant to do nothing but kill people." Do you know if any gun in any collection shown here was used to harm anyone? No? Then guns have uses other than "objects meant to do nothing but kill people."
Sorry, William, but you're attacking a straw man. I never claimed that any of the guns in the collectors' photos had been used to kill anyone. I DID mean that the objective purpose of those firearms was to kill someone. I didn't see any guns that would be used exclusively to hunt animals or shoot at targets. Of course guns have other uses than killing people: you could use one as a doorstop, a paperweight, or in place of a hammer to drive a nail. But they are undeniably manufactured to kill people. You've also conveniently forgotten the theme of the article: that these photos are strong evidence for a state of mind -- namely a fetishistic worship of guns all too common in the US today. We're talking attitudes, not actions here.
That is hair-splitting. The express purpose of a gun is to kill, wound, or at least intimidate with the threat of death or injury. Nobody uses a gun to stake their roses. Whether any particular gun was used to harm anyone is immaterial.
It's not remotely hair-splitting. It's central to the gun control argument: If owning a gun means you will use it criminally, then guns bans are justified. If if doesn't, then bans are not justified.
Data prove beyond ALL doubt that guns are NOT "used only to kill, wound, or intimidate." If they were, we would all be dead by now. We aren't.
Enough with the back and forth. You don't want to own guns, then don't own them. I do, so I will. I use them lawfully and responsibly, so you don't get to dictate.
No one is arguing that owning a gun necessarily means you will use it criminally. What is hairsplitting is your implication that since not every gun is used for killing somebody, they have other purposes besides killing somebody. That is prima facie a logical fallacy, as is your second paragraph, especially since you added a word to my statement to create your strawman fallacy. A can opener's function is to open cans. The fact that I haven't used the can opener in my RV for a long time does not change the function of its design. Also at no point have I argued against your possession of guns.
Also when you see Facebook "tacticool" photos, there is a pretty clear indication there of an identity problem, as opposed to guns being merely a tool. No one poses brandishing their pliers.
I see more people posing with their cars then I do with their guns. Identity problem there too?
I get that you don't like guns. That's fine. But there's no need to belittle or demean people who do. Since they're not hurting you with their collections, why do you care what they do?
Irrelevant. Again "liking" guns is beside the point. Also I did not address collections, but the fact is one of the right-wing "militias" did indeed stockpile a whole collection of weapons near the capitol to be conveniently accessed on Jan 6. https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/590442-oath-keepers-stockpiled-30-days-of-supplies-rifles-ahead-of-jan-6/
Enough. As I said a minute ago, you don't like guns, then don't own any. I do, and I will. I use them lawfully and responsibly, I do not accept blame for militia creeps and school shooters, and so you get no veto over my decisions.
Liking is beside the point. The fact you keep bringing it up as a last resort means you are unable to objectively think about guns. I am rated an expert marksman. Liking or not liking guns has nothing to with it. I don't "like" wrenches either, but I use them. It is merely a tool, designed to kill, injure or intimidate. Usually if they are not being used precisely for one of those purposes, they are being used for a tangential purpose such as target shooting, or they are not being used at all like the extra can opener in my RV.
Brilliant! Your last sentence says what I tried to say in 200 words...
The Japanese watch a ton of violent movies and play violent videos games, etc. They don’t have the same gun problem we have in the US. Although I agree Hollywood glorifies violence, we can’t lay the blame for mass shootings on their shoulders.
Good point, Sheri. Could it be that the reason the Japanese don't have the same gun problem we have in the U.S. is because (by a data point I just googled) the rate of guns in Japan in 2019 was 0.25 per 100 people, while a 2018 piece found that in the U.S., it was 120.5 per 100 people?
Yep.
A+ choices from JvL
I don’t see how the gun issue isn’t a crime/public safety issue. Please, democratic legislators, grab these issues by the horns and save our democracy.
I'm not inclined to accept the argument that Hollywood is partially to blame, and I think the idea to approach gun control with a PR campaign based on anti-smoking efforts is a bit of a stretch. That said, the gun violence problem is plainly complex to analyze, and I'm certainly not opposed to efforts to identify and treat its causes. What I think folks who argue about other causes and how to deal with them miss is one huge factor, however: TIME. All of the suggestions in this article and numerous others take a lot of it. The simple things--raise age, ban high capacity magazines, cooling-off periods. Could be done tomorrow. That's what makes them more impactful.
"Or we could just pound on the table and feel good about ourselves by pointing fingers at others."
This is basically what I think is wrong with modern progressivism. We used to focus on real, practical things like "economic disadvantage", "equal opportunity", quality of education, etc. Now we've oriented all of our politics around the cartoon villains of racism, sexism, homo/trans-phobia, etc. because it's easier to indulge in playing the hero in an imagined morality tale than to actually make progress in improving people's lives. Which was acceptable when these two things supported the same basic goals, but not so when the latter now works toward unhelpful or even harmful ends, like defunding police, eliminating standardized tests, or suppressing constructive discussion of important issues.
We would be wise to learn that same lesson in approaching gun control. Pushing back against the NRA and the gun lobbyists is important, but so is looking for incremental but real progress where we can find it. Speak to the concerns of Republican moms. Talk to supposedly "responsible" gun owners about how their rights are actually being endangered by extremists who've made guns more dangerous. Engage with this issue outside the parameters of our culture wars, because culture wars are how we got here in the first place.
In defense of the modern progs, we have a fairly unprecedented logjam at the federal legislative level. There is no incremental approach to be had in congress, which leaves EOs and regulatory guidance as the only methods that allow for anything to be done.
You have a point, but the all-or-nothing attitude is self-defeating.
Sure. And the leverage we have at the moment is almost entirely at the state level, so we have to work with the tools we have.
Re culture and 50 years ago, that was the beginning of the Dirty Harry movies, lots of violence on TV. Adam-12 had already aired its 'let's dress in bullet-proof gear and point M-16s at bad guys' episode, Police Story had either already begun or was about to do so, the WW2 TV shows were winding down, and there were still plenty of Westerns on TV. That doesn't include all the WW2 theme movies on TV afternoons and weekends.
My own cultural divide occurred upon the unexpected death of the actor Michael Conrad, so the end of 'Phil Esterhaus' on Hill Street Blues warning his police "Let's be careful out there." to Robert Prosky's 'Stan Jablonski' admonishing them 'Let's do it to them before they do it to us.'
It wasn't the 1970s which changed the US, it was the 1980s. And the TV show which was the better measure of the US cultural atrophy was the McLaughlin Group which made Robert Novak and Patrick Buchanan household names. To be fair, I still believe that when one's confronted with an adversary like the Soviet Union, it's good to have Novaks and Buchanans on your side. By 1992, not so much.
How we used to see guns portrayed:
https://youtu.be/4Fer9ql7itc
Thanks for the excellent newsletter. For awhile I have been saying that we should use the anti smoking campaign on guns. Back in the 70's and 80's ot was cool to smoke. Everyone smoked. In high school you couldn't see the sink in the bathroom during lunch break for all the smoke. Then non smokers said enough when it came out that cigarettes caused cancer. We knew they weren't good for you, but the nonsmokers had a wedge. We went from a couple non tables in restaurant, a law that smoking wasn't in restaurants. Then advertising was banned. And the smoking on tv shows and movies was controled. We could ban gun advertisement. Then anti smoking ads. One had Brook Shields with a cigarette in her nostril "smoking is sexy". Finally, it became so socially unacceptable to smoke that smokers looked sick. I remember a few of us huddled in an alley behind the bar like drug addicts, freezing our buns off in the middle of a Chicago winter.
Society can be made to see that guns are a stupid disgusting habit that makes the owner of one a pariah.
Old runners - me - tend to get hurt more. I’m much more careful with my goals now. More ‘can I run 8 miles’ and ‘can I run 10’ than ‘let’s try 6.50 mile repeats today’