armed and squamous
There are 90 guns for every 100 Americans, making the U.S. the most heavily armed country in the world, a new report released Monday says.
The "report" does not say what percentage of USians are possibly undereducated, sociopathic, or submoronic.
On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the U.S., with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38.Isn't Iraq more like 1,783 guns per Iraqi?
France, Canada, Sweden, Austria and Germany were next, each with about 30 guns per 100 people, while many poorer countries often associated with violence ranked much lower. Nigeria, for instance, had just one gun per 100 people.
The study also found that civilians are acquiring greater numbers of increasingly powerful guns, and that this trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Labels: amazingly stupid people with guns..., Bush, gathering darkness of all USian culture, gun control, guns, idiots with guns, USian media
posted by Tom Matrullo at Wednesday, August 29, 2007
2 Comments:
A Fine Rifle Is the Poor Man's Yacht.
These days, owning a rifle is not just about shooting. (Of course, owning a yacht is not just about sailing, either.) Ask any American who owns a rifle how he spends most of his time vis-a-vis his firearm and he will answer (if he answers truthfully and looks you in the eye and does not flinch), "shopping."
Pragmatism has often been called the only truly homespun American philosophy. Now Pragmatism goes by a more familiar name: retail.
Let me say it clearly. Your basic, hard working, patriotic American loves gadgets above everything else. If there is an American Religion, that Religion is Gadgetry. And your basic, hard working, patriotic American rifleman loves gadgets more than anybody.
The custom made tables at shows are always a huge hit. Custom knives come in a close second. People visiting them sigh and usually settle for production models, some of which eventually get heirloom status in the same ways as antique cars or tools.
The military weapons fad is markedly different. There's none of the artisanal love or cherishing of a compleat set of traditional skills. The fetishism of destructive potential drives it. You can't hunt deer with a Barrett. Daily infantilizations, fearmongering media and the near hopelessness of institutional reform organizations foster a crackpot individualism. Each man an army of one, until the SWAT teams and the BATF squads come around.
They make unlikely bedfellows, politically. I though that alliance could be split at one point. The Michael Moore/Wendell Berry people don't have much in common with warrior consumers defending their SUVs.
All the same, I'd opt for no human being being allowed near to anything more than pop gun until he/she has demonstrated an intimacy with a fair proportion of the work of Aristotle.
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