Are all Americans gun crazy?
Two people gave me inspiration for this article. One was a member of my family, the other was a writer here on Medium.
I have made no secret of the fact that I have American relatives. My sister married an American airman, so I have a niece and four nephews, plus several great nieces and nephews living in Kansas.
However, it was something my brother’s son said that inspired this article.
I knew he had recently visited his cousins in Kansas, so I asked him how the visit went. This was his reply.
“Well, they kept all their guns hidden, so it went OK.”
I thought this to be a very strange thing for him to say and I should have asked him to explain his remark, but the occasion was not the time or place for argument.
The reason I thought his remark strange is that when I visited our family some years earlier, I never gave guns a thought.
I admit I did see more guns than I was used to seeing when one of my nephews took me to lunch displaying two guns and a baton. But he was a deputy sheriff and was in uniform. (I also got a trip in a sheriff’s car and taken to Kansas City jail.)
That was the only time I saw a gun during my visit there. Although I did feel slightly uneasy when we were in a bar on the last night of my stay.
The bar was full of what we would call interesting characters. I was quite relaxed about them. After all, I came from the east end of London. For some reason, my nephew told me always carried a gun, and he was carrying a hidden gun. My only thought was, am I the only one here without a gun? But everybody looked pretty relaxed, so I shrugged it off.
I would like to say the evening went off without any incident, but it didn’t.
That is another story, but no guns were produced or even spoken about. I may write about it in another post.
So why did my English nephew make that remark regarding guns and our American family?
I believe it is the way news is presented to us.
Whenever there is a programme about gun law in America, we are given the impression that every American is fiercely protective of their right to own and carry guns. We will be presented with someone, usually a man, carrying an assault rifle or numerous guns on his person.
We are given the impression that no American would willingly surrender their constitutional right to bear arms.
But when I was in America, I did not get this impression. I didn’t see any men swaggering down the street armed to the teeth.
Remember, I was not a tourist. I was visiting my family and their friends in their homes and in restaurants. They were not toting guns.
I believe they are the American people we have never heard from. Until now.
I said two people inspired me to write this article. One was my nephew, the other is a writer here on medium. That writer is Randy Pulley.
Randy has written an article that I believe has answered my question,
Are all Americans gun crazy?
The answer is emphatically no; they are not!
