Hey, Alex...yeah, I'm wordy all right...you should hear how long some of my songs are! I'm infamous for that. Learned it from Dylan...Everybody:
Regarding NRA people, anti-gun people, and so on...I find there's some extreme silliness at both ends of that issue, which, I guess, is to be expected.
The 2nd Amendment was written in a time when most folks were country folks, and the frontier was subject to frequent raids by Indians (or Natives, if you prefer) who were darned ticked off at the White community for a variety of understandable reasons. It was absolutely vital for everyone to have access to a gun in those days, both for self-defence and hunting, and for outright war. It's a very different situation now. In this sense, the NRA are acting like it's still 1779 or something, which it is not. And...they are just a tad paranoid about normal daily life, at least by my standards.
On the other hand, the people who turn purple with indignation at the very mention of a gun, or at the sight of a toy gun in the hands of a 7 year-old kid...those people are slightly nuts, in my opinion, and they are a royal pain to those around them. They remind me of the people who won't allow "Catcher In The Rye" or "Huckleberry Finn" in their school library.
I came across a copy of "Tom Sawyer" in the local book store the other day. It was a brand new edition, and guess what? They have edited out the chapter where Tom gets into a fight with the new kid in town. It's completely gone. Some politically correct lunatic decided that it was too violent, I suppose, and that it might corrupt some young reader. Despite these inane efforts to force everyone to deny certain obvious aspects of reality and pretend they don't exist, kids continue to get into fights at school and elsewhere, and I imagine they always will, with or without Tom Sawyer, for heaven's sake!
In the field of plastic models, there have been repeated efforts by certain factions to regulate what insignia can or cannot be shown on the decal sheets of certain airplanes. In the former Soviet Union, no airplane kits of ANY German planes were allowed to be sold, period. Now that has changed in Russia.
Now is this kind of thing smart? Does it teach people anything about history? If you're going to make a model of something historical, then make it accurate, for God's sake! Otherwise, what's the point? To build a model of a German plane does NOT necessarily indicate that you support the ideals and aims of WWII Nazi Germany.
To take the analogy just a little further...the Spanish Inquisition and the Roman Catholic Church were responsible for the most hideous torture and execution of millions of wholly innocent people over a very lengthy historical period. Should we, on that basis, ban all visual representations of anything from that Church? No we shouldn't. Nor should we ban pictures of vikings and viking ships because they pillaged and raped all over Europe. Nor should we ban flying the US flag because soldiers under that flag massacred Native Americans, and Vietnamese at My Lai.
You don't learn about injustice by denying all visual evidence that it ever existed.
Oops! Running off again at the mouth, aren't I? Sheesh. Okay, I'll stop now.
- LH