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Harm of firearms missing from messages in marketin
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Harm of firearms missing from messages in marketing
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By Mike Seate
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, July 21, 2002
For a Brit, Warren Poole really has a taste for firearms. Warren is a friend of mine from Dorset, England, who visits the States every few years and each vacation includes a stop at a local gun store.
Back home, Warren, like most of his countrymen, doesn't own any firearms. He blames a combination of restrictive gun- control laws and a complex licensing process for those rare citizens deemed worthy of owning guns.
So because gun ownership is about as rare for a Brit like Warren as sunshine and citrus fruit, he's fascinated by the easy availability of guns in this country.
Unlike many Americans deeply passionate about firearms, Warren makes no bones about the reason he fantasizes about all things Smith and Wesson: his tiny, sparsely furnished apartment in Dorset has been burglarized five times in the past six years - twice while he was at home, asleep - and Warren hopes someday to defend his tiny stereo and 13-inch color television Charles Bronson-style.
But when we visit gun stores, as we did during his most recent visit, Warren can't help laughing at how guns are marketed in this country as anything but killing machines.
"There's all of this flowery language about constitutional rights and the founding fathers. Or you see these Winchester ads that show pictures of some cowboy riding peacefully across the prairie," he said, laughing. "I want to know how fast I can kill somebody."
Like smoke shop employees who will refuse to sell you a "tobacco pipe" decorated in marijuana leaves and pictures of Cheech and Chong if you mention pot, gun store clerks don't take kindly to this kind of direct questioning. At two area gun stores, Warren's inquiries about "the size of holes this baby would leave in somebody's torso" were met with stony silence.
He didn't realize that guns, despite their basic premise as tools of human destruction, aren't necessarily marketed that way. In fact, we couldn't find a single piece of gun store sales literature that contained one image of, say, a bank robbery, a drive-by shooting or a gunshot wound.
If you were from another planet and entered a gun store for the first time, you might think all those shiny, high-tech devices for sale in the display cabinets were some sort of newfangled telecommunications gadget.
Warren and I were joking about this via e-mail after he returned to England and I forwarded him a similar missive from a reader who was incensed by a pro-gun control column I'd written a few months back. The reader was confused as to why I had such a negative view of guns and she was genuinely shocked to hear that I'd seen and known several people who were killed in gunfights.
The reader grew up with Olympic competition gun shooters for parents, so she was amazed to learn that people often get killed with a piece of equipment that in her family was probably viewed as just as ordinary as a badminton racket.
Warren agreed that this benign view of firearms must be the predominant view of guns in the U.S., explaining why so many gun owners are angered when their "sporting goods" are viewed in the same light as the guns used by criminals.
And we all know that sporting goods don't kill people. Guns do.
Mike Seate is a staff writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He can be reached at (412) 320-7845.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/columnists/s_82392.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
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Discuss this column
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Print this article
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By Mike Seate
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, July 21, 2002
For a Brit, Warren Poole really has a taste for firearms. Warren is a friend of mine from Dorset, England, who visits the States every few years and each vacation includes a stop at a local gun store.
Back home, Warren, like most of his countrymen, doesn't own any firearms. He blames a combination of restrictive gun- control laws and a complex licensing process for those rare citizens deemed worthy of owning guns.
So because gun ownership is about as rare for a Brit like Warren as sunshine and citrus fruit, he's fascinated by the easy availability of guns in this country.
Unlike many Americans deeply passionate about firearms, Warren makes no bones about the reason he fantasizes about all things Smith and Wesson: his tiny, sparsely furnished apartment in Dorset has been burglarized five times in the past six years - twice while he was at home, asleep - and Warren hopes someday to defend his tiny stereo and 13-inch color television Charles Bronson-style.
But when we visit gun stores, as we did during his most recent visit, Warren can't help laughing at how guns are marketed in this country as anything but killing machines.
"There's all of this flowery language about constitutional rights and the founding fathers. Or you see these Winchester ads that show pictures of some cowboy riding peacefully across the prairie," he said, laughing. "I want to know how fast I can kill somebody."
Like smoke shop employees who will refuse to sell you a "tobacco pipe" decorated in marijuana leaves and pictures of Cheech and Chong if you mention pot, gun store clerks don't take kindly to this kind of direct questioning. At two area gun stores, Warren's inquiries about "the size of holes this baby would leave in somebody's torso" were met with stony silence.
He didn't realize that guns, despite their basic premise as tools of human destruction, aren't necessarily marketed that way. In fact, we couldn't find a single piece of gun store sales literature that contained one image of, say, a bank robbery, a drive-by shooting or a gunshot wound.
If you were from another planet and entered a gun store for the first time, you might think all those shiny, high-tech devices for sale in the display cabinets were some sort of newfangled telecommunications gadget.
Warren and I were joking about this via e-mail after he returned to England and I forwarded him a similar missive from a reader who was incensed by a pro-gun control column I'd written a few months back. The reader was confused as to why I had such a negative view of guns and she was genuinely shocked to hear that I'd seen and known several people who were killed in gunfights.
The reader grew up with Olympic competition gun shooters for parents, so she was amazed to learn that people often get killed with a piece of equipment that in her family was probably viewed as just as ordinary as a badminton racket.
Warren agreed that this benign view of firearms must be the predominant view of guns in the U.S., explaining why so many gun owners are angered when their "sporting goods" are viewed in the same light as the guns used by criminals.
And we all know that sporting goods don't kill people. Guns do.
Mike Seate is a staff writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He can be reached at (412) 320-7845.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/columnists/s_82392.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
If you will blame gun makers for every shooting then blame car maker for every car accident.
The guy's British friend....my GOD how ignorant can you BE? After being burglarized 5 times, he wants to PROTECT himself? Oh God that's hysterical, quick, sit this guy down in front of CNN and teach him the facts before he gets any more crazy ideas about personal liberty.
I cant help but notice that it's a common Liberal notion that if you dont personally agree with something, it's perfectly alright for you to go around and harass, defame, insult, degrade, and inconvenience anyone who feels differently.
This jerk is lucky he didnt get try any of that fascist crap at MY local gun store. He would have been escorted from the building at the business end of a steel-toed boot.