American Guns & Sons of guns

[Tigerrr]

I have only just discovered these gems on the outer reaches of satellite documentary channels.
I expect the programme makers are trying to do something like the Chopper motorbike thing. But with gunmakers.
I am really shocked by it. I thought that being a gun fetishist would be something to keep quiet about but it seems that over there its a whole 'out' scene.
I can imagine having a gun, but nobody in this world has just one gun - they have whole rooms full of them. and they take them out and shoot stuff with them. None of the guns are target guns they are all people killing guns.  When they handle them the men get visibly aroused. and they really get off when they shoot something, a plate or a block of ice or a target that looks like a black man.

[ferret]

and they wonder why the murder rate is so high over there, intelligent thinking is not their strong point unfortunately   

[Charlotte]

Take any meme that we apply to the ownership of bikes (n+1, build your own, bike pr0n, etc.) and I'm fairly sure that someone, somewhere in the USA is doing it with firearms.

I am really shocked by it.

Guns are fun.  And don't try to tell me that you've never found yourself starring in your own little personal Clint Eastwood moment, Mr Tigeritan... 

[Tigerrr]

I have those moments several times a day. If I had the guns that these guys have all my neighbours, colleagues, and a huge number of drivers would be pumped full o led. Especially if I had a 50 cal called gabriel.  I could sort out the parking in the street with one of those, and deal with the builders across the road at the same time.  Then Id get the taxi drivers, and anyone in a BMW.  Tripod mounted with a range of 4k. I cant even see that far - but I could shoot the parky in Hyde park from Shepherds Bush with that - and if I was in the states I could have it in my den.
I guess the amazing thing is that there is anyone left unshot in the states. So perhaps these programmes show us just how incredibly controlled the gun rage is in the states.

[mrcharly-YHT]

lol, well that's one way of seeing it!

PS, you do know you are now on several 'lists'?

[redshift]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/7psa_XYpl24&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/7psa_XYpl24&rel=1</a>

[Manotea]

Take any meme that we apply to the ownership of bikes (n+1, build your own, bike pr0n, etc.) and I'm fairly sure that someone, somewhere in the USA is doing it with firearms.

There's no doubt that the internet caters for all tastes. Just never Google "scalectric" otherwise you'll be transported to a world of track building, engine and tyre tuning, car collections and shrines to the latest nailed down track (that's a technical term, by the way) which has taken over the builders bedroom/loft/life. DAMHIKT.

And never, ever Google "Hornby",  for that way truly lies madness...

[clarion]

I'm not.aware.of.any mass killings undertaken by Hornby.

[rogerzilla]

I had occasional fantasies about owning a bazooka for an afternoon, but thave been cured of them.

I found out that the Panzerfaust was much better and less likely to glance off an X5.

[pumpkin]

We don't have that culture here so it's hard to understand. Guns are a 'way of life' in some areas of the US altho' whether .50 calibre weapons are a lifestyle accessory is debatable.

[TimC]

I'm not.aware.of.any mass killings undertaken by Hornby.

You never shared my playroom when I was a kid, then! Pile ups of Hornby (Dublo in those days), Corgi, Matchbox etc were common, and could have formed the template for any number of mass extinctions. But not my posh locos, of course. Just the ones I didn't like.

As for guns, I did my fair share of gun handling in the military, and became very good at 900m and 1000m target rifle, but the equipment never interested me in the way that bikes, m/cycles, cars, boats, aeroplanes - or model railways - did and do.

[jogler]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7psa_XYpl24

Heavens Above,they even make videos about their bikes guns

 

[jogler]

Take any meme that we apply to the ownership of bikes (n+1, build your own, bike pr0n, etc.) and I'm fairly sure that someone, somewhere in the USA is doing it with firearms.

There's no doubt that the internet caters for all tastes. Just never Google "scalectric" otherwise you'll be transported to a world of track building, engine and tyre tuning, car collections and shrines to the latest nailed down track (that's a technical term, by the way) which has taken over the builders bedroom/loft/life. DAMHIKT.

And never, ever Google "Hornby",  for that way truly lies madness...

ooh,thanks for that

[LEE]

Firearms certificates  (including Shotgun certificates) cover about 1.8 million legally held guns in the UK.
Don't kid yourself that the UK is somehow not a gun-owning country.

However that doesn't come close to the gun ownership numbers in the US where it is estimated that guns outnumber people.

I read that there are around 85 fatal shootings per day in the US.  They don't even make the news there are so many.

When my American friend stayed in London she was scared to go out as she'd seen 2 murders on the BBC news that day.  I told her that    one murder was in Manchester, the other in Glasgow and they were quite possibly the only two murders that day in the UK.  Meanwhile, back in the US, it was a war zone (but it just didn't make the news unless it was an "unusual" murder).


I'm amazed there aren't more gun killings in the UK given that there are 2 millions guns in circulation.  I'm even more amazed there aren't more gun killings in the US given there are about 300  million guns in circulation.

I don't know how accurate these wiki stats are (I thought the Ukraine would be far worse) but they are eye-opening

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

Of course many, many gun deaths are accidental, a clear case for advocating gun control.

[ian]

Firearms certificates  (including Shotgun certificates) cover about 1.8 million legally held guns in the UK.
Don't kid yourself that the UK is somehow not a gun-owning country.

However that doesn't come close to the gun ownership numbers in the US where it is estimated that guns outnumber people.

I read that there are around 85 fatal shootings per day in the US.  They don't even make the news there are so many.

When my American friend stayed in London she was scared to go out as she'd seen 2 murders on the BBC news that day.  I told her that    one murder was in Manchester, the other in Glasgow and they were quite possibly the only two murders that day in the UK.  Meanwhile, back in the US, it was a war zone (but it just didn't make the news unless it was an "unusual" murder).


I'm amazed there aren't more gun killings in the UK given that there are 2 millions guns in circulation.  I'm even more amazed there aren't more gun killings in the US given there are about 300  million guns in circulation.

I don't know how accurate these wiki stats are (I thought the Ukraine would be far worse) but they are eye-opening

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

Of course many, many gun deaths are accidental, a clear case for advocating gun control.

The grim irony in the US is that the most fervent gun advocates actually live in nice, usually white, crime-free suburbs. The only drive-by they're likely to get is a newspaper delivery. They, of course, feel threatened. Gang-banging, drug-fuelled, Satan-obsessed serial killers could be sneaking around their garden at 3am. It's just fairly unlikely and even if they were, gun fights aren't like they are on TV. The majority of US gun owners couldn't hit their own state.

Of course, the side effect of all this is a ubiquity of guns. Accidents abound. Suicide is facilitated. And those guns find their way into the places where crime really happens, and the majority of gun homicides are concentrated and drug-trade fuelled, in mostly non-white urban neighbourhoods.

So, this surfeit of firearms effectively feeds the very crime they think they're defending themselves against.

[Cudzoziemiec]

South America seems to dominate the top of that Wikipedia list, some (eg Colombia) more expectedly than others. But I think the regional trends might be misleading, as there are many outliers; Chile at the bottom of the list, less gun-tastic than even Japan. Estonia at no. 9 with ten times the rate of neighbouring Latvia. Of course we might find that some of these seemingly safe countries have high levels of knife killings, but whatever the reason is, there are clearly factors at work at national or local level.