I am 46 and female. I recently found a magazine from the 1950′s and happen to notice a boy carrying a toy gun. Then I remembered the cap guns we used to play with when I was little. We played cowboys and indians (not cops and robbers). No body wanted to be the indian because they always got shot. Now what does that tell you about our tv education? We watched “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid”, the Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Ponderosa, Death Valley Days, and later Big Valley and numerous others. We also watched sitcoms with gun, like F-troop. There were plenty of movies with guns as well but since I didn’t watch many I can’t name many, but some are classics. In addition, my dad had a shotgun, my grandpa had a shotgun, so did almost every family we knew in suburbia. Often these were kept loaded in the hall closet or behind the front door. The kids never messed with them and you never heard of anyone getting shot. On the other hand you seldom heard of people getting attacked or robbed either. This was back when the general populace didn’t have to lock their doors. The point is that it isn’t what we watch or what we are taught but how we are raised and how the rights and respect of the individual has degraded. A parent was home with the kids in 80% of the households, divorce was very, very unusual so their were very few broken homes. About 80% of the populace either attended church regularly or intermittently. You were a total outcast if you failed to follow the rules of morality in society. This kept people in line.
In the past, 50 years guns have been much more prevalent than they are today and yet now we have the violence. It is not just gun violence it is also, physical, knives, road rage, rudeness, and so on. It is the attitude that has to change, not the removal of rights, like taking guns away. Incorrect drug combinations and car crashes kill many more people than guns.
My personal story: I had a sleazy salesman type muscle his way into my house when my son and to-be-daughter in law were home. Their were young and didn’t know how to get him to stay out or leave with the way he muscled in. It didn’t occur to them right away to call the police. I arrived home moments later to find this scene and told the man to leave. Not once, not twice but numerous times. He didn’t leave even when I made it clear I had the police on the phone. When he did leave he muscled his way in to my neighbors house (a mother home with her children) and she couldn’t get him to leave either. I called her and let her know I had called the police. She had to buy the magazines he was selling to get him to leave. It took the police over 30 minutes to get here from a mile away. This is an area of 5 miles square with one police station. Their excuse, they misunderstood the street name and were looking for the address on the other side of town. Like I believe that, since I called more than once and gave the proper address and location. What would have happened it this man had become violent? It is enough that he scared us all. If I had a gun there would be no problem, as he would have disappeared quickly or I could have held him until the police arrived.
I personally hate guns and hunting but I find it neccessary now. I am getting a gun when I can afford one. I still hate hunting but it is not the gun that is hunting but the person, the same as the violence that is happening. We should enforce the laws against guns being used in crime, (higher penaltys) instead of disarming the population and removing our constitutional rights.
Cynthia