U.S. Politics

[MakemineVanilla]

24 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

As an idea of how different Minnesota is to here, Minnesota covers 225 thousand square kilometres which makes it about 1.6 times the size of England and it has a population of 5.64 million against just under 56m in England. I would imagine if there were fifteen times as many people in Minnesota as there are now it'd be culturally different, and I guess if the population of England was reduced to being less than 3 million then we'd grow up thinking very differently. 

I think there's probably a lot in that in terms of the psychological make up of populations and how they then think about nationality and influence the politics they live under - hunting is alien to most people in the UK because well it's unnecessary in the UK and there isn't really anywhere to do it or anything worth hunting - I reckon there are probably lots of areas of Americas "weird" politics where the same sort of thing applies.

 

In the UK hunting is mostly associated with the aristocracy who seem to see it as a means to assert their dominion over the land, which they own.

Shooting a stag in Scotland or big game in a colony became a rite of passage for royalty.

After almost a 1000 years the Normans still dominate the land and its people.

We just lack the concept of freedom which Americans take for granted.

We are a nation of forelock-tugging toadies drunk on our historical myths.

[sidcow]

On 13/12/2021 at 07:31, Vancvillan said:

Basically hyper-niche use cases where an alternative could be easily argued for and none of which this family falls in to. I'm all for trying to see someone else's side but I have a hard time with justifying ownership of centrefire semi-automatic firearms - if someone claims a farm subsidy (usually requires a bunch of conditions) there could be a case where those people are excempt from a ban. I'd love to hear someone on here argue for them though?

Because. 

[bickster]

2 hours ago, MakemineVanilla said:

In the UK hunting is mostly associated with the aristocracy who seem to see it as a means to assert their dominion over the land, which they own.

Is it?

Living in the middle of hare coursing central, The Waterloo Cup used to be held about 2 miles over there, I'd dispute that

As someone whose Grandfather used to go out shooting for rabbits and pheasant (and was a coalminer), I'd also dispute it on those grounds too. He was doing that into the 1970s, just himself, a shotgun and his dog. I remember the pheasants hanging in the kitchen over the bath

Hunting was very working class, yes the toffs used to go around on their horses shouting Taly Ho chasing foxes but the dead animal count will have been far higher from the working classes. The number of participants would also be strongly in favour of the working class.

You are basing your perception on a VERY small timescale of a couple of decades at best

Hare coursing still goes on around here, it's just not talked about

[HanoiVillan]

7 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

As an idea of how different Minnesota is to here, Minnesota covers 225 thousand square kilometres which makes it about 1.6 times the size of England and it has a population of 5.64 million against just under 56m in England. I would imagine if there were fifteen times as many people in Minnesota as there are now it'd be culturally different, and I guess if the population of England was reduced to being less than 3 million then we'd grow up thinking very differently. 

I think there's probably a lot in that in terms of the psychological make up of populations and how they then think about nationality and influence the politics they live under - hunting is alien to most people in the UK because well it's unnecessary in the UK and there isn't really anywhere to do it or anything worth hunting - I reckon there are probably lots of areas of Americas "weird" politics where the same sort of thing applies.

 

Minnesota has, AIUI, a pronounced east-west divide. The eastern half is much more populous and dense, and has more culturally in common with the other mid-western states, while the western half is almost completely empty and has more in common culturally and politically with the 'Big Sky' states to the west.

[Vancvillan]

4 hours ago, sidcow said:

Because. 

If you mean they own them "just because" I'd like to hope there's a bit more to their mental process. If you're asking why I'd like to hear from them it's because we haven't in over a thousand pages and again I'd like to hope there's some kind of thought behind it.  While to me it's like Brexit or choosing to live Sunderland in that it's beyond my comprehension, I generally find people have reasons I haven't thought of once you talk to them.  Whether you think those reasons are valid or not is another discussion.

[Vancvillan]

7 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

As an idea of how different Minnesota is to here, Minnesota covers 225 thousand square kilometres which makes it about 1.6 times the size of England and it has a population of 5.64 million against just under 56m in England. I would imagine if there were fifteen times as many people in Minnesota as there are now it'd be culturally different, and I guess if the population of England was reduced to being less than 3 million then we'd grow up thinking very differently. 

I think there's probably a lot in that in terms of the psychological make up of populations and how they then think about nationality and influence the politics they live under - hunting is alien to most people in the UK because well it's unnecessary in the UK and there isn't really anywhere to do it or anything worth hunting - I reckon there are probably lots of areas of Americas "weird" politics where the same sort of thing applies.

 

I live in BC, Canada and it's almost 4 times the size of Minnesota and with slightly less people. So four times the size of the UK, with the population of way less than London living in it. 

When I go hunting / camping I take a satellite messenger, a chainsaw to clear fallen trees on a trail, a kit so we can spend at least two extra nights sleeping rough and the tires on my truck cost more than my first two cars combined.  When we lived in the UK I took my Canadian wife camping in Newquay in a Mini Metro and we pitched a tent with about 600 other people.  No wonder she was confused.

To paraphrase your post, your environment defines culture to a notable degree.  You'd probably be hard pushed to find a country that doesn't have some weird sounding laws.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Vancvillan

[Vancvillan]

18 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

When I first came to the American West I fell in love with it for that reason. To go hiking in Utah or Arizona you can backpack for weeks and not see people. Just listening to the silence (sound of nature) is a unique experience. We just don't have anything on that scale in England.

I have no wish to sneak around it shooting living creatures though.

I think you're being reductive with that statement and you know it.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Vancvillan
spelling

[TheAuthority]

5 hours ago, Vancvillan said:

I think you're being reductive with that statement and you know it.

[TheAuthority]

5 hours ago, Vancvillan said:

If you mean they own them "just because" I'd like to hope there's a bit more to their mental process. If you're asking why I'd like to hear from them it's because we haven't in over a thousand pages and again I'd like to hope there's some kind of thought behind it.  While to me it's like Brexit or choosing to live Sunderland in that it's beyond my comprehension, I generally find people have reasons I haven't thought of once you talk to them.  Whether you think those reasons are valid or not is another discussion.

I used to have some friends in Florida who owned lots and lots of weapons. Pistols, rifles, semi-automatics (AR-15's) Uzi's and one long range rifle which they called "the canon." When it was fired it was like a f****ng canon.

I went shooting a few times them (one of them had a lot of land.) Meh - I've been to ranges since and fired all sorts of weapons - again - meh. I just get bored.

You ask about their mental process for owning them and here is my opinion FWIW. Having asked them to explain it to me numerous times. Their reasons for owning them are a mixture of:

1: Boys with toys/guns are cool.
2: Mistrust of the government and being 'ready' for when Facebook team up with Biden and turn us all into the Borg.  but seriously they do believe that kind of shit.
3: Hoarder instincts - just hoarding guns and ammo due to slight mental health issues.

There really wasn't any more to it than that. Not bad/terrioble people they just have very different thoughts about this subject to me. One guy is a retired marine, now retired state trooper who made his own ammo and was generally very paranoid about government, big tech/corporations. History of substance abuse. He would do anything for you but he was fairly also pretty anti-semitic. He didn't get very far discussing that with me though.

The other guy is someone I wrote on here about recently as he passed away. Generous and a huge supporter of the arts. He also loved heavy metal, and had to take strong medication due to mental health disorders. He was a recovering alcoholic, a maverick but everything he did was fairly extreme and he was a hoarder. 

In the society in which I want to live, neither of them should be able to have access to such potentially lethal weapons.

[Vancvillan]

5 minutes ago, TheAuthority said:

I used to have some friends in Florida who owned lots and lots of weapons. Pistols, rifles, semi-automatics (AR-15's) Uzi's and one long range rifle which they called "the canon." When it was fired it was like a f****ng canon.

I went shooting a few times them (one of them had a lot of land.) Meh - I've been to ranges since and fired all sorts of weapons - again - meh. I just get bored.

You ask about their mental process for owning them and here is my opinion FWIW. Having asked them to explain it to me numerous times. Their reasons for owning them are a mixture of:

1: Boys with toys/guns are cool.
2: Mistrust of the government and being 'ready' for when Facebook team up with Biden and turn us all into the Borg.  but seriously they do believe that kind of shit.
3: Hoarder instincts - just hoarding guns and ammo due to slight mental health issues.

There really wasn't any more to it than that. Not bad/terrioble people they just have very different thoughts about this subject to me. One guy is a retired marine, now retired state trooper who made his own ammo and was generally very paranoid about government, big tech/corporations. History of substance abuse. He would do anything for you but he was fairly also pretty anti-semitic. He didn't get very far discussing that with me though.

The other guy is someone I wrote on here about recently as he passed away. Generous and a huge supporter of the arts. He also loved heavy metal, and had to take strong medication due to mental health disorders. He was a recovering alcoholic, a maverick but everything he did was fairly extreme and he was a hoarder. 

In the society in which I want to live, neither of them should be able to have access to such potentially lethal weapons.

Yeah, to be clear - sometimes I just need to hear someone say "we get them Euro millions to so we can buy more nurses and I know it's true cos I saw it on a bus" before I can actually believe that's the reason for them doing something I don't agree with.  I'd still like it if someone on here who owns ARs (or similar) sticks their head above the parapet to tell their side, but at the same time I get why they wouldn't.

[sidcow]

8 hours ago, Vancvillan said:

If you mean they own them "just because" I'd like to hope there's a bit more to their mental process. If you're asking why I'd like to hear from them it's because we haven't in over a thousand pages and again I'd like to hope there's some kind of thought behind it.  While to me it's like Brexit or choosing to live Sunderland in that it's beyond my comprehension, I generally find people have reasons I haven't thought of once you talk to them.  Whether you think those reasons are valid or not is another discussion.

No, that was just my pretend childlike nonsense argument about why they need those guns. 

[choffer]

2 hours ago, Vancvillan said:

Yeah, to be clear - sometimes I just need to hear someone say "we get them Euro millions to so we can buy more nurses and I know it's true cos I saw it on a bus" before I can actually believe that's the reason for them doing something I don't agree with.  I'd still like it if someone on here who owns ARs (or similar) sticks their head above the parapet to tell their side, but at the same time I get why they wouldn't.

We do have an occasional poster who tried exactly that a few years ago. Needless to say, his arguments weren’t entirely persuasive for most on here. 

[stuart_75]

I know a handful of guys who own rifles and shotguns and use them for target shooting, Deer hunting and pest control on farmland in Shropshire. Couldn't be anymore working class if they tried and they are "normal" folk, like a beer and watch the footie just like us.

[MakemineVanilla]

14 hours ago, bickster said:

Hunting was very working class, yes the toffs used to go around on their horses shouting Taly Ho chasing foxes but the dead animal count will have been far higher from the working classes. The number of participants would also be strongly in favour of the working class.

You are basing your perception on a VERY small timescale of a couple of decades at best

Hare coursing still goes on around here, it's just not talked about

One of my abiding memories is of my uncle firing his shotgun in his back-garden in Pelsall, and I've eaten plenty of pigeon pie, but the British attitude to hunting and shooting, is that it might be the done thing for the nobs but it is considered not quite respectable when the lower-order do it.

It is definitely a trope in British cinema that the poacher character is slightly beyond the socially acceptable pale.

In the wartime propaganda film, Went The Day Well?, where they portray the classes co-operating to defend pastoral England against the dastardly Germans, the guy at the bottom, is the local poacher.

As you point out the foxhunter wears his pinks, sounds his horn, and sends his pack across the lands of his tenants, while there is always something furtive about the proletariat in the field.

I think these well established norms form the basis to the British attitude towards gun-ownership in the USA.

We seem to be overly excited by such terms as 'semi-automatic' and have a phallic fixation against anything which looks like a rifle, where the handgun is easier to conceal and just as lethal.

 

[villa4europe]

2 hours ago, stuart_75 said:

I know a handful of guys who own rifles and shotguns and use them for target shooting, Deer hunting and pest control on farmland in Shropshire. Couldn't be anymore working class if they tried and they are "normal" folk, like a beer and watch the footie just like us.

i think that's been lost on people, agree with bickster that the perception has swung to it being done by filthy rich people who are too rich to take in to consideration the barbarity of it

the guy who took me shooting a couple of times on work days out did deer stalking in the highlands and he did make it sound cool and a proper skill (and also exhausting and boring as **** at the same time) and he explained to me how the land owners paid him to do it as opposed to organised shoots where you pay for what you kill

been part of it in germany too, the brother in law is properly in to it, like you say hunting to him is like football to me, a hunt is like an away day, he cant get enough of it...he's a factory worker, makes carrier bags for a living, owns a gun, owns a hunting dog, goes out shooting every saturday that he's allowed

 

Edited December 15, 2021 by villa4europe

[bickster]

2 hours ago, MakemineVanilla said:

 

It is definitely a trope in British cinema that the poacher character is slightly beyond the socially acceptable pale.

I wasn’t talking about poaching I’m talking about people hunting on common land or with permission.

[Awol]

18 hours ago, bickster said:

Is it?

Living in the middle of hare coursing central, The Waterloo Cup used to be held about 2 miles over there, I'd dispute that

As someone whose Grandfather used to go out shooting for rabbits and pheasant (and was a coalminer), I'd also dispute it on those grounds too. He was doing that into the 1970s, just himself, a shotgun and his dog. I remember the pheasants hanging in the kitchen over the bath

Hunting was very working class, yes the toffs used to go around on their horses shouting Taly Ho chasing foxes but the dead animal count will have been far higher from the working classes. The number of participants would also be strongly in favour of the working class.

You are basing your perception on a VERY small timescale of a couple of decades at best

Hare coursing still goes on around here, it's just not talked about

Yep, my old man kept a village pub in the 80’s and the regulars had a shooting syndicate on local land. Farm labourers, mechanics, all sorts of normal working class people. As kids we worked as beaters on the weekend, getting £2.50 and a pheasant (or two on a good day) for a few hours ‘work’. That was just outside Brum too, not the Highlands or Home Counties. 

[Seat68]

8 minutes ago, Awol said:

Yep, my old man kept a village pub in the 80’s and the regulars had a shooting syndicate on local land. Farm labourers, mechanics, all sorts of normal working class people. As kids we worked as beaters on the weekend, getting £2.50 and a pheasant (or two on a good day) for a few hours ‘work’. That was just outside Brum too, not the Highlands or Home Counties. 

My brother did beating and shooting from the 80s onwards. Just a normal fella, ish. Certainly working class. 

[HanoiVillan]

54 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

My brother did beating and shooting

[sidcow]

Sometimes The Oinks even get to shoot with The Nobs