Ricky Perry and Sean Hannity: A Frightening American Portrait

[Husker_x]

There's something that's been bothering me about this country lately that never used to--that is, not to this extent. I grew up in the midwest. I'm a Nebraska boy. I've shot, killed, gutted, and skinned my own fauna a few times, and I have negative-zero problem with hunters, hunting, or the love of the great outdoors that inspires people to take up a completely legitimate and even ecologically necessary sport. But there is a perverse aspect of gun culture which has nothing to do with what I just mentioned. Bill Maher did a segment on it recently that set off a few alarm bells:

 

 

Now, it's simple enough to say that this is a fringe minority of cooks. I may have rubbed shoulders with the kind of guy who rigged his gun safe with dynamite––you know, in case the negro came for his guns at the witching hour––but I wouldn't call him representative. It's the same kind of person who would outfit his pickup bed (which apparently he doesn't need for hauling anything) with a coal-burning apparatus for no other reason than to emit extra carbon into the atmosphere––you know, like, suck on that one climate change science. But let's not get carried away here. I think a general rule of life is if you're going to let a few nutjubs w/ a better-than-even probability of a mental disorder stand in for the majority of otherwise rational people, you're going to find yourself in a sad, dark place.

 

Then I read this Huffington Post editorial. I consider HuffPo to be little better than a tabloid rag most days. It's the kind of 'news' website that features controversies about Miley Cyrus a few inches beneath bombings in Gaza, but I think this writer nailed something fundamentally scary in both form and content.

 

For the last several weeks, the following photo of Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) and Sean Hannity has haunted me. During the current unhinged freakout surrounding immigration reform and, specifically, the Central American teens and children being held by the U.S. after having entered the country via the Mexican border, I can't help but to the think that the true threats to the U.S. aren't undocumented immigrants, be they adults or children, but rather these dinguses:

 

 

Read on: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-real-enemy-isnt-undoc_b_5638652.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

[carlfense]

I know the feeling. I'm a hunter, fisherman, gun owner, etc. . . . and I feel a bit alienated by the extremist/all or nothing/rambo movement that keeps rearing it's head. I'm thinking of the reaction to Jim Zumbo's statements among others. There is no toleration for compromise or criticism. None.

[BigRedBuster]

It's a very very confusing times on so many fronts.

[StPaulHusker]

I brought this up in another thread that the people are not going to know the difference between 8 people walking into a Chipotle each carrying a gun to "exercise" their 2nd amendment rights or 8 people walking into a Chipotle each carrying a gun to light the place up. That is a scary situation for an unarmed person to be in.

[BigRedBuster]

This is a perfect example of my frustration in politics right now. I am all for gun ownership rights. Just like others, I hunt and use guns in other fun ways. So, in essence, I support gun ownership. BUT, the side that you would think a gun ownership supporting citizen would be on has gone so ape sh#t crazy that it absolutely boggles my mind.

 

That is the case with so many issues. I have been in places where a very respectable person walked in with a pistol in site hanging from his belt in a safe professional looking holster and I had absolutely no problem with it. THEN, you the picture above of what appears to be a teenager sitting at a Sonic Drive In with a deer hunting rifle....hmmmm....not so comfortable wit that.

[carlfense]

The thing that really drives me nuts about the open carry yahoos is that the effect is exactly the opposite of what they want. They're not drawing more people to their beliefs . . . they're driving them away.

[strigori]

The thing that really drives me nuts about the open carry yahoos is that the effect is exactly the opposite of what they want. They're not drawing more people to their beliefs . . . they're driving them away.

It does not help their cause either, that those nuts are also prone to behaving in a rather hostile/belligerent fashion.

[Junior]

I guarantee you that if a couple of black dudes exercising their 2nd amendment rights walked into Chipotle carrying rifles strapped across their chests that these people wouldn't find it so cool. One of these white yahoos would probably even shoot at the obvious criminals.

[sd'sker]

I guarantee you that if a couple of black dudes exercising their 2nd amendment rights walked into Chipotle carrying rifles strapped across their chests that these people wouldn't find it so cool. One of these white yahoos would probably even shoot at the obvious criminals.

there's a rich history there:

The Secret History of Guns

The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight.