Talk:Gun culture

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[edit] Understatement of the Past Three Millennia

'The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.'

Wow. That's really something. And yes, we need to take in the worldwide view here, cite how this culture is killing people, and show the connection between the aggressively hostile attitude towards sexuality, bible belt fanatics, and violence in US culture.

POV and OR have no place in wiki. Dman727 15:50, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scope?

Is this article intended to be only about Ross's idea of "gun culture"? I wonder if it would be appropriate to merge it with John Ross (author) in that case. If it's intended to be wider in scope than Ross's work, it may be difficult to keep out the original research. Friday (talk) 18:21, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Nope. I plan on adding (and finishing up citations of) other's ideas, but needed to take a break and couldn't figure out the right tag for "I'm still working on this" Dave polaschek 19:23, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
No worries. Anyone who comes across this article and wonders about it can find the discussion here on the talk page. I've got this on my watchlist and I'm happy to help out however I can. Friday (talk) 03:34, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
To date it remains primarly Ross's Gun Culture. Still needs a lot of work. Arthurrh 03:57, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Until I reviewed the history of the article, I had no idea who "Ross" was. His name is no longer in the article, and it is difficult to identify any content that would be attributed to him. The article as of this moment is roughly 1200 words long. Broken down, those words are spent as follows:
  • Lede: 60 word summary (excluding the part about the UK and Australia).
  • International: 250 words about "gun culture" outside the US, split between the lede and the "present day" subsection.
  • Gun Nut: 140 words on this phrase.
  • Richard Hofstadter: 60 words mentioning the Hofstadter article.
  • Spitzer: 410 words are a near plagiarism of Spitzer.
  • Luna: 295 words are a summary of Luna.
So, roughly 80% of the article that deals with the United States is from either Hofstadter, Spitzer, or Luna; roughly 15% deals with "gun nut". That only leaves around 5% of the coverage of the United States that could be attributed to Ross (or anybody else). I'm curious, Arthurrh, where you see the remaining Ross influence.- Hoplon 15:58, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
The concept itself as outlined in the lead is all Ross. Others define it quite differently. Everything else in the article is working from that thesis. Arthurrh 17:43, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Ok then, I think I understand your position. A problem I see is that there is not a single definition of "gun culture", either internationally or within the United States.
  • "While there is no clear definition of or consensus on the meaning of this term, it continues to be used both in literature and practice to describe attitudes and behaviours toward weapons." - [1]
  • "In scholarly literature, the expression "gun culture" is frequently used but in most cases remains entirely undefined." - [2]
  • "The term ‘gun culture’ is vague, ill-defined, and currently denotes many things..." - [3]
I suspect forking this article (or clearly dividing it) into the meaning of "Gun Culture" inside vs outside the United States may be a good step, but I wonder what others here think? - Hoplon 18:00, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Forking may be the the correct idea, although it leaves a tiny stub for "outside the USA". I think we need to have one overall definition for the lead, with maybe info about the US definition, then the use separated by countries. Luna for example if quoted accurately was very specific to the US, referencing political party association, demographics, etc. Arthurrh 19:08, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Term is spreading

Gun Culture, as a term, is starting to permiate pro-firearms forums and blogs.

As it has a life now beyond Mr. Ross's work, I suggest that having this seperate entry ( with its referal to Ross ) is appropriate.

'Separate' has two 'a's and only two 'e's. As for a separate entry, kbarrett: I think not. The less attention we draw to romanticising this twisted culture the better.

Regards, kbarrett.

PS. 'Permeate' has no 'i's. Use a spell checker and throw your peacemaker in the river.

^^^Attacking misspellings is the intellectual crutch of the mentally crippled; the ignorant who have no real argument in a debate. But as long as we're going that route...romanticizing is spelled with a "z"

Take it easy on him ... using an "s" there is correct for English as written in Britain ... which also explains his POV, as well as the spelling 'lames. -kbarrett —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.103.65.4 (talk) 21:17, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Added worldwide tags

This article is hopelessly America-centric, acting as if the situation in the US is the standard and other countries are deviations from this.--Nydas 08:24, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

This is the second understatement of the past three millennia. Except I would disagree that it's 'America-centric'. Like so many other things the US have appropriated the entire 'Americas' it would seem. Guatemalans are 'Americans'; so are Brazilians, people from the Argentines, Nicaraguans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Canadians, and more, and more and more. I think it's time to get the US to describe their citizens as something other than 'Americans' as if they own every country and people in the 'Americas'.
Getting Americans to stop calling themselves "Americans" is proably just a teeny-tiny bit beyond the scope of the wiki project. Besides, what would you suggest? United'ians? State'ians Of'ians? Come one. Let stay on topic (see WP:SOAP)64.102.254.33 18:33, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

In one sense yes, it could be seen as US driven, however in Australia we use the term Gun Culture to describe a pardigm of usually American popular culture that embraces guns or has an inordinate usage of gun imagery or props, which tend to romanticise or numb the audience into a positive view or an acceptance of guns. We refer to such things as Western, Cop, and War movies, television shows, and other pop culture. petedavo 12:24, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

'Paradigm' has two 'a's. Otherwise you're spot on matey. Glad someone out there is still sane about the issue. Good on ya!

[edit] Biased

Are there any examples of unbiased use of this term? All I've seen are examples where the term is used by people in favor of greater controls on firearms, saying things like "The Virgina Tech massacre was a result of America's gun culture", as though supporters of shooting sports or firearms rights support giving guns to the mentally ill. If someone said "Islam is a religion of violence" (accompanied by footage of Iranians mobbing the streets cheering the latest terrorist bombing) they would be labeled a hateful bigot, yet when the term "gun culture" is used to imply that anyone who supports firearms rights an accessory to mass murder, it's politically acceptable. scot 15:33, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

An example of a roughly opposite political view is Nanny state--note that it makes it abundantly clear in the article that the term is politically biased. scot 15:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
There are several examples of positive uses of this term. These uses predominately tend to be in books, but also in many magazines. Unintended Consequences by John Ross (author) is probably the best positive example. Since the publication of the first edition of this book, there has been considerably more "positive" use of the word in the US, at least, in newspapers and magazines and a fairly large number of novels. Shotgun News, a weekly publication that is available at Wal-Mart, among many other places, also has many articles in which "gun culture" is used in a positive sense in the Knox editorials and in the RWVA stuff by "Fred", especially. In the UK and in Australia, though, the media is infamously biased, using this term mostly in a biased, negative, sense, only, with but few uses in a positive sense or unbiased sense. Ditto for John Howard, and many other non-US politicians. US politicians, though, at least when they are running for office, seem to use the term in a non-biased sense, except for the relatively few far left-wing candidates. Admittedly, left-wing publications in the US tend to use the term with malice and bias. Personally, I don't see the term as uniformly biased, although it is often used this way. It is somewhat similar to the Assault Weapons Ban intentionally confusing semi-automatic and full-auto actions, though focusing on "evil" pictures of weapons that are actually full-auto. The Assault Weapons Ban banned no full-auto weapons; they were already controlled by the NFA from the 1930's. Ask a citizen on the street, though, and you will rarely get an accurate assessment of just what the Assault Weapons Ban actually banned; most think they banned machine-guns. (They didn't, of course.) "Gun Culture" is much the same; there are those who try to paint it as uniformly negative, and the "man on the street" likely identifies "gun culture" with negative thoughts, or, in extreme cases, with even banjo music (as in, "Paddle faster, I hear banjo music", which has even been printed on t-shirts, in reference to Deliverance along with other generally false stereotypes of southerners, especially. Personally, I think we ought to describe "gun culture" in a non-biased sense, as it is used both with positive and with negative meanings, depending on where one looks. There is precedent for this. Once, "ham" radio operators were considered to be uniformly poor operators, "ham" meaning poor, as in ham-fisted when sending Morse Code; of course, this changed over time, and today "ham" radio is not considered pejorative. There just needs to be enough positive support to make "gun culture" lose its pejorative sense, too. It is already used both positively and negatively, depending on where one looks. 06:13, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rural?

Gun Culture members are most often from rural areas? Is there any actual source to back this up, and even if there is, is it worth mentioning? Mwv2 16:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

The sourcing for this is the Robert Spitzer book. SaltyBoatr 21:29, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gun Nut?

Why is there a section called "Gun Nut" in this article? I don't see how this term relates to gun culture. 71.139.0.198 16:37, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Because it is a term widely used to describe people involved in the Gun Culture, just as it says in that section's first sentence. --BillyTFried 18:49, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] gun myths in America

errrrmm I'm not sure I entirely agree with the claims about gun culture being inherent to America. There's certainly conflicting evidence on the matter, but there has been research to show that guns were expensive and had to be imported from Europe for years since the U.S. had no domestic manufacturing (although the government tried very hard to subsidise private gun mftr, smiths and their apprentices certainly couldn't make enough weapons to arm an entire country). Although, even if this is untrue and a lot of average households did have guns, the question still remains about the frequency of their use and their condition — if people didn't actually use their guns or maintain them it hardly counts towards gun culture, does it? I'm really skeptical about things like boys shooting/receiving guns as a rite of passage... especially when you consider how ineffective and untrained/poorly trained militias actually were and the debates over having a citizen militia vs a proper state army.

Just a suggestion! I don't think it should be rewritten entirely but I think it might be a good idea to present the fact that there's conflicting evidence about gun culture so that at least readers can have a basis for further research into either argument.

Aside from that, we definitely need a bit more "world view" to this article!

Michael Bellesiles' debunked work aside (see his wiki entry), it's pretty well agreed that gun ownership and use in the early American colonies and United States was fairly high -- the law in every colony required gun ownership by landowners, after all, and Jefferson advised it over football. Pre-1800s firearms weren't particularly accurate or reliable, but they were also very, very simple : many parts of ordinary farming equipment was of comparable difficulty to form, and the colonies had few issues obtaining either. There were some folk poorly trained in the use of firearms, but such things were rare enough that Washington himself felt it worthy to point out the few cases of poor skill and preparation.
For more information, there are lots of viable sources, but Cramer's debunking of Bellesiles' work is a pretty good place to start. 69.61.196.180 23:41, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm struggling with the world-view part. Does anyone have good sources for gun culture in countries outside the USA? Arthurrh 17:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Present-day gun culture

The "Present-day gun culture" section claims to be based on Erik Luna's work, but is very misrepresentative of what he says. I'm probably going to take a crack at re-working it in the near future, unless someone else gets there first. If you think what's there is accurate, now is a good time to start helping rework this. Arthurrh 21:04, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Media shaped perception

We need to flesh-out the sources re the modern interpretation of old west history. The two main sources in the article now, Spitzer and Luna, conflict on this point. I don't think it belongs in the photo caption at all. Arthurrh 21:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Are Spitzer and Luna are even in conflict? They both agree that firearms were important on the nineteenth-century frontier, but Spitzer clarifies that actual violence in populated places on the frontier has been exaggerated by books and movies. - Hoplon 23:52, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Luna mentions those who minimize the gun influence in the historical west as "historical revisionists". Arthurrh 00:47, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Undue weight on the nut

Does anyone else think we're giving undue weight to the gun nut refs? There are 9 sources for the pejorative use, 4 from the same publication, 2 from the same author, which essentially proves that the particular publication uses the term frequently, but not much else. Shouldn't we pare it down to a couple of representative examples? Arthurrh 00:52, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

You can if you want. That was just the result of a little war I went through for the term's existence on Wikipedia. It originally had it's own article but was deleted by other editors, then I put it here and it was also deleted a couple times, and in the end it manage to stick around. --BillyTFried 03:07, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I trimmed it down a bit. Hopefully no one will think it should go just because there's fewer refs. Have you thought about putting it in wikitionary? It might be a better fit. Arthurrh 03:56, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Understatement of Anti-Gun culture

I think, being a member of the Anti-gun culture, we are being severely underrepresented. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.205.166.177 (talk) 01:17, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] UK/Aus usage

The usage I (British) am most familiar with, that of "gun culture" being a wholly negative term associated with inner-city gang violence and the like, is skimmed over in one sentence in the lead. This is unsatisfactory to say the least: it should either be the subject of a proper section here, or of a separate article called something like Criminal gun culture. 86.143.48.55 (talk) 18:35, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Good point. I support and encourage you to work to globalize this article. If a separate article is needed, I think Gun Culture (United States) would make more sense, in that Wikipedia articles are to be oriented towards a global perspective. By the way, I think that the US also has a concept of an inner city gang gun culture, in any case a good source on the US versus British gun culture(s) might be chapter 4 of the Peter Squires book _Gun Culture Or Gun Control?: Firearms, Violence and Society_ [4]. SaltyBoatr (talk) 19:52, 24 January 2008 (UTC)