The last full, nonairport day I was in the states was a sunday. While looking through the ads, one caught my eye. It was from Bass Pro Shops and strangely enough there wasn’t any tackle or boats being advertised. Nope they were gearing up for the fall deer season and the things that were most prominently advertised were guns. I had never seen so many in an ad before, I had seen the occasional shotgun or .22 advertised, but never a handgun or larger caliber rifles. They had everything from the bolt action .22 up to 30-06 rifles and handguns ranging from .22 to the .357 and .44 magnums in addition to all sorts of 12 and 10 gauge shotguns and ammo. The entire thing was about 8 pages.
Like I said, I was a bit surprised, but not shocked. The first thing I thought of was my European housemates. I have yet to meet a European that can appreciate, let alone not get freaked out by Americans and their love of guns. To be fair, a lot of Americans don’t like it either but I have come around a bit on hunting. When I was growing up, I always associated hunters with the redneck crowd. Let’s face it, that’s probably mostly true, but what they do is more important than what they are. The Spanish women last night were predictably appalled by guns and the hunting culture until I pointed out that we still have quite a bit of wildlife in the States. I get the impression that that is not the case in most of Europe. Not only do we have a lot of deer in particular, but we don’t really have any predators to keep the population under control. Deer in rural areas would simply starve in the winter if left to their own devices. Deer in more populated areas have the same problem, but they also cause problems when they interact with people. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if all they did was eat the lawns and shrubs, but when they “interact” with cars, they are deadly. I think that a couple of women last night actually understood why hunters (and their guns) are needed in the US. That doesn’t explain the handguns in the ad of course, but they didn’t notice that and I didn’t bring it up:-)
One reply on “Fun with Europeans”
You can tell them that the bearing of arms is a holdover from the colonial days, when taking up arms was the only way to rebel against the tyranny of King George III and the (at the time) most powerful armed forces on Earth.
Then you can remind them that George Bush is still President for another year and a half, and we can’t give up the few assets we have.
I am sure they will understand.