Americans and their gun culture: attached at the hip (Spectator.co.uk reviews "Gun Baby Gun")

[Electric Monk]

[font size=+1]Americans have an almost mystical belief that guns are synonymous with freedom, says Michael Moorcock, reviewing Gun Baby Gun. Every time there’s a call for stricter arms control, the sales of guns rocket.[/font]

Gun Baby Gun: A Bloody Journey into the World of the Gun Iain Overton
Canongate, pp.358, £18.99, ISBN: 9781782113423
http://www.amazon.com/Gun-Baby-Bloody-Journey-World-ebook/dp/B00O45B8OO

Like the documentary journalist Iain Overton, author of this book, I was taught to shoot and maintain a gun as a boy. As an adult I joined a campaign to monitor, curb and limit the arms trade. I taught my children good gun protocols and how to shoot. There is an undeniable pleasure in shooting.

When I moved to Texas I immediately bought a black powder Navy Colt with which to practise the cowboy spins, rolls and shifts I had learned as a boy. The thing Bible-belt Baptists, Bedouin tribesmen, Brazilian drug-barons and Boer farmers have in common is a love of guns. Guns are in our DNA. Yet statistics prove that, wherever they proliferate, murder and suicide rise and children are killed. The mantra of the NRA (National Rifle Association) of ‘guns don’t kill people; people kill people’ sounds convincing until it’s changed to ‘guns don’t kill children; children kill children’. The statistics are overwhelming.

Unlike Michael Moore, who in Bowling for Columbine fudged his statistics and loaded his arguments so much that he weakened his own case, Overton has checked his facts and his statistics thoroughly and wherever possible interviewed all concerned, whether in the Americas, Africa, Europe, Australia or Asia. As a result his book is chilling.

(snip)

Overton presents a compelling argument for gun control as he follows the money back to the makers, dealers and men of violence profiting from what is essentially an addiction. Men respond as fiercely as speed freaks to any threat to take away their porn, cars or guns. You don’t have to be a committed Freudian to work that one out. And the ‘liberties’ most Americans seem to be defending have very little to do with the right to vote or equality under the law.

much more
http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/9505462/americans-and-their-gun-culture-attached-at-the-hip/

Sounds like an interesting read.