British consrvatives: not like American conservatives

[Howie Felterbush]

Cultured guns, yes. Gun fetish, not so much.

Rolfe.

Totally fetishized.

Look at some of the engraving on an H&H safari rifle. All of it completely useless, as far as operation of the gun is concerned. It would shoot the same with a simple walnut stock and blued receiver/barrels, but they take the time to beautifully engrave every square inch of metal with gorgeous scenes of charging elephants and defiant Cape Buffalo. Hell, they will sculpt the opening lever on your custom rifle to resemble an elephant's head if you like.

Purdey will supply you with a color case hardened shotgun if you want, even though using bone and charcoal to case harden steel is technology from two centuries ago. It's beautiful, but it doesn't do a damn thing for how the gun shoots.

What does fetishization mean to you?

 

[bit_pattern]

On balance, they tend to accept climate science as a reality too.

 

[Skepticemea]

Totally fetishized.

Look at some of the engraving on an H&H safari rifle. All of it completely useless, as far as operation of the gun is concerned. It would shoot the same with a simple walnut stock and blued receiver/barrels, but they take the time to beautifully engrave every square inch of metal with gorgeous scenes of charging elephants and defiant Cape Buffalo. Hell, they will sculpt the opening lever on your custom rifle to resemble an elephant's head if you like.

Purdey will supply you with a color case hardened shotgun if you want, even though using bone and charcoal to case harden steel is technology from two centuries ago. It's beautiful, but it doesn't do a damn thing for how the gun shoots.

What does fetishization mean to you?

Yes, and that would cost a horrendous amount of money.

Not to put words in Rolfe's mouth, but I believe the fetishisation of guns is more in the US "appreciation" of them as a right. The above description of the engraving and manufacturing of hunting and fowling pieces sounds like high quality craftsmenship. Owning a Tec9, Armsel Striker or AK47 is not about craftsmenship.

 

[Howie Felterbush]

Yes, and that would cost a horrendous amount of money.

Not to put words in Rolfe's mouth, but I believe the fetishisation of guns is more in the US "appreciation" of them as a right. The above description of the engraving and manufacturing of hunting and fowling pieces sounds like high quality craftsmenship. Owning a Tec9, Armsel Striker or AK47 is not about craftsmenship.

You're right about the craftsmanship thing. They truly are things of beauty, especially when compared to a utilitarian gun like the AK47 (we'll leave Saddam's gold plated AK's out of this, he was a 'special' case). But that beauty is there for only one reason, to show the other guys you shoot with just how rich you are. It doesn't help you kill more grouse or face down a charging elephant. Wouldn't you call this a type of fetishism? Wouldn't it make more sense to just have a plain Jane rifle or shotgun, especially when you consider the hard knock life a sporting gun lives?

Just to be clear, I don't think this is a bad thing. If I had the bread, I'd have an entire room in my house devoted to English guns.

 

[Rolfe]

Skepticemea partly explains what I meant. Indeed these items were high class craftsmanship and often intricately decorated. In this they are not dissimilar to musical instruments, which were often ornately inlaid and decorated in ways that didn't help them play any better. They were desirable status symbols.

That's not the sort of culture I was referring to. I was referring to the culture of "packing heat", and all the glorification of US citizens going around armed to the teeth and having arsenals in their homes far beyond anything that might be reasonably utilised in hunting.

There are people like that in Britain, but not very many, and they are generally regarded as dangerous lunatics.

Rolfe.

 

[Skepticemea]

You're right about the craftsmanship thing. They truly are things of beauty, especially when compared to a utilitarian gun like the AK47 (we'll leave Saddam's gold plated AK's out of this, he was a 'special' case). But that beauty is there for only one reason, to show the other guys you shoot with just how rich you are. It doesn't help you kill more grouse or face down a charging elephant. Wouldn't you call this a type of fetishism? Wouldn't it make more sense to just have a plain Jane rifle or shotgun, especially when you consider the hard knock life a sporting gun lives?

Just to be clear, I don't think this is a bad thing. If I had the bread, I'd have an entire room in my house devoted to English guns.

They're wonderful pieces to look at, not sure how most of them would fire. A few of the armourers in the UK are hundreds of years old and many of them have manufactured family pieces which were separate from the utilitarian (if extremely well-made) pieces. Naval officers, for example, in the late 18th century, had a pair of "dueling" pistols, but also one/two for boarding enemy vessels with. The duelling pair would be well made yet attractive, the boarding pair would be heavily built and functional. Neither would approach the look of a display pair made for the family home.

Some of the firearms made for Indians nabobs and maharajas were functionally idiotic. But they looked prawper bling, innit?

 

[Debaser]

Very few on any side care about gun rights in Britain. We have what the US would regard as ultra-draconian gun restrictions, and every change in the law over the last 30 years has only restricted it more. Something like 90% of the population are perfectly fine with that. Britain has never had much of a gun culture in any case hasn't had a mass gun owning culture since somewhere between the wars - my whole life I have never known a single person who owned a gun.

I think the above description is a bit more accurate.

We did, once upon a time, have some sort of right to bear arms, but we dropped it a long time ago (possibly the result of having civilian armies fighting bloody wars?)

 

[Mojo]

That's not the sort of culture I was referring to. I was referring to the culture of "packing heat", and all the glorification of US citizens going around armed to the teeth and having arsenals in their homes far beyond anything that might be reasonably utilised in hunting.

There are people like that in Britain, but not very many, and they are generally regarded as dangerous lunatics.

Well, it's in the Constitution, isn't it? "Dangerous lunatics going around armed to the teeth, being necessary to the security of a free State..."

 

[Rolfe]

We did, once upon a time, have some sort of right to bear arms, but we dropped it a long time ago (possibly the result of having civilian armies fighting bloody wars?)

I was reading a Victorian children's story, in which a schoolboy of about 12 had reason to require a rifle (long story, time travel and parallel universes involved as far as I recall). He managed to get enough money and just went into the gun dealer his father patronised. Although he didn't have quite enough for the weapon he wanted, the dealer cut him a deal on a second-hand model. I can't even remember whether the kid gave the dealer his real name.

Then he walked off with the gun.



Rolfe.

 

[zooterkin]

Britain hasn't had a mass gun owning culture since somewhere between the wars
I think the above description is a bit more accurate.

Evidence?

Pistol ownership was already regulated by the 1903 Pistol Act, and there were Firearms Acts in 1920 and 1933 which further restricted ownership. I couldn't quickly find figures on what ownership levels actually were at that time; there would have been an increase in the availability of weapons following the Great War, but I don't think that automatically translates to a "mass gun owning culture".

 

[Debaser]

Evidence?

Well there's the apocryphal tales of officers ordering guns from Harrods? or somesuch during WW1 and having them shipped to the front, which suggests a certain level of availability.

Also Orwell's quote about "That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." suggests a larger pool of gun owners than we usually assume.

 

[zooterkin]

Well there's the apocryphal tales of officers ordering guns from Harrods? or somesuch during WW1 and having them shipped to the front, which suggests a certain level of availability.

I don't dispute that it was a lot easier to obtain guns between the wars (though neither of your quotes is from that time). It's still a big leap from that to the "mass gun owning culture" which you were claiming.

As for this:

Also Orwell's quote about "That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." suggests a larger pool of gun owners than we usually assume.

this seems to be a good example of quote mining (not on your part, I suspect). According to this article, the quote is from WWII, in an article about the Home Guard and how Britain was clearly not a totalitarian state at the time, and in context does not support the conclusion you drew:

'Even as it stands the Home Guard could only exist in a country where men feel themselves free. The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do, they cannot give the factory worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.'

"That rifle hanging on the wall" is the rifle handed to a member of the Home Guard, not a commonplace item in interbellum Britain.

 

[Rolfe]

Pistol ownership was already regulated by the 1903 Pistol Act, and there were Firearms Acts in 1920 and 1933 which further restricted ownership. I couldn't quickly find figures on what ownership levels actually were at that time; there would have been an increase in the availability of weapons following the Great War, but I don't think that automatically translates to a "mass gun owning culture".

I don't think there was ever a "culture" of gun ownership in the way the Americans glory in "packing heat". Gun ownership was more widespread in the past, but it wasn't that sort of a phenomenon ever, as far as I know.

Rolfe.

 

[Eddie Dane]

I was reading a Victorian children's story, in which a schoolboy of about 12 had reason to require a rifle (long story, time travel and parallel universes involved as far as I recall). He managed to get enough money and just went into the gun dealer his father patronised. Although he didn't have quite enough for the weapon he wanted, the dealer cut him a deal on a second-hand model. I can't even remember whether the kid gave the dealer his real name.

Then he walked off with the gun.



Rolfe.

There's a great scene in the television series Reilly, about master spy Sidney Reilly (see my avatar).

Reilly spends a night with a lady of negotiable affections. In the morning he asks her how she would like to be reimbursed.
She says 'Well, you could buy me a gun, it might come in handy in my line of work'.
And off to the classic, wood-panelled gun shop they go.

It's set in 1910 or so.

 

[Rolfe]

Really, the fact is that if there had been anything like the US gun culture here 100 years ago, it would have been impossible to have reduced the number of firearms and made gun ownership the exception rather than the rule. And yet that's what happened.

Rolfe.

 

[Oliver]

And everyone is above average too.

Not really. In contrast to the British, the US has two major center-right parties, namely the Democrats and the newer Republican Party. The really funny thing about those two parties and their blind or dumb followers is that they see their opponents as either far left - or right, while in reality there is no such far left or right. It's center right. Read my lips so you "far right Nazi Fascists" and - "radical social-liberal NPR Leninists" understand:

Center.
Right.
Both.

 

[3point14]

You're right about the craftsmanship thing. They truly are things of beauty, especially when compared to a utilitarian gun like the AK47 (we'll leave Saddam's gold plated AK's out of this, he was a 'special' case). But that beauty is there for only one reason, to show the other guys you shoot with just how rich you are. It doesn't help you kill more grouse or face down a charging elephant. Wouldn't you call this a type of fetishism? Wouldn't it make more sense to just have a plain Jane rifle or shotgun, especially when you consider the hard knock life a sporting gun lives?

Just to be clear, I don't think this is a bad thing. If I had the bread, I'd have an entire room in my house devoted to English guns.

The bolded part is the fetishism.

 

[dafydd]

I'd be a lesbian if I had passed the physical.

I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Well there's the apocryphal tales of officers ordering guns from Harrods? or somesuch during WW1 and having them shipped to the front, which suggests a certain level of availability.

You are aware that Harrods is not terribly representative, right? And as it still has a gun shop (or did as recently as 2008 anyway, it may no longer be there), the fact it had one in the past does not suggest any greater availability then than now.

Or should I read into the fact that they have a bottle of 1982 Petrus on offer for £8,995 that this indicates a mass culture of drinking wine at that price?

 

[sam81292]

Simples, the right wing of the Republican Party is basically our BNP.