Huffy Flounce

Dalty wrote:I genuinely struggle to understand how anyone can reasonably think that somewhere in the depths of the White House / Pentagon / Capitol there was a meeting and somebody in power told somebody else in power to go and get some cops to shoot a couple of black guys so that can start the ball rolling on this gun-snatch plan.

Seriously?

I emphasized the key word in your question which also serves as the answer to it.

Smart!

Alabama, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Cold War politics was mentioned in Make-Fun-Of-Dalty-While-He's-Here Thread, and I see this ammunition and firearm stockpiling push among rural folk as a microcosmic expression of something pretty similar.

I doubt very seriously that any monolithic organization is orchestrating things in a mustache-twirling, Palpatinian way. Even so, it's clear some are profiting from the stockpiling and encouraging the stockpilers. Gun sellers profit from it. Organizations that support it and the corner of the government that promotes it benefit from it. To what degree the encouragement is borne of a desire to drive profits and to what degree the encouragement is borne of some genuine desire to see an armed populace is unclear to me.

When I interviewed for JET back in 2010, one of the questions asked was how would I explain to Japanese kids why America has so many guns.

"You see, kids, there was a time when we needed all the citizens (i.e., white people) to have guns to keep the blacks and Injuns in line. The whole thing just sort of escalated from there."