Welcome to Saturday Morning Cartoons, a segment where four artists take turns delighting you with their whimsy, facts and punchlines on Saturday mornings! Our esteemed cartoon critters are Cameron Glavin, Anna Bongiovanni, Megan Prazenica and Yao Xiao. Today’s cartoon is by Cameron!
I grew up in a family that is extremely anti-gun, but now someone very close to me is extremely pro-gun and I am so glad he has not brought his gun “rights” up
in that particular context. Thank you for making me aware that people are arguing that. (Also: how the heck can they take that position???)
feeling this too hard
Wow. Someone’s right to empty a clip in someone.
And this is what I hate about the right to bear arms. It is an unfortunate experiment that is uniquely USA.
Combine the right to bear arms and racism, and this is the awful outcome that continues to happen.
Sympathy and support to Michael Brown’s family, and POC in the US.
Seriously? We lost a life to gun violence, and people are talking about their right to “empty a clip”? Gross.
Regardless of whether or not someone is pro-gun, they could at least show some compassion toward other human beings…
I like to start with “Thou shalt not kill” – not sure how this gets lost on so many “god-fearing,” gun toting people, but I think it has something to do with hateful conservative talk radio. I just had a small victory talking my childhood piano teacher into understanding why black folks can’t just “pull themselves up” like her grandparents did after the Depression, and how black people rioting in the streets is qualitatively different from white people rioting. As easy as it can be to dismiss these people who are being so hateful, I think for those of us whose immediate emotional health and safety it doesn’t threaten too much, we must try to engage!
Are these fundamentally opposing values in the larger context? To be say, pro-gun and anti-racist?
I struggle with this because I try to be a good ally, but I was also raised in the (very white) Libertarian-ish backwoods where most of our meat came courtesy of a gun (or a bow, or a fishing pole), and I always took some pride in that; the industrial meat industry is so cruel and in my family we didn’t take the shot unless we were sure the deer was going down. My step-dad always made sure to point it out to us when we were having a meal that didn’t rely on any foodstuffs from the store; he took particular pride in that.
So for me, I always made a distinction between the guns-for-food people and the guns-for-protection people. And long-barrel firearms vs. handguns. I know the reality is that most pro- and anti-gun people treat them as if they’re all one and the same – including in my family – but the former are resourceful, in my eyes, while the latter are fearful and paranoid.
Or am I just delusional? What do others think?
You forgot or are blissfully unaware of one group of people: the gun nuts.
The people who’s greatest joy in life is owning powerful guns and shooting them.
Not the hobbyist, or the competition shooters but the people tripping on the power of their weapons.
Sure they’ll mention 2nd amendment or protecting ones’ self but it has nothing to do with any of that. It’s about power.
I’m a Louisiana girl and honey I’ve met all the kinds of gun people ( been taken gun shows as kid) and some of em that are all of em rolled into one or little bit of everything. The gun nuts are the kind of people that make pro-gun and anti-racist opposing values because they are scared are trying to hold on to power.
The whole equality means taking things away from one group and just handing those thing to the other group thought process. And if the most you got is that you’re white man with powerful guns. You’re going to cling to the status quo and your guns as hard as your can.
I’m not very eloquent but do ya get what I’m saying basically?
(And now I’m craving duck legs)
No, I had a similar upbringing. Which makes me feel a little weird about some/most of my liberal friends. Because my liberal friends are so anti-gun. And I can’t support that, beyond my nostalgia and appreciation of nature and life that hunting gave me (even though I no longer hunt personally). Because hunting is literally the only thing holding the deer population even slightly in check where I grew up. Mind you, the deer are still a walking ecological disaster, but also, deer are fucking menaces. It’s shocking the number of injuries and deaths from car accidents with deer. (Plus like, the disease potential for when the deer get overpopulated is frightening.)
At the same time, I agree the that “guns for protection” folk tend to be different than the “guns for hunting” folk. Not always. I know a shit ton of hunters who aggressively oppose gun regulation. (I do know more hunters that don’t oppose handgun regulation, because that’s a much easier weapon to conceal and use to harm humans, unlike shotguns and the like). Of course, most of the hunters I know fall somewhere on the conservative spectrum and range from “sort-of-racist-but-mostly-ignorant” to “holy shit if you were in the south you’d actually be a member of the KKK”.
So while I don’t think that being pro-gun and anti-racist are inherently opposing values, I think because the people supporting each issue are gonna make you choose. And if I have to chose, I’m doing my best to choose the anti-racist side, because goddamnit, young peoples’ lives are worth far more than someone’s hunting nostalgia, and some ecological diversity and crops.
I’ve had the same experience. My dad always hunted when I was younger, and we even grabbed roadkill if it was in good shape (aka not rotten or smushed to bits). I think that distinction between guns-for-food and guns-for-people is key. I feel that people who are pro-guns-for-food are not necessarily the same as people who are pro-guns-for-people (although the two can obviously overlap). I was raised in a pro-gun household, but would never have viewed a gun as something I could actually use on another person. I think this is definitely talking more about pro-guns-for-people.
That paragraph felt like it was all over the place. But yeah, I don’t think those values are fundamentally opposed as long as that distinction is in place.
Being neither a US citizen nor ever having had the experience of living or visiting the US,I’m reluctant to comment about this article.
I do feel, though, that all of the neo conservativeism of the last 25 years has really made a negative contribution to the way that people view and interact with their fellow human beings.
There seems to be real encouragement from society to see the other, whoever that is, as a potential enemy, rapacious competitor or just as someone who you have to be better than. This does no one or any society any good. Something really has to change.
Sorry, I’ve descended into a ramble now. I don’t have any answers just a deep feeling that co operation is more desirable than competition and somehow we all need to re- think the direction and structures of the way that the western world works.
Any others, with ideas?
Well that’s fucking terrifying