Saturday, October 31, 2009
Gun fun
Came across a blogging lady (address on application) yesterday who seems to be very into guns. A couple of quotes: "I carry this as my duty weapon as director of security for a private school". "I am getting ready to enter a police academy and need advice on which handgun to purchase". In between the two there is a lot of stuff about things called Taurus guns (http://www.taurususa.com/. Glossy looking site). While it is not clear whether the two quotes come from the same person, it is clear that there are people out there who really love guns. Who sound as if they keep their guns in beautiful mahogany boxes with dark blue velvet lining. I met a chap once from Hertford, Connecticut who was very into fancy shotguns. He might have been into boxes. But I have not yet met a hand tool using craftsman who drooled over his tools. In my limited experience, craftsmen like to have decent tools, but they do not sit up at night over them. The one possible exception was a car mechanic who was hooked on Snap-on (http://www.snapon.com/) hand tools, to the extent of having a special wheeled cupboard to keep them in. So the question is, do we really approve of people who drool over guns? Do we care?
Now if one was a soldier, it would seem reasonable enough. You are probably going to want the best gear you can get your hands on. You may well spend quality time talking about it. Cleaning it. Taking it to pieces and putting it back together again. Tenth century soldiers of wealth used to spend a great deal on their swords. Amongst other things they liked to work a lot of gold into the pommel. Pounds of the stuff it seems, the idea being to provide some balance to the weight of the blade. Plus, incidentally, to show off. They must have been very hot on wrist exercises for this to be a good thing in battle, which sometimes went on all day. But I am not sure that I want civilians getting similarly enthused.
That said, when I was a child, say around the age of 13, a gang of us were very keen on penknives, used for various scout-like purposes on our roams around the neighbouring lands and woods. And the quality of one's penknife did affect one's status. Something which must have stuck, as in my closing years in the world of work I used a rather splendid penknife from Laguiole (http://www.layole.com/, cunningly the first hit if you ask Mr G. about French pen knives) as the bread knife with which to prepare my lunch. I believe I could have been done for an offensive weapon if caught with it blade out in the wrong circumstances, the blade being a little longer than the magic 3 inches or something; fortunately this was never put to the test. I was always very discrete when using it outside. I dare say that if guns had been available all those years ago, we might well have enthused about them too. Fortunately they were not, and now, as an adult, not very interested any more.
A few days ago the DT announced that policemen are going to patrol dodgy areas, presumably in London, carrying machine guns. Glock & Wesson or something. Not at all sure about this. Given their rather dodgy record of blasting off at the wrong person and blasting off inappropriately at the right person, do we really want them waving machine guns about? Does this really deter bad people any more than wearing protective clothing and carrying a more modest handgun? Or even a serious baton?
And then today it announces that a scientific advisor to HMG who had the temerity to suggest in public that maybe fags and booze do more damage than cannabis and ecstasy and that maybe we need to rethink things a bit in this area. Bearing in mind that lots of otherwise decent people are very keen on one or more of the substances mentioned. Now while if both A and B are bad with A more bad than B, and A is legal and B is not, it does not follow that one should make B legal. But, if A and B are related activities, it does suggest something of a muddle. Maybe that the law is a bit of an ass. Now while it is true that the various parts of HMG do need to stick to the party line or the whole will become incoherent, and so this scientific advisor maybe stepped out of line, I do have a lot of time for his suggestion. Our present arrangements in this whole area are indeed a incoherent muddle.
Lastly a factlet about incest from the same source at that about pommels. It seems that the small gene pool available to inbred groups is not the only problem. It seems also that middle size groups - say in the clans of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia - which allow inbreeding fairly rapidly break up into small size groups, this threatening the integrity of the sensible sized, viable, middle sized group. The solution is exogamy, so that the men of one group have to import women from another group as mates. That this addresses the gene pool issue is clear enough. Presumably the idea on the second point is that by importing a mate one is not making a special tie to another member of one's own group, or making a special enemy of another spurned, member of one's own group. Outsider mates, if that is the rule, bother no-one.
# posted by Jim @ 10:36 AM 
