Wednesday, September 2, 2015

The New Trend in State Symbols: Guns

State seals, flags, flowers and songs are well-known, but did you know that there are 6 states with state guns?

Since 2011, six states have adopted state firearms to represent them. The first state gun effort was in Utah, naming the Browning M911 semiautomatic pistol the official firearm. That firearm was created by John Moses Browning, a son of Utah pioneers. Arizona, famous (infamous) in 2011 for the state where 6 people died and Gabrielle Giffords was seriously wounded, adopted the Colt Single Action Army Revolver the same year as the shooting.

Four other states have adopted 'state' guns since then.

What's wrong here, people?

Read the article on AtlasObscura on State Guns, here.


4 comments:

Priscilla said...

This is insane. How many more innocents have to die before we regain our humanity?

Anonymous said...

There is nothing wrong here. Read the Second Amendment.

Nancy in the Chickasaw Nation said...

Priscilla, Should we assume you would like all guns to be illegal and assume that all guns are evil regardless of circumstances? I wonder where you live and how you have become a "gun bigot". Certainly, there are bad people who use guns for evil purposes. The same is true of knives. [Note: In the U.K. many a person is maimed/killed with a blade. A woman was beheaded less than an hour from me. Want to outlaw knives?]

Did the author of the blog or Priscilla bother to read and digest the referenced news item? Do either of you understand the historical significance of the gun/rife and the state which named it a symbol? Do you realize that good also comes from the gun/rifle? Maybe you live in a megalopolis and have never lived in an area where one has a responsibility to protect oneself. Take a young mother with an infant whose husband had recently died. She called 911 because a person was breaking into her house. She asked the 911 operator if she could legally shoot the man. The operator did not advise her yes or no. She just said, do what you have to do. The man was threatening her. As sh burst through her door, she shot and killed him. Priscilla, who is the innocent? I guess you call a mother protecting herself and her baby evil and the man entering her house to do them harm is the innocent? when you live in a rural area, help is not going to arrive in time.

The "out with guns" group see only the negative. I wish we had a statistic which provided us with the information to know how many "innocents" are alive today because a person had a gun and used it for good - not evil. For instance, I mentioned the beheading in Norman, OK. The man was in the process of beheading a second woman when the boss entered and shot the evil doer (or maybe Priscilla thinks the beheader was the innocent). The man recovered and will either stand trial for murder or live in a mental facility.

Please, let us stop to think before making guns evil. It is a tool - like a knife, like fists, like a bat, etc. Evil people do evil things and use tools to do the dirty deeds. The gun is an inanimate object. Killings don't stop because guns are made illegal. Criminals will have guns. The ignoring of this fact, Priscilla, means innocents die while criminals and/or mad men are able to spread their evil.

Icewineanne said...

Unfortunately it is America's love of guns that lead to so many preventable tragedies.