Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Guns are not a part of the culture of my homeland, except perhaps for the occasional Bollywood movie in which the bad guy meets his demise staring down the wrong end of a barrel.
My childhood in India was steeped in ahimsa, the tenet of nonviolence toward all living things.
The Indians may have succeeded in ousting the British, but we won with Gandhian-style civil disobedience, not a revolutionary war.
I grew up not knowing a single gun owner, and even today India has one of the strictest gun laws on the planet. Few Indians buy and keep firearms at home, and gun violence is nowhere near the problem it is in the United States. An American is 12 times more likely than an Indian to be killed by a firearm, according to a recent study.
It's no wonder then that every time I visit India, my friends and family want to know more about America's "love affair" with guns.
I get the same questions when I visit my brother in Canada or on my business travels to other countries, where many people remain perplexed, maybe even downright mystified, by Americans' defense of gun rights.
I admit I do not fully understand it myself, despite having become an American citizen nearly a decade ago. So when I learn the National Rifle Association is holding its annual convention here in Atlanta, right next to the CNN Center, I decide to go and find out more.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/28/world/indian-immigrant-nra-convention/index.html
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:25PM (1 child)
I begin with this question: "Why do you want to own an object that can kill another human being?""
... and she wonders why they don't like her? It's like walking up to Indian people and ask why they like throwing acid in the face of women.
Exactly this. This isn't reporting, or even genuine curiosity. It begs the question, and is clearly a hit-piece.
It would be equally disingenuous to ask a car driver "why do you want to operate a device which one of thousands of things which goes wrong could hurtle you to a flaming death at 60 mph?" Or indeed, I could ask any chef, "why do you want to own an object that can kill another human being" (you did know knives can kill people too, right)?
As for a more genuine-curiosity question, why is this article even on SoylentNews? I'm not going to go into the /. level "it's not technology," but really... what's the deal with this one? NRA conventions happen all the time. People talk about guns all the time. There are different efforts to restrict, and occasionally expand, gun rights in the US. So why is this CNN article news, or indeed interesting, in any way? Is there an angle I missed?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:08PM
Is here because runaway, like buzzard, thought it was an example of an "open minded" liberal that he could use to shame all the fascists liberals who don't give them any respect.
Neither of them are very bright.