Reading the Juneau Empire’s (2/13/13) front page article ‘Veterans for Peace continues battle against gun range’ reminded me of the depth at which the way we use our language identifies developing trends in the underlying directions in which our national culture is evolving.
The VFP is appealing for more community scrutiny and public dialogue before the approval of a gun range that provides access to the use of machine guns, assault rifles and other rapid-fire weapons of war as an available form of public recreation. There is some community disagreement as to whether this is a good idea.
Note that the article frames the appeal as a battle and the group’s appeal as a fight against the proposed gun range. The words battle and fight are being used metaphorically here. The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.
We all regularly use metaphor to frame and clarify what we talk about. We do this more or less automatically largely out of our own awareness. The concept of argument provides one good example of this. In our everyday thinking argument is conceptualized as war. To that end we readily get such statements as:
Your claims are indefensible.
He attacked every weak point in my argument.
His criticisms were right on target.
I demolished his point of view.
You disagree? Okay, shoot!
So he shot down all my arguments.
I’ve never won an argument with him.
And we don’t just talk about argument in terms of war. We can actually win or lose arguments. We attack other positions and we defend our own.
My concern about approval of such a gun range centers on such questions as:
• Do we want access to automatic weapons designed for combat to be part of our Juneau community culture?
• Do we promote the firing of such weapons as a valid form of recreational entertainment?
• Do we want to see Juneau marketed in cruise ship ads as a place “where you can actually experience what it feels like to shoot a machine gun!”?
• Does such access move us a few steps closer to a “culture of violence”?
• Do we want to rear our children in a community where such access “is just part of things.”?
I believe that gun ranges that provide public access to weapons of war for recreational purposes contribute to an insidious militarization of our national culture at a time when it would behoove us to move in the direction of demilitarization.
To that end I favor of VFP’s appeal for more extensive public dialogue on this issue.
(I’m reluctant to suggest public ‘discussion’ because that word has the same Indo-European root as concussion and percussion. Enough of that!)
• Dillon is a Juneau resident.
Comments (16)
Add commentDon't worry, Bill
It's pretty clear that the range is being built to cater to the tourists. It will likely be so prohibitively expensive that no Juneau kids will be using it.
As I read this, there seemed to be a
vague implication that Mr. Dillon was just a concerned member at large of the Juneau community. So, I looked to see what else he had submitted. Not so surprising, this was at the bottom of a post from Dec 20th 2012; "Dillon of Juneau is a retired educator, psychotherapist, veteran and Juneau Veterans for Peace member." Wow, he supports an action that a group he is a member of, is dragging out. Incredible.
so?
So he supports the action of a group he is part of...so what. The point he is making is about turning us all in to a culture that promotes and thinks that violence is the common correct way to do things. It does not matter what organization he belongs to, that just muddles the issue.
Mr Dillon
1. very articulate;
2. if people think an indoor gun range that provides the opportunity to level an assault weapon on a target is going to breed killers, they have no idea what our armed services do. Get real.
You are correct,
in that the organization has been muddling the issue. My point was that this was an apparent attempt, to make it look like the VFP appeal has widespread support among non-members. That is one form of propaganda.
War has been around pretty
War has been around pretty much as long as we have inhabited earth. There isn't a sweeping change to become warmongers. We have become desensitized to horrific things and death through ALL forms of media including the news. If your afraid that your children will be negatively effected by the way things seem to be going, then be a parent and do your job. It's not the local city government or what's on tv's job to raise your kids and teach them what's acceptable and what's not. No you can't stop every influence on your kids and that's the way it goes. It's your job to form a stronger influence on your kids if that's the way you choose to raise them. Personally I hope my children will be able to form their own opinions on issues and weed through all of the BS you see and read getting to the core of an issue.
With that being said I don't think the gun range is a good idea but they followed the rules and have a right to build it.
Can't you all already see how pointless the gun debate has been? What has changed? There is massive doubt that anything can be passed in congress especially something that is equally or more opinion divided then our current financial issues? I wish our leaders could actually be leaders but as long as we have career politicians and allow companies to influence them, we will only see more division and disfunction.
"Discussion" is a militarizing metaphor?
We better not have one of those!
Hey Dillion, if you and the
Hey Dillion, if you and the rest of the haters don't like the idea of firing fully automatic fire arms, don't go there.
Other wise stop being such a control freak, & respect the rights of those who would find such activity enjoyable.
Hey Dillion, if you and the
Hey Dillion, if you and the rest of the haters don't like the idea of firing fully automatic fire arms, don't go there.
Other wise stop being such a control freak, & respect the rights of those who would find such activity enjoyable.
Well, I'll be taking my 16
Well, I'll be taking my 16 year old, video-game-loving son. Around our house, we call him the "gentle giant". He loves video games - especially shooter-type ones - you wouldn't begin to believe the things he's learned from them, and violence is not one of those things. Yes I'm a liberal - most of you know that. But I'm also an Alaskan, and Alaskans use guns. My step-father, a former Ketchikan Police Officer, use to take my brothers and I out to learn to shoot on his days off. I was always thrilled to beat the boys with my accuracy. I am excited about the gun range, and I'm very happy that my son will learn to handle a gun properly. It's a big world out there - a world with a lot of guns. And you can either learn to respect and use firearms properly, or not. I'd rather he learned.
Kara
There's already a publicly owned firing range in town with gun safety classes. No need to wait for the private range with machine guns.
While it's never to late for gun safety training, your son should have started before he was 16.
These VFP folks make me
These VFP folks make me nervous. They always seem to slip in their "weapons of war" tag on everything they do, and try to make it sound like they just want to do away with ownership of auto or semi-auto weapons. Well, if they are truly after "weapons of war", where will they stop? I can see this going from AR-15 all the way to revolvers and muzzle loaders before they are done with their war on guns and gun owners.
Lat
My son has been training with various weapons since he was 5 - However, I am no professional. Does the current gun range provide rental weapons? Also, the new one will be quite close to my home. I look forward to the grand opening.
I suggest
To curb the growing problem of drug use, we should build a facility that would allow for a safe environment for a user to go and use his/her drugs.
Drugs ruin lives? My spoon made me fat.. right guys?
jnukara
So, you want this facility to be built for the convenience of being close to home?
I have actually taken a class through UAS with Bruce Bowler. We learned gun safety and also went out to the shotgun range in Montana Creek and did skeet shooting. I have never owned a gun in my life but i was able to shoot multiple types of guns through this course.
Superhero
What a ludicrous thing to say. The fact that it is close to my home is simply icing on the cake. If we already have one - what's the problem with another one? No one is being forced to patronize a business they don't want to.