Friday, April 30, 2010

"Wild West" and Women's Fashion

Say Uncle linked an article from the Wall Street Journal this morning about Open Carry, in which the author, true to form, makes a fool of herself.  In so many words, allowing Open Carry will result in massive amounts of testosterone driven one-ups-manship, women requiring quick change grips so they color coordinate, and a reversal of society to the days of the "Wild West."

Which is why they called it the Wild West and we are lucky not to have been born then.
Anybody who watched the History Channel back when it was about History probably knows that the whole violent aspect of the "Wild" West mythos is widely overblown.  Eugene Hollen's book Frontier Violence: Another Look tells us that-
    • In Abilene, Ellsworth, WichitaDodge City, and Caldwell, for the years from 1870 to 1885, there were only 45 total homicides.  This equates to a rate of approximately 1 murder per 100,000 residents per year.
    • In Abilene, supposedly one of the wildest of the cow towns, not a single person was killed in 1869 or 1870.
Hardly that violent really.  Most major cities in the US have far worse murder rates than that, just look at Chicago (a comparatively whopping 15.6 per 100,000), where guns are completely banned!  The anti's will continue to equate any widely accepted carry of weapons, open or concealed, to accomplishing nothing but reverting the country (or state, or town, or whatever) back to the "Wild West."  Really doesn't sound like a bad thing to me.

As for her other "complaint" of women widely accepting guns, complete with such gems as:

Next thing you know, women could be trading tips on the Web about the best way to attract men in a world where every girl can have a gun. Should she try to stand out from the crowd with a piece of rustic exotica that reminds him of the safari dolls in 1953's "Mogambo," like a .416 Rigby? Or go with something more crudely flashy, like one of the pretend AK-47s?

Sounds like my kind of girl (author's tip: the .416 Rigby would definitely catch my eye more than an AK.  In this context the AK sounds more like some scenester's attempt at being ironic, like thrift store clothes, and that's just lame.)

To top it off though, her first sentence of the final paragraph:

Speaking of serious shooters, I don't know a soul among gun owners who is itching to prance around showing everybody what is in their holster.

Give me two minutes and access to the internet.  We simply know that there's a time and a place to show off our iron, that's all.  (Here's what's usually in mine by the way, although I do sport my Kimber Custom II on occasion.  Just that with the stupid vehicle laws in Wisconsin, the setback happy .45acp isn't a good idea.) I do kind of wonder... could there be a market for a color coordinated quick change grip system?  Although I think coordinating the holster would be far more important.