Practicality

As the Assault weapons ban seemed to go up in smoke today, I was thinking about how people in different environments would have markedly different reactions to guns, cities, wilderness, the out of doors etc.

For example, people in a city tend to me much more interdependent societally and people in the country have to be much more self sufficient and independent or else they couldn't survive in the country. And so, this tends to create very different kinds of people with very different values.

Even though I was raised from age 6 to 21 in Tujunga and then Glendale, California (both in Los Angeles County). my father was an out of doorsman and so was his father, and his father before him too who was a Captain in the Northern Army in Kansas in the Civil War. So, I was trained by my father to be a backwoodsman and how to survive in the wilds anywhere, how to find my way alone anywhere and how to look for landmarks anywhere I went so I never would be lost (so I wouldn't die in the wilderness like so many do these days). I was also given what was my father's .22 pump rifle when I was 8 years old that was given to my father when he was 6 by my grandmother. This would have been in 1956 and was a part of an at least 400 year tradition in my family of welcoming young men into young adulthood by giving them not only a firearm but respecting them enough to use it as an adult. This was just a part of Being an American in the U.S. still in the 1950s.

When my father was 2 hit was bitten either by a coyote or desert fox that his older brother (aged 6 was raising in a cage in Morinci, Arizona. My Grandfather was building housing for miners in the deep pit copper mine there at the time as he was an Electrical Contractor in 1918 when my father was 2. Since the sheriff and doctors were at that time 25 to 50 miles away when they finally got my 2 year old father to the doctor within the week he said that my father would have died if the bite had been 1/100 of an inch deeper because it would have punctured his kidney and he would have died.

The point I'm trying to make is that the law and doctors then might have been a day or more away and there likely weren't any phones in the area at that time either. So, being self sufficient in all ways kept people alive. If people were silly or stupid in these kinds of environments they were soon dead or dying.

The problems in big cities are often very different than the ones one can encounter in the country or in the wilderness. For example, going into a deep forest where you can't see major landmarks because of the thick forest can be very dangerous if there isn't a well marked trail. And even then if there are many branches to a trail if you don't have a map or GPS getting lost is pretty easy. Or even if you have GPS if your battery goes dead or you drop it and it breaks you still won't know where you are even today. And in most wilerness areas there is no cell reception anyway. So, a cell phone is no help at all in these kinds of situations.

Personally, because of the way I was raised I'm quite at home in the Wilderness even if there are bears and mountain lions around. I know hwat i'm dealing with. But, often in some cities I'm not familiar with I don't feel safe at all because I don't live there to know where it is relatively safe or what to watch out for. So, I spend much more time in the wilderness because I'm at home there. But, I also know there are people who only feel safe in a city. But, to me personally that doesn't make any sense at all.

So, wherever you live it tends to train you to survive in the kinds of environments you are growing up in. But, that doesn't mean you are ready for other environments unless you prepare yourself well for all the differences.

The most important things I can say about any environment you are in  is that you must always try to remain calm and very observant, especially when you are in unfamiliar territory. This is the best way to stay alive and actually have fun wherever you are.