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, said Indian woman Moni Basu, CNN.
India was steeped in ahimsa, the tenet of nonviolence toward all living things. Indians have succeeded in ousting the British, but with Gandhian-style civil disobedience, not a revolutionary war.
She said that, she 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 as in the United States. An American is 12 times more likely to be killed by a firearm than an Indian.
She continues, “It’s no wonder 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.”
National Rifle Association (NRA) has held its annual convention in Atlanta, inside the vast and cavernous Georgia World Congress Center. There were countless exhibits by the firearms industry. Among them are the Mossberg Blaze .22 semiautomatic Rimfire Rifle and an FN 509 semi-automatic 9mm pistol.
There were 80,000 of America’s fiercest patriots and defenders of guns. Many are wearing American flag attire and T-shirts with slogans like: “Veterans before refugees” and “God loves guns,” in the convention.
Indian American Woman Held By US Customs
“Why do you want to own an object that can kill another human being?” The answers was centered on three main themes: freedom, self-defense and sport.
Chris Styskal, who was in a booth set up by the NRA Wine Club. Yes, a wine club for the almost 5 million members of the organization, said, “Eat, sleep, go fishing. Drink, sleep, go shooting. In that order,” Styskal jokes. He tells , has its roots in the birth of this country. “George Washington’s army fought off the British with rifles,” he says. “They overthrew an oppressive government.”
This is just one of the customers opinion about the prevailing gun culture in America, which is killing innocent people just at the stoke of a word.
By Premji
