Casual Militarism? Options

[Todd Simpson]

I was "tank spotting" the other day on Ben's Facebook TANK TUESDAY posts and realized that in the states we have a sort of "casual militarism" that I don't see in other countries as much.

For example....

Folks here, generally speaking of course, have some sort of weapons training (even if just from a father/uncle/etc.) and some sort of weapon in the home, (pistol, rifle, shotgun, etc.) and I"m no exception.

Recently when CHRISTIAN/Gitarrero visited my home town all the way from Germany, and we went to the Gun Range, it struck me as odd that neither him nor his traveling buddy had ever touched a firearm, much less loaded one. To be sure, MANY people here can say the same thing. Never handled/loaded a gun. But, especially here in the south, it's more common that folks know their way around guns.

We just take it for granted that everyone knows the difference in loading/unloading a revolver vs a 1911 semiautomatic. We also take it for granted that certain weapon systems are so familiar to us as to not need naming, e.g. tanks/fighter planes/automatic rifles, just because the nomenclature is common knowledge.

Only by interacting with folks from Europe basically am I starting to see that we here in the states have a "Militarized", "Weaponized", "War footed" culture that is so deeply ingrained we don't even see it.

What do you guys think? Especially folks in other countries? Are we really that different in such things?

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This post has been edited by Todd Simpson: Nov 7 2014, 02:04 AM