[BearwWthoutBorders] From RBB: Pacific Northwest cities -- and also "gun control"

[Hunter Gray]

By Hunter:

I'm kind of interested in the Portland's darker shadows (no racial implication.)  I've always seen the city as essentially Mid-western in nature, which I attribute to the fact that western Oregon was "settled" in the 1830s and 1840s.  That was a full generation before, say, Seattle and Tacoma -- always rip-roaring -- got started.  Those two, on Puget Sound, were major ports early on and Seattle was the departure point for the Alaskan gold rush.  In a nutshell, I always saw Portland as a little dull whereas I had great times in its western Washington counterparts.  My mother was born at Everett, Washington, and her two brothers at nearby Seattle. But that isn't what I think of when I think of the SeaTac area.  For a great, if dated history of Seattle and its wild and woolly nature, see Murray Morgan's classic, Skid Road -- still in print.  Lots on the wild, wild Wobblies.

David mentioned the desirability of firearms registration.  I couldn't, of course, be more opposed. And I'm far from alone in this country on that one.  In 1950 and 1951, our Junior NRA club at Flagstaff High wrote letters to the Arizona Congressional delegation -- mostly New Deal Demos; Goldwater wasn't even on the far horizon) -- opposing national gun registration and denouncing its two major proponents:  J. Edgar Hoover and Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut. We consistently pointed out that was one of Hitler's early top priorities.  We always received nice letters from our political leadership in DC to the effect that that would never happen.  And it hasn't.  The 1968 gun law does require initial new firearms purchases to record the gun's nomenclature and serial number -- and that's a kind of very partial registration only -- since firearms frequently change hands, and do so usually and fortunately, without Federal "white" tape.  And, of course, there's a vast number of firearms that pre-date 1968.  As I mentioned some time back, Canada several years ago mandated national firearms registration.  That produced massive civil disobedience.  From Manitoba westward, provincial officials refused to enforce the edict from Ottawa and every Native nation indicated it would never comply with the nefarious scheme.  That was the end of Canada's attempt to register firearms.  I certainly don't think it'll happen here -- nor do I see any significant new gun control measures in the foreseeable future for the USA.  H.

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands.

Key pieces from our big Jackson Mississippi Movement 
scrapbook.  Three consecutive and full pages beginning with
this Link:  http://hunterbear.org/a_piece_of__the_scrapbook.htm
And see my reflection ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE:
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded in Fall 2012. Photos. Material on our Native
background.)  And see Personal Background Narrative: 
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm  (Updated into 2012) 

For the new (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.
 http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
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