[BearwWthoutBorders] [SycamoreCanyon] Tobacco and Guns / Individual Liberty and Personal Privacy

[Hunter Gray]

Thanks, Kass, for such a timely and full post.  Doesn't sound like we have much, if any, disagreement.  Actually, I don't think we ever have. (Kass is a popular university professor, a most accomplished writer, and she's also a former student of mine -- and certainly a good friend indeed.)

I agree totally on the Whiteclay, Nebraska situation.  As you know, Peter and colleagues have run no end of exposes on that nefarious "thing" -- as have many others.  Alcohol prohibition on reservations, including Pine Ridge, is losing ground and, in some cases, has already lost.  It was supported initially by the Federal government, perennially afraid of the "warpath", but also by traditional religious leaders. But bootlegging, on and off the reservations, thrived.  In 1954, the Federal ban against selling liquor to Natives was ended -- but tribes were free to continue that on the reservations.  Bootlegging boomed even more and border situations like Whiteclay became prevalent.  At Chinle (Chin-lee), on Navajo Nation, a leading bootlegger had his place only a few yards from the tribal police station.  Right across the street, waiting for Eldri in the grocery store parking lot, I saw lots of his customers.)

If people on alcohol-prohibitive reservations don't want to pay the gouging bootlegger price, then they often have to drive long distances to a border town to buy it legally.  On the way back, it's tempting to drink the purchase -- and this can obviously lead to tragedy.  We had a number of those at Navajo Community College (now Dine' College), 95 miles from bordertown Gallup, NM.

So, increasingly, there are moves to legalize the selling of alcohol on the reservations.  I certainly agree with that.

And I certainly agree with the swift legalization of marijuana -- and the decriminalization of most "drugs."

You have a good feel, Kass, for the "gun culture" -- and especially that centered on hunting and principled self-defense.  Unfortunately, a great many people in this country don't have the least bit of knowledge about any of those things -- and are often easy targets for the "prohibitionists."

I agree that these issues can often be "social class matters."   I don't see how some left and liberal left groups can expect to recruit from the workingclass -- when they're simultaneously pushing for widespread "gun control."

I like the idea of a society that provides its people with a maximum number of reasonable choices.

Finally, and personally Kass, take damn good care.  Weird things are happening all over to people and women are certainly at great risk.  It wouldn't hurt to hunt up a reputable gun store and secure, say, even a good used short-barreled .38 Special revolver.  Revolvers are safer than semi-automatics.  You're a very cool head and that goes well with firearms.  Even the knowledge that you have it, can serve to deter some sicko.

As you know, we've had our problems here in Poky -- one of your former towns!  I always have a couple of loaded firearms close at hand.  For a few years after we got here, I had an NRA Life Membership decal on our front and back door windows.

Keep me posted by all means.

And the very best from all of the Grays and Salters -- almost all of whom you certainly know.

As Ever,

John or Hunter  
(This continues to be one of our most visited WebPages:  http://www.hunterbear.org/alcohol_and_peyote_and_native_am.htm

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Kass Fleisher 
  To: SycamoreCanyon at yahoogroups.com 
  Cc: newgreencanada at yahoogroups.com ; marxist at yahoogroups.com ; Bear Without Borders 
  Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2012 12:20 PM
  Subject: Re: [SycamoreCanyon] Tobacco and Guns / Individual Liberty and Personal Privacy


    
  Sorry, I just have to pop in here and note the old half-joke about how Native Americans gave Europeans nicotine poison, and European Americans gave Natives alcohol poisoning. A vast over/understatement, I know, but it's making my eyes twinkle *just* a bit---



  especially in light of the fact that some reservations have prohibited alcohol on their sovereign grounds. How do we feel about that? As a U.S. citizen, I fully support, beg for, hope for, the obliteration of White Clay, NE. The exploitation going on their is *sick*.


  But the reason I popped in on this is that, while I'm sure gun supporters are made of sterner stuff, etc., the sad fact is that, in the U.S., most smokers hail from the lower-middle and lowest classes. Smoking has become a class issue---it's not so much that they can't band together; indeed they literally get together four times a day---it's that, between the science working against them ("yes, I know, this will kill me, I'll stop some time, I swear") and the *upper classes* working against them, they don't stand a chance. 


  And should we talk about the gradual decriminalization of marijuana?


  Members of the lower classes own guns, fer sher! My cousins are all well armed. With no way way to earn a living in Appalachia they have every weapon needed to get them every hunting license available, and this is how they feed themselves. But gun interests run throughout the class system, and the upper classes engage liberally---and not to feed themselves. My brother-in-law spent $10,000 on a 7', 900 lb gun safe *alone*. The guns in it---I can't even guess. Every time he buys a new one, it's a toy he wants to play with and so he gets it out and we all have to hold it, and so I have held in my hand(s) everything from a 22-whatever to a 45, 9mm (with multiple adjusting scopes), and military-grade stuff of the sort we end up seeing on TV. Every now and again I ask what something cost, and he'll s! ay Oh, $3000, but then I got this, and this, and this, and I think it ended up at $4500.


  He tosses $2500/year at the NRA.


  The smokers spent that on cigarettes last month.


  4 weeks ago an assault was made on my person by my next door neighbor. I used kick boxing maneuvers to evade only---I could not get to my aluminum softball bat. Last week someone broke into my house---in short, I'm being stalked. He's not armed or I think he would have used that by now. As we speak, I have my rather devastating front kick immediately available and my bat is never more than ten feet away. I think about whether it would be nice to have a gun. I think about it. Frankly I'm not sure I could pull the trigger. Not stern enough I guess.


  White Clay needs to go (surely those 14 residents would enjoy federally-sponsored condos in Florida). Weed needs to stay. As for guns? A reasonable collection for food and protection. But the gun/tobacco discussion is terribly skewed by money. Gun/grass makes a little more sense, given the sudden profit-making of the latter. NORML is finally well funded.


  Kass


  On Dec 30, 2012, at 6:40 AM, Hunter Gray <hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org> wrote:


      


    (Stimulated by an RBB discussion)

    Note by Hunter Bear:

    Although smoking tobacco isn't directly protected by the Constitution-- as gun rights are -- there have always been plenty of smokers in this country.  But in a matter of a few decades, and especially this last generation, smokers and tobacco have been pervasively demonized in this country, the price of tobacco is -- via high taxes -- astronomical.  Smokers have been forced from restaurants, bars, even public open door spaces in many cases, and efforts are underway to prohibit smoking anywhere, including cars and even homes.  (None of this has eliminated tobacco smoking by any means but it's made it very tough to do so. I've always seen the zeal of the anti-smoking forces and their backers to be, in part at least, a so far largely successful effort to divert attention away from the corrosive effects of industrial air pollution.)

    Smokers have never had a smokers' rights organization to fight for their rights.  Assaulted again and again, directly and incrementally, many simply crumbled and, in any case, they've lost most of their ground.

    Precisely the same thing would have happened to guns, gun owners, and firearms rights.  But we gun people are generally cut from tougher stuff than many of the smokers were and are -- and, most fundamentally, we're very well organized -- and well  aware of the dangers of incrementalism and relativism.  The NRA and other gun rights organizations have and will continue to fight on principle and substance all the way -- trench warfare.  (Ken's ostensible concession on guns and hunting impresses me not a whit -- the attack on guns would never stop at that point. )  If the NRA had been, say, simply an organization of Sunday afternoon shooters, gun rights would be virtually dead in the United States.

    Going deeper into all of this, it's clear that individual liberty and the related dimension of personal privacy, are at great risk in this country at this point.  That also translates into an intolerance of "people who are a little bit different."  The gleaming self-righteous and sanctimonious light in the eyes of prohibitionists, whether many Christian fundamentalists or superficial "liberals", is remarkably similar.  In great danger of virtual disappearance is the willingness of Americans to fight for the civil libertarian rights of people with whom they may disagree.

    Despite centuries of physical and attempted cultural genocide and countless other vicissitudes, Native people, Native tribal societies, and Native cultures have survived. No assimilation. And now they're often doing more than simply survive.  A key factor in all of this is the powerful and time honored dimension of "tribal responsibility".  That boils down to this:  the individual has a responsibility to the tribe and the tribe has a responsibility to the individual.  If these two should conflict, the well being of the tribe takes precedence -- but there are clearly defined areas of personal and family autonomy into which the tribe cannot intrude.

    Hunter Bear

    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.

    See my extensive Movement Life Interview, done by Bruce
    Hartford of Civil Rights Movement Veterans:
    http://hunterbear.org/HUNTER%20BEAR%20INTERVIEW%20CRMV.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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