Dear Friends,
It seems to me, a thing urban people don’t understand, is the relationship rural people have with guns. How could they? Having a completely different background. Rural people grow up with guns, chain saws and tractors. They’re simply part of rural life. Urban people, on the other hand, have no experience with a chain saw and so are afraid of them. Tractors are fire spewing monstrous beasts to someone who’s only seen one in a magazine. While the mere sight of a gun literally makes an urban person’s blood run cold. Not all, some go to shooting ranges, and so have a cursory understanding of guns. Not like a rural person though. To someone who grows up with guns, they’re no different than a tractor, chain saw, cheater bar, rototiller, or knife… it’s a tool.
I met a woman at an ATM several decades ago. There had recently been a school shooting, and the woman behind me said, how awful it was that the teenager had access to guns. I smiled and told her I grew up with a gun in my closet, with bullets for it on the shelf above. I had used it my entire life. What was odd though… is that, while I had fights in school and suffered teenage angst, not once did it ever occur to me to bring that gun to school and shoot anyone. Color drained from her face and she took a step back from me. Horror and shock mixed with alarm at being so close to a potential killer. I laughed, because from her accent I could tell she was from an urban area of Massachusetts, while I grew up in a rural area in northernmost Appalachia.
While rural people are familiar with guns, as tools, urban people are familiar with crowds. Which admittedly, I am not. I would rather be in an open carry bar, with a few people I know, than be in a disarmed crowd of people I don’t. Given my druthers though… I would be in the woods alone with my dogs. Traffic is another thing that vexes me and I’m sure most rural people as well. While a city person is comfortable in mind numbing traffic, but isn’t on a winding abandoned dirt road, in the middle of the night. You get used to what you get used to. We’re most comfortable surrounded by what we grew up with. Which isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength. Because, society needs city and rural people, along with our varying attitudes and preferences.
There’s a place for the urban person’s fears and bravery as well as for the rural person’s fears and bravery. When both are given courteous respect, both contribute to the greater whole. A society can be considered the alloy of all the people, or more aptly, a society is a complex system. Each part contributes to the emergent phenomenon that’s called society. As long as there’s an underlying societal myth, binding the people to a unit, diversity is a strength. Since complex systems become robust by it. With freedom of travel and living such a society can self separate. Those who prefer the city life can move to the city and those who prefer rural life can live in the rural areas. Each to their preference and all benefited by it. As long as people stay in their lane and don’t become arrogant.
If rural people imposed rural values and standards on cities, the speed limit on residential streets would be 75 miles an hour, burn barrels would be common, and every backyard would have a shooting range. While rural people have the common sense and humility, to know better than to impose rural values on city people, sadly, city people don’t seem to have that level of humility. What’s good for the city is good for the country is their mantra. Proven by their actions. Since national governments are necessarily run by urban people, rural people have urban values imposed on us. Ideas that are every bit as stupid as a 75 mile an hour speed limit on an urban street. Like gun control. Because what makes sense on a city street doesn’t in a forest or farm. But it takes the wisdom a forest bestows to understand it.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
