I suppose many of us feel that living the life-styles of our parents “would be the salvation of the world.” I most certainly do!
Anyway, as I say in our recently-published little book on positively ethical applied community ecology, “Games We Play,” I am very sure that the world would be much, much, much better off if all lived the relatively sustainable livelihoods of Alton & Lousie Martin.
Alton & Louise lived “Less Is More,” low input, frugal, and humble lifestyles, which were in many ways anti-capitalistic & anti-growth … and very much in concert with a dynamic homeostatic symbioses including humans. …
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And what about their probable positions on guns, and gun ownership???
Guns were certainly not of a major concern of my Dad Alton (and definitely not of Mom Lousie). Moreover, Dad truly was a man who avoided excess … OF ANYTHING! (Well … he WOULD crack the whip over us when we were harvesting and putting up dewberries as a family. And especially in the late 1960’s-1980’s, he did always have a lot of hogs on our little five-acre place.)
Early on in my formative years in the 1950’s and early 1960’s we had only a short barrel .22 pump “repeating” rifle which my Dad had inherited. Later, a great uncle gave us a single-shot, longer-barrel .22 (which I now have and use when trapping wild hogs, but which I rarely do of late). … And we did have a couple of BB-guns as well as slingshots, which regrettably, sadly, shamefully, we didn’t call “slingshots.” (I have a post on this, “Confessions and Changes in Values and Socio-Ecological Actions,” in this blog site.)*
We five boys of Alton and Louise hunted cottontail & jackrabbit, squirrel, dove, and quail with these rifles. (Brother Charlie had the reputation for the patience to persist in hunting bobwhite quail until he got a tree-branch shot.) … And Mom would fry and then saute them under a low heat & a cover of gravy.
We had no deer on our 140-acre Stockdale, Texas farm nor in the pastures (of other land-owners where we hunted) around our five acres of mostly hog production near Devine, Texas. When we did get invited to hunt deer by friends around Kyote, Black Creek, or Big Foot, we borrowed rifles from other families, including a long and very heavy Japanese rifle from Tucker Irwin (a wonderful old neighbor who lost his legs in WW II, but never let that slow him down). (My brother Lawrence, now deceased & called “the Amazing Mr. Martin” in his Northside SA school district, shot his first deer with this Japanese rifle in the area of Kyote, Texas.)
Later, my brothers put their agriculture earnings together and purchased a 410 shotgun for hunting birds and a 30-30 rifle for deer hunting. I was off mostly working for my Uncle Peggy and others by that time and then at Texas A&M (where my rommmates and I hunted & ate rabbit, raccoon, & duck), in the Navy, etc.. … Most of my hunting around home was with the pump .22.
My point of this little rambling piece is that my Dad, who had been a Marine in the Pacific and at Peleliu and who was a great marksman, would never have dreamed of purchasing an AR-15, or even some of the other high-power rifles which even my own family now purchase and use.
Dad Alton would have recognized (if only in his subconscious) these high-power arms, AND other arms, as wasteful in very many ways (including the sad and sick destroying of those precious young lives recently in Uvalde, Texas, etc., etc., etc., etc. as a result of a captalistic, growth-** & gun-worshipping & relatively despicable, complacent & apathetical, satisfied, yet greedy, people we call “Americans.”***
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*I must emphasize that these are my memories as the eldest of six siblings. My siblings will sometimes argue the details of these memories, even memories I have from before they were born.
**Including growth of arms and the arms industry. It means a “better” GDP in a world of very sick economics and sick economic measures void of indicators of sustainability, or positively ethical applied community ecology.
***A military-loving nephew will now accuse me of “appropriating my paw” … which is okay!
