Gun nut comment:

[oggbashan]

Comment on my story: Haloween Invasion:

Anonymous about 9 hours ago
I guess you have to be British to understand and enjoy this tale?

The aggressor had already shot at him and was ready to burn them alive inside his house. So I guess the victim's response is considered to be more civilized? You know the aggressor will be released from jail sooner or later, and he probably won't be so blatant or stupid about his plans to murder them. Prison tends to be a great learning institution.

In a civilized country that recognizes the right of self defense, the aggressor would have been shot dead and saved Everyone A LOT of time, bother, and expense. But its OK if you want to live like sheep, hoping the wolf won't choose you for his next meal. In a civilized country the female would have killed her attackers with her own gun. But I think that is too much independence and self reliance for some cultures. How can the shepherd justify his existence and his dominance if the sheep don't need his protection?

I'll leave the rolling pin defense to the Brits. Thanks for the effort.

Is Trick or Treating in the US so dangerous that you have to be prepared to shoot?

 

[SimonDoom]

Is Trick or Treating in the US so dangerous that you have to be prepared to shoot?

Not where I live. But it's a big country, and I can't speak for all of it.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Walking in the street, being black and possibly having a mobile phone in your hand is grounds enough to be shot. Mostly by police. So I figure wearing a somewhat threatening mask might be seen as aggravated assault.

/sarcasm

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Not really, but there are those nutters out there that will put razor blades in apples and poison the candy in hopes of causing harm or even death to a child. But then again there are those kind of people all over the world.

/not sarcasm

 

[holliday1960]

Just another tasteless nut-butter, Ogg. Add some salt and stir vigorously... goes well with some Crackers.

 

[R. Richard]

You need to understand that criminals are the customers of the scumbags. As with any business, it's important to treast customers well.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Not really, but there are those nutters out there that will put razor blades in apples and poison the candy in hopes of causing harm or even death to a child.

This is an urban myth. There's only one case on record of a child being killed by sabotaged Halloween candy, way back in 1974, and it wasn't by some random nutter. His own father murdered him for insurance money and tried to claim a stranger had given them the poison candy. (He also tried to poison four other kids to sell the story, but fortunately none of them ate the candy.)

There have been a few other cases where kids died from unrelated causes shortly after trick-or-treating, and one where a kid died from eating his uncle's heroin and the family tried to cover it up with a story about poisoned candy.

There have been some cases of sharps found in apples etc., but most of these have turned out to be hoaxes, and the rest have mostly been stupid practical jokes rather than serious attempts to harm or kill. The worst injury ever recorded this way required a few stitches, no more.

 

[SimonDoom]

This is an urban myth. There's only one case on record of a child being killed by sabotaged Halloween candy, way back in 1974, and it wasn't by some random nutter. His own father murdered him for insurance money and tried to claim a stranger had given them the poison candy. (He also tried to poison four other kids to sell the story, but fortunately none of them ate the candy.)

There have been a few other cases where kids died from unrelated causes shortly after trick-or-treating, and one where a kid died from eating his uncle's heroin and the family tried to cover it up with a story about poisoned candy.

There have been some cases of sharps found in apples etc., but most of these have turned out to be hoaxes, and the rest have mostly been stupid practical jokes rather than serious attempts to harm or kill. The worst injury ever recorded this way required a few stitches, no more.

It's interesting that you bring this up, because this urban myth has been around a long time. I remember it when I was a kid in the early 1970s, and that was long before the era of hyper-protective parents that we live in now. We went trick or treating anyway.

Off the top of my head, I can't remember any one ever giving me an apple when I went trick or treating. If you think about it, it's a whole lot less convenient to pass out than a mini Snickers bar.

 

[Bramblethorn]

It's interesting that you bring this up, because this urban myth has been around a long time. I remember it when I was a kid in the early 1970s, and that was long before the era of hyper-protective parents that we live in now. We went trick or treating anyway.

Off the top of my head, I can't remember any one ever giving me an apple when I went trick or treating. If you think about it, it's a whole lot less convenient to pass out than a mini Snickers bar.

Yeah, the myth was around long before the cases relating to it. There seems to be a perpetual human need to fantasise about Scary Others targeting our children. As well as the poison candy myth there was the Satanic Panic stuff, which eventually evolved into the Qanon stuff about hundreds of thousands of children being kidnapped and trafficked by pedophiles every year (I worked the numbers, I think it worked out at one in every five American children being kidnapped by this conspiracy!) And long before American Halloween became a thing, there was the old blood libel about Jews murdering Christian children.

One version that used to be very popular was that people were slipping children LSD/heroin/etc. disguised as candy. Clearly started by somebody who had no idea what drugs cost...

 

[SimonDoom]

Yeah, the myth was around long before the cases relating to it. There seems to be a perpetual human need to fantasise about Scary Others targeting our children. As well as the poison candy myth there was the Satanic Panic stuff, which eventually evolved into the Qanon stuff about hundreds of thousands of children being kidnapped and trafficked by pedophiles every year (I worked the numbers, I think it worked out at one in every five American children being kidnapped by this conspiracy!) And long before American Halloween became a thing, there was the old blood libel about Jews murdering Christian children.

One version that used to be very popular was that people were slipping children LSD/heroin/etc. disguised as candy. Clearly started by somebody who had no idea what drugs cost...

Is there anything like this in Australia (not Halloween -- I mean the scare myths)? Or is this just an American thing?

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I remember getting oranges and apples as a small child, which was admittedly a long time ago. My parents always made a point of examining each bit of fruit, so the concern must’ve been around even then.

As to it never happening, I do remember a couple of news items about somebody being arrested for putting needles or such at Halloween. I can’t remember where, but it’s been in the news. Very, very rare, mind, maybe twice that I’ve seen in print.

 

[oggbashan]

Is there anything like this in Australia (not Halloween -- I mean the scare myths)? Or is this just an American thing?

In the UK, the myths are around Halloween as All Souls night when ghosts are supposed to walk, not about trick ot treating. Halloween predates Christianity.

The most widespread one is the ghostly hitchhiker who disappears after getting into your car. That has various locations around the UK. I wrote a Lit story Hitchhiker on a variant of that myth.

The other is that Satanists sacrifice a black cat on Halloween. People are advised to keep their black cat indoors that night.

But if there is a ghost associated with a particular place, Halloween is the time to see it..

 

[ElectricBlue]

Is there anything like this in Australia (not Halloween -- I mean the scare myths)? Or is this just an American thing?

Killers picking up broken down campers in the desert.

Unfortunately, not a myth, there have been a few. Ivan Milat, and the Joanne Lees case are two noticeable ones, but there have been many more. Hitchhiking used to be common back in the day, not now.

 

[NotWise]

I remember getting oranges and apples as a small child, which was admittedly a long time ago. My parents always made a point of examining each bit of fruit, so the concern must’ve been around even then.

I remember getting caramel apples and popcorn balls. Our elderly next-door-neighbor (now gone) used to make popcorn balls when my kids were trick-or-treating. She got a big kick out of giving them away, so my kids would always go there to make her happy, but they wouldn't eat the popcorn balls.

Halloween is not a big thing in my neighborhood. I think it's been two years since we had even one trick-or-treater. Dias de los Muertos starts at midnight on Halloween, and it gets more attention.

 

[Voboy]

Well, it does sorta happen.

https://wgme.com/news/local/man-acc...blades-in-maine-pizza-dough-expected-in-court

That was just last week. But it's not really a trick-or-treating thing.

Where I live, I take my kids out every Halloween and the only problems we have are with twentysomething adults, drunk out of their minds and roaming the streets. They're easy enough to avoid; if I'm hauling a gun along, it's mostly out of habit.

You do hear occasional stories of mischief and mayhem by the drunko party people, but that's later in the night when the Decent Folk have gone home.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Is there anything like this in Australia (not Halloween -- I mean the scare myths)? Or is this just an American thing?

Most American cultural things leak into Australia to some extent, especially now that Facebook makes it so easy to spread bullshit around. I don't think these myths are as strong in Australia as they are in the USA but they do have their echoes.

Back in the nineties there was a NSW Member of Parliament (Franca Arena) who was convinced there was a massive Satanic pedophilia conspiracy operating in Australia. She used parliamentary privilege to make a bunch of allegations of pedophilia against prominent people. One of those allegations seems to have had substance (Frank Arkell - several witnesses supported the claim, but he was murdered before it went to court). Another led to the suicide of a closeted gay man, a judge, who was exposed as having had a fondness for younger men, though I don't think there was ever any evidence to suggest that he went below the age of consent.

And another... well, she shared allegations that a second judge had murdered a third judge with an axe to take his place as the leader of a worldwide Satanic conspiracy. That one seems a bit far-fetched, especially since we weren't missing any judges.

And we do have Qanon here, complete with the implausible "child trafficking" theories. One of their more enthusiastic Australian members was a good friend of our Prime Minister, but it doesn't seem to have entered mainstream politics the way it has in the USA.

We did have a thing with needles in strawberries a while back. Seems to have started with a disgruntled employee, but a lot of cases were probably hoaxes, people sticking needles in their own fruit to get a discount or whatever. I mostly remember it as a time when we were able to buy strawberries very very cheap, in exchange for slicing them in half before eating

 

[ruddygore]

Off the top of my head, I can't remember any one ever giving me an apple when I went trick or treating. If you think about it, it's a whole lot less convenient to pass out than a mini Snickers bar.

Store bought candy? I swear, in the town I lived in, all the little old ladies spent the week before Halloween making candy. Popcorn balls, caramel apples, fudge, divinity, brownies, peanut brittle, and so on.

 

[NotWise]

Getting back to the OP, gun culture is definitely a thing in the US, and it isn't going away any time soon. Someone who thinks our gun culture should exist elsewhere is at least ignorant.

I actually had the opposite experience with a comment on "Breaking with Tradition." Cosima was surprised when Todd stumbling into her campsite, and she greeted him with a deer rifle pointed at his chest.

An early commentator was critical of that and American gun culture in general -- in fact, hypercritical of most everything in the first few paragraphs of the story. Maybe he was having a Snickers moment.

He (presumably "he") ended his comment by paraphrasing an earlier comment about the end of the story. I deleted the comment. I had no reason to believe he actually read past the first few paragraphs. AND, I didn't think I needed to defend gun culture in the US.

 

[Javahead]

Store bought candy? I swear, in the town I lived in, all the little old ladies spent the week before Halloween making candy. Popcorn balls, caramel apples, fudge, divinity, brownies, peanut brittle, and so on.

I remember our Boy Scout troop making caramel apples. It’s got to be at least a double-dozen years since I last had one. The store bought ones just aren’t the same, but making just one or two seems silly.

 

[oggbashan]

Another persistent UK Halloween Myth is the Hellhound.

Conan Doyle used that for his Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles, but the myth was already centuries old.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

This is an urban myth. There's only one case on record of a child being killed by sabotaged Halloween candy, way back in 1974, and it wasn't by some random nutter. His own father murdered him for insurance money and tried to claim a stranger had given them the poison candy. (He also tried to poison four other kids to sell the story, but fortunately none of them ate the candy.)

There have been a few other cases where kids died from unrelated causes shortly after trick-or-treating, and one where a kid died from eating his uncle's heroin and the family tried to cover it up with a story about poisoned candy.

There have been some cases of sharps found in apples etc., but most of these have turned out to be hoaxes, and the rest have mostly been stupid practical jokes rather than serious attempts to harm or kill. The worst injury ever recorded this way required a few stitches, no more.

*shakes head in wonder* By the way Snopes has been found to embellish and/or leave somethings out of their "fact checks" depending on what it is they are "fact checking."

And even if it is an 'urban myth' it had to be an actual event to even become a myth. So, somewhere, someone, did this because they were either mental or just hated kids, which would put them and being mental.

I also remember my parents going through my candy back when I was child... way back in the late 50's and early 60's looking for suspicious 'things' and no they weren't taking the good stuff out of my bag.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

We now return you to the OP.

Gun culture? It's not really a culture in the sense of it being rooted in extreme past of our society. Yes, back in the day when the Pilgrims set foot on the shores of North America, they did have guns, but then again, so did everyone else from the civilized world called Europe. And even after that, everyone had a gun, to hunt for food. Then the revolution came along and we had to fight for our freedom. So, we had guns. Then came the Constitutional Convention where the Constitution of the United States was written in 1781. Then in 1789, James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights, which included the 'Right to Bear Arms' it wasn't ratified until 1791. So since 1791 we Americans have lived with the right to bear arms. In the context of the constitution that was determined to be the right to own and carry guns.

Now... do I carry a gun? I have in the past, I might in the future but right now I do not own a gun. I do however have a concealed carry license.

I not only know how to use a gun, but I have used one in the performance of my duties while in the Air Force. Since then, I have only used one at a shooting range. When I had one, I carried it with me most of the time. There were place that you can't or wouldn't take one, like to the doctors or to the hospital, etc.

How many have I owned at one time... three. A handgun, a shotgun, and a long gun or hunting rifle with a scope. Am I good? I always shot 'marksman' in the service, which meant I got an M16 with a scope to take out targets far way. I was always expert with a handgun, whether it was a .38 pistol or a 9mm Barretta automatic.

My favorite handgun was my Browning High Power 9mm. 14 shots before you had to change clips if you carried with one up the pipe.

So, is it a culture? Maybe so, but it was born a long, long, time ago.

 

[Voboy]

I think there's a gun culture here. It's not a bad thing.

A violence culture? That is a VERY bad thing.

The only problems arise when those two cultures coincide. I know an awful lot of "gun people" and I'm not particularly afraid of any of them; they're normal people who are interested in firearms the same way other people are interested in model airplanes or coin collecting. Some of them hunt, but most don't. Most would never think of using those guns against anyone else unless the other guy was trying to kill them first.

The problem arises when someone breaks in, steals their gun, and goes off to do god knows what with it. But that person is, by definition, a violent felon already, a person who's already broken a few laws and, presumably, doesn't mind breaking a few more. This sort of thing can be mitigated if the "gun person" has enough responsibility to properly secure their property, or if he/she lives in a jurisdiction that requires safe storage.

Either way, the gun itself isn't the problem. It's not in control of who's holding it.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I think there's a gun culture here. It's not a bad thing.

A violence culture? That is a VERY bad thing.

The only problems arise when those two cultures coincide. I know an awful lot of "gun people" and I'm not particularly afraid of any of them; they're normal people who are interested in firearms the same way other people are interested in model airplanes or coin collecting. Some of them hunt, but most don't. Most would never think of using those guns against anyone else unless the other guy was trying to kill them first.

The problem arises when someone breaks in, steals their gun, and goes off to do god knows what with it. But that person is, by definition, a violent felon already, a person who's already broken a few laws and, presumably, doesn't mind breaking a few more. This sort of thing can be mitigated if the "gun person" has enough responsibility to properly secure their property, or if he/she lives in a jurisdiction that requires safe storage.

Either way, the gun itself isn't the problem. It's not in control of who's holding it.

I have a gun safe, but they aren't infallible. If a person wants in one bad enough there is no keeping them out. Yes, they would need time but in most cases they have already secured the residents, unless they sleep with a weapon under their pillow, so the intruder would have quit a long time to get into the safe. And if he uses the wife or girlfriend... what husband, boyfriend wouldn't give up the combination.

The only way to keep guns out of the wrong hands is to secure them in such a way as they will only work for the person who owns them. They have tried that, yet that too isn't infallible yet.

Do I think there should be controls on who, what, how, when, and where a person gets to own and carry a gun. Sure. But... well what is proposed and what is possible right now are far from being. If one side had it their way, no one would be able to own a gun. There are reasons for that... then again way over on the other side are those who want no controls. There are reasons for that also.

 

[jehoram]

The other is that Satanists sacrifice a black cat on Halloween. People are advised to keep their black cat indoors that night.

I've heard that, but it seems to be just another one of those urban legends. BTW, a researcher named Jan Brunvand has made a career out of studying urban legends, and has published a slew of books collating them. If you've heard one, it's probably in one of his books by now.

Funny thing about black cats (of which I've owned three -- if you can call it "owned" since the cats seem to have the impression that they own us). Black cats used to be far less desirable than other cats, and animal shelters had a hard time placing them.

But then came the movie Black Panther. They suddenly became very popular, and according to some vet techs I've talked to, they're usually the first ones to be adopted, and shelters were calling other shelters to see if any black cats were available.