A few years back I got embroiled in yet another email argument with a friend whom I respect, about gun ownership. Our opinions on guns, and politics in general are, and remain, as diametrically opposed as east and west. He's a firm, long-time owner, who, if I recall correctly, keeps a couple of handguns in his …
Continue reading The futile search for a solution to gun violence
From today's Washington Post:America's ritual of outrage By Anthea ButlerIt is an American ritual, engaged in on almost a monthly basis. A mass shooting. Screaming. Frantic families. Shell-shocked survivors. Carnage. Grim-faced police and emergency responders, and news reporters smelling blood in the air, angling for the right shot of grief-stricken friends and family.Then, the tweets and statements …
Continue reading On guns: Couldn't have said it better myself
Félix, our jack-of-all-trades assistant at our ranchito, comes from a dirt-poor family plagued by illiteracy and other problems. Felix himself only reached the sixth-grade before going off on his own to work at whatever he could find, including a stint doing manual labor in Texas.Yet if you were to dismiss him as a pitiable dumb …
Continue reading As mass shootings become ever bloodier, American politicians keep shooting blanks
When Stew and I visit the United States we can count on one tedious question to come up: "Aren't you afraid to live in Mexico?" Over lunch, when we visited Chicago in October, a friend asked us that and it struck me as odd, considering I'd just read in the local newspaper there had been …
Violence in Mexico is the inescapable question every time we visit the U.S. Aren't you scared? Are you safe? Ever thought of coming back to the good ol' U.S.A.? Surely, you must have considered it! Where would you go?Ten years ago, when we announced our plan to move to Mexico, Charlotte, a good friend, reacted …
Paranoid chatter in the U.S. media about guns and mass shootings during the past several weeks shows you that if absurdities are repeated long and often enough they eventually acquire some plausibility. So much so that Stew and I, the ultimate firearm virgins, recently talked about buying a gun for self protection at our ranch …
El Rancho Santa Clara 