I get that the British don’t have a gun culture like the US. Here, guns are a part of life and have been since before the founding of this great nation. They’re part of the fabric of America and the British don’t really seem to understand that.
That’s fine, of course. They’re not Americans, after all.
But they feel obligated to pontificate on our gun laws all the time, despite it having no impact on their lives and despite their own laws doing jack squat to reduce violent crime.
Yet a BBC reporter who found his way to the US is a bit upset with BB guns sitting on a shelf.
Hi from America. Where Walmart doesn’t have a plug adapter for my UK laptop. But on the other hand, I can buy a rifle and ammunition. pic.twitter.com/5AOl232CZE
— Pádraig Belton (@PadraigBelton) April 26, 2022
The problem, of course, is that those are air rifles, including the famous and venerable Red Ryder BB gun from A Christmas Story.
Imagine being part of a population so disarmed that you’re freaked out by the prospect of a freaking air rifle.
These are the things we buy for our kids to learn with, for crying out loud, and Padraig there thinks they’re actual rifles?
It’s so sad it’s hilarious.
The funny thing is, depending on where he’s at, Walmart sells actually guns. In many of their stores, you can buy actual rifles, not just air rifles. Yet that’s not what’s pictured here.
And if they were actual firearms, so what?
This is the United States, where we recognize that people have the right to keep and bear arms. We also don’t have a lot of people looking for adaptors for UK-purchased computers, so it’s not surprising that they wouldn’t have such a thing.
See, this is about demand. People want BB guns, so Walmart endeavors to provide them. What they don’t want, though, are adapters for computers most people don’t own. It’s part of how the free market works.
If we had a sudden influx of people from the UK who didn’t bring their own adaptors and that demand continued for a prolonged period, you better believe Walmart will start to sell those adapters.
Yet the lack of something for which there’s no demand isn’t a sign of a moral failing, even if there is a demand for something you find morally disgusting.
Padraig took this difference in demand and thought to make a point about the American gun culture, yet all he illustrated is how little intelligence it takes to work for the BBC.
After all, he knows this is the United States and that we have guns. He could have asked a question about whether what he was seeing is normal and I’d have been happy to explain that yes, but those aren’t firearms. They’re air rifles that we routinely use to help our kids learn gun safety and can let them plink around with in relative safety.
He didn’t go that route, though. Instead, he had to try and use it to bash the US and the Second Amendment, only it went about as well as you think it did.
Look, if a Brit comes to the US and wants to make a fool of himself, he can. The beauty of rights is in the fact that you have a right to do something stupid. He exercised that right and I’m not about to stop him.
But I’m more than willing to exercise my right to make fun of him for it.
