#QuarantinedThoughts — Guns N’ Rides

“Woke up this morning, got myself a gun.” Ever since I half-jokingly floated the idea that we should purchase a firearm to my husband, the Sopranos’ opening sequence has been stuck in my head.

Only I didn’t. They were all sold out. And even if you managed to snag the last gun in the shop, you would have a hard time getting ammo, which sort of defeats the point. As it turns out, when Americans get scared, they buy guns. The fact that the thing they’re scared of is a virus — which I’m pretty sure you can’t shoot — is entirely irrelevant. It’s a safety blanket thing.

But it also goes deeper than that, in a way that I think it’s genuinely hard for people outside the U.S. to properly grasp. If there are two things that are fundamentally tied to the core of the American psyche, it’s guns and cars.

Show me what you drive, and what (if anything) you carry, and I’ll tell you what kind of Yankee you are. Much more than the house you live in, your family, your pets, the way you vote, or even your job, these two things are wrapped around the core of America’s identity. For the most stark and depressing proof of that point. look no further than the “protesters” in places like Michigan. They all drive the same sort of car, and they pack (a whole lot) of the same sort of guns.