A little more mail, based on my Impromptus today, and an earlier Corner post:

Jay,
Everyone in Arizona is packing. I attended a driver’s-ed course in suburban Phoenix and the state patrolman asked the class of about 50 how many had weapons in their car. About 47 hands went up.

A (further) cultural note:

Jay,
I grew up in Baltimore City. In seventh grade (1965-ish), my parents allowed my brothers and me to take our .22 rifles on the transit bus to the end of the line, where we did some target practice and hunted for small animals in the woods. My mother was always a “free-range” mom — as the newly discovered parenting style is being called — so the fact that she was fine with us carrying guns cross-town on a bus is normal to me. What is strange to me now is that the Maryland Transit Authority was fine with it, too. As long as we showed the driver that the clip was out of the gun, he waved us by.

Another:

Jay,
A few years ago on Christmas morning while walking my little dogs, as I do every morning, I heard the noise of gunshots coming from several different directions. I live in a small town in Utah. It was then that I realized how fortunate I am to live here. Not for one minute did I think any violence or crime was being committed. You see, it was just folks trying out their new Christmas gifts by firing a few rounds off.

Many Americans would be amazed that such places exist, in America; many other Americans would be amazed at their countrymen’s amazement.

Take one more, please (almost Henny Youngman!):

When my son was about six, we were visiting my in-laws in Boulder, and my father-in-law’s wife set him up with a pad of paper and a pencil while we adults were talking after lunch. Joe set about drawing tanks firing their guns, soldiers pointing rifles, etc.
(My father-in-law earned his Ph.D. at Ann Arbor and spent his working life on the faculty and in the administration at U. Colorado/Boulder; need I say more? [No.])
At one point, my father-in-law’s wife, a psychologist [!], leaned over to Joe and said, “Can you draw me a picture of something pretty?” Joe turned to a fresh sheet of paper, scrawled a daisy, ripped the sheet off the page and handed it to her, all without looking up, and then turned the page and started drawing another tank. I would have captioned the action, “Here’s your d*mn flower, lady.”

Boys will be boys (as Ronald Reagan said after Israel obliterated Saddam’s nuclear facility).