Thanks for examining an aspect of Western culture that receives less coverage than it deserves. Responsible gun ownership includes acceptance of safeguards that are essential to the maintenance of a peaceful society. The paranoia and fear driving this small, feverish band of gun zealots is one of the strongest arguments for strengthening regulations. Their willingness […]
Reining in the zealots
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Liberal and armed
I would think that an independent-minded journal like HCN would not so easily fall prey to anti-gun rhetoric more befitting the New York Times. Specifically: “… a reflection of white men’s anxiety about the civil rights movement”? Tell that to my Hispanic and Indian hunting friends (most of whom vote Democratic) but who support gun […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Non-negotiable self-defense
Mr. Ring, my right to personal self-defense is not negotiable. It is not subject to “re-examination,” looking at from another angle, reconsideration, modification, or “sensible” restriction based on false premises and false promises of safety by a government that cannot or will not provide it. The notion that “no one is talking about confiscation of […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
It’s a privilege, not a right
I’m a native Westerner and a gun owner, but I didn’t really have a problem with this article. Gun ownership is part of the America heritage and especially so in the West. However, that doesn’t preclude responsibility. We, as a nation and a gun culture, need to find that fine line between the freedom to […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
A gun culture bibliography
As a longtime subscriber and sometime contributor to High Country News, I always look forward to your feature reporting – especially when the reporter is Ray Ring. But I have seldom been not only so disappointed by an article’s obvious slant, but also so absolutely astonished by the lack of breadth in Ring’s information-gathering (it […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Beer drinkers = radical drunken fanatics?
“Guns R Us” was a hatchet job of the first order. Ray Ring used the civil rights infringement of Red’s Trading Post as a fig leaf to present a blatant anti-gun screed. Take this quote: “The seats are mostly filled; some of the people are drinking beers they’ve carried in from the saloon. They’ve come […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Two weeks in the West
Many a mud-spattered pickup truck in Western mining communities sports a bumper sticker that reads, “Behind every light switch is a coal miner.” After the Crandall Canyon mine collapsed in central Utah on Aug. 6, the slogan took on a slightly different meaning for the anxiously watching American public: Behind just about every light switch, […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Letter imperfect
It’s not often that I’ll start off an editor’s letter by writing about letters to the editor, but it’s not often that we get the deluge of correspondence spawned by Ray Ring’s cover package on firearms in the West, “Guns R Us.” You’ll see a selection of the missives in this issue; you can see […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Heard Around the West
NEW MEXICO Just two decades ago, pink coyotes were ubiquitous in downtown Santa Fe. They howled at oil-painted moons, or were sculpted from metal, or were accompanied by acrylic neon landscapes. To some high-minded folks, the fad was much worse than a particularly bad moment in Southwestern-style kitsch; it seemed to signal the imminent demise […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Gunning with the in-laws
Jim Aldrich, my father-in-law, grins a lot. But today, as we stand on his deck in the desert of Southern California, his smile is especially pronounced, cutting deep creases into his stubbled cheeks. It’s not the blue sky brushed with contrails that makes him happy. It’s the gun. He just popped six rounds from a […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Are tomorrow’s ghost towns sprouting today?
IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE that in the late 1880s, Bannock, Mont., was one of the fastest-growing, most wildly energetic communities in the West. The mining town was even proposed as the territorial capital. Today, it is a ramshackle collection of abandoned buildings surrounded by mine tailings and open only as a quiet tourist attraction. It […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
The good and bad of peak-bagging
“Above this memorable spot, the face of the mountain is … a maze of yawning chasms and gullies, in the angles of which rise beetling crags and piles of detached boulders that seem to have been gotten ready to be launched below. But the strange influx of strength I had received seemed inexhaustible. I found […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Clean energy activist reflects on corporate influence in New Mexico legislation
NAME: Ben Luce AGE: 44 Resume: Ten years at Los Alamos National Laboratory working on nonlinear dynamics; co-founder and former director of the New Mexico Coalition for Clean Affordable Energy; founder, Break The Grip. Minimum number of Task Force seats Governor Richardson appointed him to: Five (all relating to energy.) Minimum number of harmonicas carried […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Border restoration’s odd couple
Law enforcement and environmentalists are working together to save southwestern Arizona wetlands
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
The new land rush
In the West’s mountains, old mining claims are the latest real estate hotspots
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
A dustup over weed control
The BLM’s plans to spray nearly a million acres with herbicides have some environmentalists fuming, but many biologists and land managers welcome the policy
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Dear friends
MEET US IN SALT LAKE HCN invites Salt Lake City area readers to join us for a dialogue on Thursday, Sept. 13. We’ll help the Utah Science Center kick off a series of discussions on “Choices.” Several panelists, including David Nimkin, National Parks Conservation Association chair; Dianne Nielson, energy advisor to Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman; […]
Posted inWotr
When smoke gets in your life
On the way to Gardiner, Mont., the sunrise was a surreal red. All day, smoke squatted in town. Walking around on the eve of my writing class, seeing people through the haze, felt vaguely apocalyptic; what I imagined nuclear fallout might be like, or Pompeii after the eruption of Vesuvius. Ash landed on parked cars […]
Posted inWotr
The inevitable fires next time
Welcome to the West’s new world of fire. With six out of the last eight years among the worst 10 fire seasons since 1960, it is a world where every year is what we call a “bad” fire season. Or maybe it’s the “indefinitely bad” season, as Tom Boatner, the BLM’s chief of fire operations […]
Posted inArticles
The great American cat fight
Phantom cat of forest and desert, the jaguar slinks through its surroundings, an optical illusion of tawny, sun-dappled fur. It manifests and evaporates with hardly a trace amid the darkness of South American rainforests and the shattered canyons of the arid Southwest. By the 1980s, however, a century of predator control, hunting and habitat loss […]