Well, uh, no. Another instance of people tossing around the words "gun culture" without taking more than ten minutes to think about what "gun culture" actually means. And, as noted in Blake's second post, seeing their arguments dismissed for just that reason. https://twitter.com/RBlakeBrown/status/1359502883150991365

A culture is a set of shared values and beliefs held by some group of people. To have any kind of coherent culture that we can talk about, these values need to be shared to a sufficient extent that they become manifest somehow: customs, books, art, etc.

To choose a non-gun-related example, there is undeniably a culture surrounding fly fishing for trout, which has produced not only the folk art of the flies themselves but a substantial body of literature. It's less immediately clear what the values & beliefs are.

The idea of gun culture comes from Richard Hofstadter, who looked at a set of American gun-related ideas & said, "America is a gun culture."

More recently we see a sociological approach, which looks at people who own guns & seeks to understand what values they hold.

The problems that arise for Generoux's arguments are:
1. there is no single shared "gun culture" of all gun owners;
2. inability to define what "gun culture" is, for that reason;
3. the May 1 regulation affects a subculture that is recent & can't claim deep traditions.

Fact is, these two gun owners likely don't share any recognizable set of gun-related values & beliefs.

This is underscored by the likelihood that the guy on the right derides the values & beliefs of the guy on the left, calling him a "Fudd"

It is equally likely at first blush that neither share the values and beliefs of these fine gentlemen

So if you want to argue that the May 1 regulation violates the rights of gun owners to their culture, you run into enormous difficulty defining what culture is actually affected by a ban on specific firearms. Not this guys, or this guys.

& these two have a clear case for a cultural argument: customs, huge body of literature, and a recognizable set of values that begins, obviously, with the belief that killing wild animals for food is justified.

It is much less clear that there is a coherent culture connected to the specific firearms banned on May 1, what the values of such a culture are, and whether that culture is valuable enough to invalidate the regulation.

Last point is significant: cultural protection is not absolute. We can point to cultural beliefs held around the world at various times which are inconsistent with contemporary Canadian values & would not merit protection under Canadian law.

So the challenge Generoux faces is not only to define what gun subculture is affected by the May 1 regulation, and what its values are, but also to outweigh the government's argument that public safety outweighs its protection.

n/n at last holy shit what a pedant