These replies are not surprising. Guns are a part of the culture in white rural Missouri, and often proudly so. Guns mean protection, self-preservation, and patriotism, as my cab driver Jim told me. And perhaps phrasing the question in the way I do, and the fact of my being an outsider, implies on some level that I ascribe culpability to the culture itself and to its inhabitants, even though this is not my intention.
