Driving around town this weekend (near Colorado Boulevard and Virginia in Denver) ended up behind a nice new white pickup truck with an extended cab (I'm not enough of a pro to give you the make and model). In the back window was a two foot tall white decal displaying a hand grenade (pin in place; similar to, but not identical to this one). Nothing else adorned the car.
Just what message did the owner intend to send?
I received a message something along the lines of: "I am a violent psychopath ready to engage is mass murder at any moment, don't mess with me."
It wasn't clear or directed enough to be a threat (i.e. I'm not trying to say that this was illegal, just odd and in bad taste), but it did catch my attention, and not in the humorous way that the runner up for most notable car adornment this weekend, a bumper sticker proclaiming "I heart jet noise," did.
Surely, if you wanted to portray military associations, you'd do a bumper sticker in the "Semper Fi" or "Proud To Be A Marine" or "10th Mountain Division" genre. And, there is also a whole genre of 2nd Amendment bumper stickers of the "I heart the NRA" or "Take my wife, take my dog, but you'll have to pull my gun from my cold dead hands" variety. But, a hand grenade without comment delivers neither message very clearly, is pretty apolitical and is quite chilling.
Perhaps others can offer other insight on the intended meaning of the image in this context.
As an aside, the Denver Post noted today that the percentage of households where someone owns a gun in the U.S. has droped to a record low 35%, and that about 77% of all guns in the U.S. (250 million) are owned by the 10% of the population that have four or more guns.
1 comment:
I saw a VW Hippie van outside My Brother's Bar last weekend with a few hand grenade decals and was really confused for similar reasons. But I was told that grenade is a snowboarding apparel company. So maybe your truck guy is not a violent psychopat but just wants to look good on the mountain.
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