First off, I like the band. They're one of my favorites. Obviously the old line-up, first albums until they died, not the post-crash bullcrap masquerading as them.
But something that's always struck me is how, unless I missed ever hearing it be talked about, the song Saturday Night Special wasn't considered a sticking point with their fans.
Modern country bands wouldn't dare write a song that's vaguely anti-second amendment.
Yet this song, which is from a Southern 70s band, literally has the lyric in it
"Hand guns are made for killin' They ain't no good for nothin' else....
So why don't we dump 'em, people To the bottom of the sea"
It's the "no one needs an AR-15" of the 70s.
Yeah a lot of murders happened with "Saturday Night Specials" and other handguns and revolvers, but also many lives were saved in self defense or otherwise with those very same guns.
Just pretty crazy that in the 1970s a band that would have a confederate flag on stage, would sing this to adoring crowds and it wasn't a big fuss. Maybe it was, and we're just not privy to it anymore. Someone who was alive back then' perspective would be greatly appreciated.
Well I know from personal experience that older dudes in the South, the kind that fly the Confederate Flag and would listen to Free Bird all day sitting on their porch with moonshine jugs, considered handguns "homo shit" anytime they saw them at the hunting camp shooting range. And would drunkenly harass/berate the "Yankee" with his fancy pistol for being a city slicker and all sorts of other things you can fill in the blank on.
I'm sure there was a hippy/Leftie notion behind it for the band, but it likely didn't phase these types of old dudes much because they had a clear hierarchy in their mind of what a "real gun" was.
Of course this is just from my specific corner of Louisiana years after the fact, dealing with old guys that lived to harass you for any reason.