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Just a quick one - why would being British mean that Alan Moore had no understanding of guns? I'm not denying or confirming the accuracy of the depiction of gunshot wounds in TKJ (as I don't, in fact, have any understanding of guns), but I'm curious where the idea that being British = knowing nothing about guns would come from.
Britain has very strict gun control laws whereas much of the United States does not.
Side effects of this include the following: Brits, thinking they know America through American movies & TV, have some exaggerated ideas about the incidence of gun violence in this country. And they have a lack of the sense of the seriousness & realworld nature of gun violence.
Therefore, a Brit writing about gun crime in the USA is often as removed from reality as a Yank writing about ninja in Japan. Moore & Bolland, by writing Batman, were indulging in a fantasy version of the USA, which makes a sick sense since they're not Americans.
That said, yes, there are Americans who are careless enough to make larger errors in the portrayal of guns than that. I usually write this off as immaturity or indulging in exaggeration, either of which could be applied to Moore & Bolland as well.
But in this case, I think it's fair to see Brits writing the America of their fantasies, rather like Americans who write Britain according to their ignorant suppositions.
I think your latter argument - that this is an example of Brits writing America in a lazy fashion - is possibly a better argument than your initial one, that it's simply Brits not knowing about guns. I mainly say that because, back when Alan Moore wrote TKJ, gun laws in this country were far more relaxed than they are now. Perhaps still stricter than the US in general, but pre-Dunblane (1996) guns were still readily available.
Certainly however, I can certainly see the 'America of their fantasies' angle (though at least it is - as you point out - already a fantastical America), and am fairly sympathetic to the irritation that can cause (as you point out, it works both ways - though I don't see Britain used too much in general in comics, in film we regularly get the short end of the stick in our representations). Still, it's not all bad: if British writers stuck to Britain/fantasy representations thereof, we'd never have had Transmetropolitan or, more relevantly, Watchmen.
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- Rick Marshall (managing editor at www.comicmix.com)
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Side effects of this include the following: Brits, thinking they know America through American movies & TV, have some exaggerated ideas about the incidence of gun violence in this country. And they have a lack of the sense of the seriousness & realworld nature of gun violence.
Therefore, a Brit writing about gun crime in the USA is often as removed from reality as a Yank writing about ninja in Japan. Moore & Bolland, by writing Batman, were indulging in a fantasy version of the USA, which makes a sick sense since they're not Americans.
That said, yes, there are Americans who are careless enough to make larger errors in the portrayal of guns than that. I usually write this off as immaturity or indulging in exaggeration, either of which could be applied to Moore & Bolland as well.
But in this case, I think it's fair to see Brits writing the America of their fantasies, rather like Americans who write Britain according to their ignorant suppositions.
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Certainly however, I can certainly see the 'America of their fantasies' angle (though at least it is - as you point out - already a fantastical America), and am fairly sympathetic to the irritation that can cause (as you point out, it works both ways - though I don't see Britain used too much in general in comics, in film we regularly get the short end of the stick in our representations). Still, it's not all bad: if British writers stuck to Britain/fantasy representations thereof, we'd never have had Transmetropolitan or, more relevantly, Watchmen.
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