Ray Park Quotes
My gun trainer on the first 'G.I. Joe' gave me about a week of commando training, so I got to shoot every single machine gun and hand gun there was.
Park, Ray. "Ray Park Talks G.I. JOE: RETALIATION." Interview by Christina Radish. Collider, Valnet Inc., 28 Mar. 2013.
This is yet another quotation demonstrating that the image of early America as a gun culture where most men were armed, skilled with those arms, and ready to come to the defense of the country. It turns out that none of the three corresponded to any historical reality for most Americans.
At the time, English ordinary citizens were not allowed to have firearms, but exception was made for the colonists. “Stands” were y-shaped sticks that the gun would rest on as the weight was about 20 pounds.
The great cowboy gunslinger was much a myth in that the few that were very good shots became legends. The best shots in America generally were the hunters of small game like Annie Oakley and the military and sportsmen who studied the gun and practiced endlessly. Almost all were in the Midwest and East. In the case of Oakley, she learned to shoot small game for food in rural Ohio. Her first shooting contest was not on the frontier but in the big city of Cincinnati.
This historical quotation gives us an interesting picture or Secret Service practices and First Family Security in 1937. Unlike all the first ladies before her and most after her, she was a very active political figure and regularly received threats. Yet she not only drove alone on occasions, but published that fact to the world in this column. Also, although an extreme liberal, she had little trouble carrying a gun and learning to use it. Her father and her Uncle Theodore Roosevelt both were very comfortable with guns. What is surprising is that the Secret Service did not provide more protection for her. At that time gun ownership had not yet become a political issue, and Mrs. Roosevelt, a committed liberal, thought nothing of “packing heat” at a personal level.
Raymond Park is a British actor, author and martial artist. He is best known for playing Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and Solo: A Star Wars Story, along with a motion capture performance in the final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Toad in X-Men, Snake-Eyes in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and Edgar on Heroes.
