Gun Control

Album: Short Back 'N' Sides (1995)
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Songfacts®:

  • Disillusioned with Britain, Ian Hunter immigrated to the United States a decade before Sting's "Englishman in New York." His 1976 release All American Alien Boy is a concept album based on that transposition. Hunter's love affair with his adopted home has been critical rather than unconditional as can be seen from this song. Anyone reading the lyrics might think this was an endorsement of the right to bear arms as espoused in the American constitution, but listening to the song with its male voice choir dispels that notion.
  • In Campbell Devine's authorized biography of Ian Hunter and Mott The Hoople it is stated clearly that "Gun Control" was written as "a piss-take of all the gun freaks in the US." >>>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander - London, England, for above 2

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