American cowboys are armed and may or may not respect the law of the land, either. Tribesmen in Yemen are ranchers and truck farmers, and parts of Yemen are a bit like the “wild, wild West (or East).” Rural people, even rednecks and hillbillies, constitute part of the American body politic, just as they do the Yemeni.
The fact that these tribesmen are armed should not raise such alarm for Americans, either. Most other civilized Western countries don’t believe in a blanket right to bear arms, but Americans mostly do. And in a country like Yemen, armed citizens may serve as a bulwark against military tyranny. Let’s not imagine that Yemenis are any more inherently prone to guns and violence than Americans, since the empirical evidence does not support this stereotype.
