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There is a difference between having access to the same information and truly understanding the culture. I can rattle off plenty of information about various countries. But I couldn't tell you one iota of what it is like to live there and interact with the people with all the underlying themes that go on in the society.
You assume that Americans don't know how the world perceives them. People make a lot of assumptions about Americans. You know what they say about assumptions. People do know. However, our political system doesn't make it easy to elect people who will better represent us rather than just continue to induce the same fear that goes into wars (on a large scale) and gun ownership(on a smaller scale). People know. A lot of them know. They just don't have much power to change it because no matter who you vote for, on foreign policy and defense they are mostly all the same.
Funny that almost every other free nation on earth doesn't have unrestricted gun ownership, yet somehow they're still free...
And it wouldn't be funny if they weren't allowed to talk about it and voice their opinion about it! It wouldn't be funny if someone spit on other people just because they don't like their opinion.
Is it freedom to live in such a perpetual state of fear that you cling to ammunition, deluding yourself it keeps you from harm? Sound more like dysfunctional to me.
Having a table to voice your opinion, regardless if it delusional or not, is freedom of speech. In a free country, you are allowed to express delusional opinions!
But I think seeker was talking about the freedom to express their views about the issue and to raffle off a gun legally, like those people in your neighbourhood did, without being spit on
Yes. Free to not be shot in a road rage incident. Free to not have to carry a gun to protect oneself from some other looney with a gun. Freedom from having our politicians kowtowing to the NRA.
Free to not have one's child shot dead accidentally by another child. Free to not have one's own and the neighborhood kids mowed down in cold blood while in class at school. Free to not have to worry about a loved one or friend get killed in a random drive-by shooting. Free to not have to worry about this or that President being shot dead.
If you look at our history, there are a lot of areas where people had access to guns freely, anyone of any age could get one (and often did, young kids frequently had their own rifles and so on). But we weren't killing each other like now. So while I don't disagree with what a different world it might be without guns, I don't think guns are the basis of the problems...even when considering gun crime. It's far deeper than that, and until we figure it out and start fixing *that* whether we have guns or no guns, this type of violence will continue. People will just find different ways to do it. The *reasons* for the violence are what we need to figure out. The disparity between classes allowing for the chasm of haves and have-nots. The culture of fear we all buy into. The culture of non-stop entertainment we all buy into. A lot of people, even if they don't own guns, are part of the deeper problem of why we have gun violence.
Like I said, I support better restrictions on who can own what, and how many. But it's not going to solve the problem that causes a person to think it's ok to shoot another person.
Where I live the chance that your bicycle gets stolen is a lot bigger than the chance that someone pulls a gun at you. The way I see it that doesn’t say we are better people but one big reason is probably that we have an awful lot of bicycles and virtually no guns.
Aside from that, the question what causes violence in society is quite interesting. Here’s a list of homicides per 100.000 inhabitants per country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate The most significant difference between Canada and Mexico is probably not the gun laws and I wonder why people are so eager to kill each other in Greenland.
I don’t want to analyze US society for you, but I think that’s what you’d have to do. The explanation is not that there are a number of bad people. They are everywhere. The difference in homicide rates in different countries says something about their societies.
I live very near Blacksburg, Virginia, where Virginia Tech is located. Most people probably remember the mass shooting at Tech in 2007 where 32 people were killed by a deranged student, who then killed himself. If that memory isn't bad enough, today at the annual "Steppin' Out" street festival in Blacksburg, a group calling itself the "Virginia Citizens Defense League" not only has a tent where they're giving out stickers saying "Guns save lives", they have the audacity to be raffling off a Glock handgun identical to the one used in the Virginia Tech massacre - all literally almost within sight of where the massacre took place.
I walked by their booth today, it it honestly took every ounce of self-restraint I possess not to go up and spit on them. What is America coming to that our precious "gun rights" trump basic human decency? These people can only be sociopaths to be so insensitive and tasteless.
Also, the gun industry has a very powerful lobby so it is unlikely that US gun laws will change much.
Maybe there needs to be an anti-gun or gun-control lobby. Like the anti-drunk driving lobby started by Moms Against Drunk Driving (MADD) that succeeded in getting DWI laws tightened and enforced, lobbies to change laws in how we deal with kidnapped children, and so forth. A citizens' lobby.
It's going to proverbial hell. Don't you read the papers?
Oh, I couldn't imagine what could possibly go wrong:
I'm fairly sure that my right to free speech is threatened when someone who disagrees with me shows up with a gun. This is just common sense. There is no reason these guys had to bring guns to the rally. They could have showed up with signs, as people have done forever. They could have shouted down the speakers, they could have engaged the protesters one on one. This is how we normally stage our political disagreements. But no, they show up at rallies with loaded guns and ostentatiously display them. There is no other reason to do it this way except that you want to intimidate those on the other side.
According to [Representative Carolyn] Maloney, three phone calls were made to her Upper East Side office about an hour apart from each other, ABC reports. Disturbed by the phone calls, the congresswoman decided to skip an event where she was scheduled to present an award that night.
The Republican party, a number of timid Democrats, and the conservative "movement" have played footsie with dangerous woodland characters for far too long. This stuff can be used, but it cannot be fully controlled. This is not political debate. This is empowered, enabled paranoia, with firearms. This is not an exercise in democracy.
Comments
You assume that Americans don't know how the world perceives them. People make a lot of assumptions about Americans. You know what they say about assumptions. People do know. However, our political system doesn't make it easy to elect people who will better represent us rather than just continue to induce the same fear that goes into wars (on a large scale) and gun ownership(on a smaller scale). People know. A lot of them know. They just don't have much power to change it because no matter who you vote for, on foreign policy and defense they are mostly all the same.
Like I said, I support better restrictions on who can own what, and how many. But it's not going to solve the problem that causes a person to think it's ok to shoot another person.
The way I see it that doesn’t say we are better people but one big reason is probably that we have an awful lot of bicycles and virtually no guns.
Aside from that, the question what causes violence in society is quite interesting.
Here’s a list of homicides per 100.000 inhabitants per country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
The most significant difference between Canada and Mexico is probably not the gun laws and I wonder why people are so eager to kill each other in Greenland.
I don’t want to analyze US society for you, but I think that’s what you’d have to do. The explanation is not that there are a number of bad people. They are everywhere. The difference in homicide rates in different countries says something about their societies.
It has 200 to 300 million guns.
This is incomprehensible to people from other countries.
As an outside observer, i can see the point
when people say they need guns to defend themselves.
But when you have that many guns, you have to
pay the price for it.
Gun violence in US is the highest in the world.
Is that a surprise to anyone?
The worst part is guns are marketed to kids.
There is a gun called the cricket and it comes in barbie pink.
Also, the gun industry has a very powerful lobby
so it is unlikely that US gun laws will change much.
to me, there is no right or wrong, you choose to make
guns easily accessible, so you deal with the consequences.