Something people (generally outside the US) seem to forget, or not notice, is that gun laws only impact... you know... legal guns. And while I don't doubt that a higher-than-insignificant percentage of gun-related violence in the US is due to legal guns, I seriously doubt that gangsters, wannabe gangsters, plain crazy people, etc. etc. are using legal guns.
Considering background checks are not universal, the capacity for criminals to get guns legally is pretty high. It sort of breaks down when you factor that in. Consider also that the gun lobby has opposed regulations impacting both trafficking and straw purchases and we're still making it pretty freaking easy for criminals to get their hands on guns.
Consider that we had one such shooter kill people in CO and TX because someone purchased the gun for him. IF they choose to throw the book at her and hit her with the worst penalties possible, she will get....Basically a slap on the wrist.
As far as "crazy" people go, I'm willing to bet most "crazy" people are using readily accessible, legal guns.
Britisheagle said:
OT: It does not matter if guns are regulated or not; if someone is set on going on a rampage with a gun they aren't going to double check they have the correct paper work, it just happens.
Why do the British seem to fear gun deaths, but ignore football riots and violence?
It's simply a difference in what is culturally normal in your society. We have gangsters with guns, the British have soccar hooligans with tire irons and knives.
Guns can arguably give you a degree of control over the situation. That is why gun violence causes many to call for everybody to be armed--if a gunman attacks, there are other people who can use those same weapons to take him down.
With terrorism, there is no even imaginary veneer of safety that can be divined from it. There is nothing about it that can make people safer. With a terrorist attack, you're either the terrorist or the victim. There's no middle ground, and there's no aspect of it that can be turned around to make anybody safer.
also this. most gun violence is "in the moment" specifically targeting someone, usually over a personal matter or self defense, a bomb/act of terrorism is a pre thought out plan to hit as many people as possible and instill fear in any and everyone.
Something that I feel, as an American and a Gun owner, should be brought up is that in the US the majority of the legally owned guns are owned by people living in low-population density rural and small town areas. Conversely, the majority of gun-violence and gun-related crime happens in high population density urban areas.
So you have one side that doesn't own guns, never have and likely never will own guns, doesn't know anyone who owns guns and what little the know about guns is from hearing about somebody that got shot.
You then have another side that owns guns, many many guns, their family owns guns, their neighbors own guns, guns-guns-guns, everywhere you look there are guns.... and nobody gets shot.
Is it any wonder how both sides could hold such passionate and diametrically opposed opinions on the subject of civilian gun-ownership?
I'd venture that it's because constantly featuring stories where your own people are the bad guys/crazies is a pretty good way to ruin your news network. Therefore they (newspeople of any country) try to limit the coverage of home-grown killers.
What I can't understand is why people are so up in arms about 3 people dying, when every day in Afghanistan/Iraq and that area, hundreds of innocents are killed in the crossfire each day, by people including American troops.
It was a tragedy, but I hear people saying that it's the biggest atrocity since 9/11. Even since then, there was that explosion in Texas.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/21/boston-marathon-bombs-us-gun-law Don't "shoot" the messenger by the way. Personally, I think it's in part because of the fear monger that is the mass media, if not mostly. I mean CNN covered a lockdown of a city for the whole day Friday where NOTHING HAPPENED for most of the day! Lets not forget the bullshit they reported to later retract(false bombers, false leads, false reports of other bombs)not just CNN either.
1 man shut down a city of over a million. Where is the logic in this? Anyway, I just thought it was a pretty good read.
Whats even more frightening is the chap is now being charged with using WMDs. Now that is a tad hypocritical since if an IED is a WMD then surely a semi automatic gun is.
Tom_green_day said:
What I can't understand is why people are so up in arms about 3 people dying, when every day in Afghanistan/Iraq and that area, hundreds of innocents are killed in the crossfire each day, by people including American troops.
It was a tragedy, but I hear people saying that it's the biggest atrocity since 9/11. Even since then, there was that explosion in Texas.
This is very true, I'm British but I was working in the U.S. last year and one of my American co-workers was shocked when I casually dismissed the tensions in Northern Ireland as just "a bomb every now and again", because it's just a fact of life for Brits: the sky is blue, there are bombs in Northern Ireland, you just sort of accept it without thinking about it after a while. If your country has only been attacked once or twice before on the other hand... pretty scary.
I would also like to note, not to argue with you but to continue with the thread, that I've never seen coverage of the IRA where they did not have guns. Are they legal in Ireland for some reason? I don't know how universal the UK's laws are.
Actually a lot of the guns came from the US. Not neccessarily directly, but the US were behind the IRA, or rather, Irish independance, and against the British.
OT: Americans like guns, Americans do not like being blown up. Changing one's glasses for differant senarios is common all over the world, and it's the same proccess here.
Okay, this touches on a lot of things so I'll start with the one most likely to piss people off so we can move past that:
When it comes to international coverage of things like US Armament, there is a very transparent case of "gun envy". Basically the Brits and other countries like to go off about armed Americans because on a basic level they wish they had an armed populance as well. In say the UK, the people are more or less entirely at the mercy of their own goverment and law enforcement, which can act pretty much as it sees fit without any direct threat of resistance from the people. In the US, the goverment is greatly limited by what it can do because in the case of a popular uprising the most it could hope for would be to destroy itself. Assuming the military backed the goverment during a popular uprising, when the smoke cleared and the tanks and planes destroyed everything (and that's what it would take) there would be nothing left for the goverment to rule. In a more "present" sense it also means that stupid laws become more or less unenforcable because at the end of the day your typical cop has to worry about whether it's worth potentially getting shot to enforce some politician's stupid vanity law. Overall the US works well and maintains the world's highest standard of freedom because of the way the right to bear arms limits govermental authority and excesses. The authorities can deal with armed individuals, and even small groups of individuals, but not with any kind of popular or large scale uprising, and it also means that at the best of times the authorities have to show caution.
To really "see" things clearly here you have to listen to what people from the UK, Australia, etc... have to say when they aren't discussing guns directly, but in terms of the goverment doing stupid things with no recourse for the average person. Goverment/police thuggery are pretty much a way of life, because at the end of the day it has all of the real power and can make the people do whatever it wants. A cop in the UK will just do whatever a politician tells them to usualy when a law is passed, because there is no real reason for him not to. Without his life being in danger the path of least resistance is to just do whatever he's told, and tell anyone who complains to blame the politicians. A lot of things in the rest of the civilized first world go badly there largely because the population is powerless. They just don't tend to put 2 and 2 together. Nor do most bother to consider this when they try and say "we have more freedom than the US", when really whatever freedom they have is entirely based on whatever the goverment wants to give them. In some nations like Canada that are also fairly critical you have the police running around with Blank Warrents (or they used to), something which pretty much undercuts 90% of the rights the people there think they have.
See, at the end of the day, ask yourself could the people of the UK for example ever have the right to bear arms like Americans can if they wanted it? The answer is no, they could not. The goverment would never let them have it, holding all the cards it has no real vested interest in changing that. The UK goverment wouldn't even need tanks and planes to put down a large scale revolt because the people just aren't well armed enough for it to be a factor, any revolutuon would have to worry about arming itself from the outside.
-
That bit aside, a very straightforward answer to why gun violence isn't seen as being as big a problem as terrorism is that the gun violence is seen as the expected price to be paid for the power and freedom having an armed populance allows. A few deaths here and there, while not good, are a far lesser evil than being under the goverment's bootheel. Those who are anti-gun in the US tend to be very short sighted and/or victims involved in a kneejerk reaction. What's more it also doesn't go unnoticed that most of the victims tend to be stupid liberals who are themselves anti-gun and/or unarmed, not to mention that the lack of response in many of these cases is largely because of goverment limitations on armament. Basically if some dude carrying a gun can terrorize a hundred people and claim dozens of victims, it can easily be argued that this comes from most of those people not packing. After all if your carrying a gun and not using it, and some dude goes on a shooting rampage, the first thing your going to do is take him out with your own gun. A lot of the upswing in firearms violence can arguably be tied by pro-gun proponents to increasing numbers of unarmed civilians (and the knowlege of them being unarmed) largely brought about by goverment controls. With tighter rules on ownership, registration, and carrying, our "armed" population tends to mostly only be armed in their own homes, some goober comes into a shopping mall with a few guns and cuts loose, he can pretty much guarantee not many people (if anyone) will be able to shoot back even if a lot of those people owned guns in a technical sense. A concealed carry permit being incredibly difficult to get nowadays (requiring connections) is a big part of the problem, as are limitations on where you can carry even then. "Sandy Hook" would have been a very differant scenario if the adults had been armed. Not wanting guns around the kids, and preventing the responsible caretakers from having them, also rendered it very vulnerable.
The bottom line though is that the armed incidents you hear about are a small price to pay for the freedom and safeguards inherant in an armed society.
When it comes to TERRORISM the answer is that the violence largely comes from outside sources, and that it also happens to be something the US is largely not prepared for idealogically. Our entire mentality is based around the idea of threats coming from other nations, in the form of a clearly defined military threat. Not from cultures, or idealogies which are largely acting through the covert actitivies of un-uniformed civilians. What's more as a nation so based on the idea of individual freedom and "Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" in our criminal system, the questions this raises about the need to single out and persecute entire groups of people for purposes of public safety are contrary to our central belief structure since we created our society with the assumpsion that things like terrorism basically didn't happen, especially not here. This is further combined with facing enemies that cannot be combatted with our reactive and humanintarian ideals on how a war should be fought. Simply put when your facing an religiously motivated enemy that is willing to kill hundreds of civilians to spread terror and make a point, your at a huge disadvantage when your not willing to do the same in return... To put things into perspective, when the UK fought the IRA, it largely gave as well as it got, because it was willing to be just as vicious under the table if need be as the guys they were fighting, leading to massive amounts of atrocities on both sides and an actual war. The US in general isn't willing to do that, or at least not on the same level.
What's more when it comes to things like the bombing of the Boston Marathon, uncomfortable questions are raised about a lot of things. Here we have "suspects" who were clearly not US aligned, having as many roots in Russia as they do in the US, having gone oveseas before the attack, as well as immersed in Muslim culture to the point of being anti-US to the point of terrorism. All of the signs were there that these guys were not loyal Americans but our principles prevented us from noticing or doing anything about it. Anyone who is a US citizen that spends that much time overseas in a nation that isn't exactly a friend of the US in recent years (Russia) or that follows this religion is questionable in the current climate as a matter of common sense. We can't profile though by our own principles, and just by saying this I am doubtlessly breeding anger for being politically incorrect, as many of my readers are probably clenching their jaws about to respond about American principles and how having been pro-active here in any sense that would have mattered would have been wrong.... these very questions, and the disagreements that arise, and uncomfortable to Americans because this hits the very founding principles of our society, far more than others. This is the kind of internal dialogue we never wanted to have.
With the Gun Violence there is a clear cost/benefit analysis involved, the price of the gunshot deaths is well worth the benefits in terms of limiting goverment power. With terrorism there is no clear question like that. In an objective sense we should be profiling people like crazy, and having our troops in The Middle East rounding up 1,000 civilians at random for every American that dies in a terrorist attack or the result of insurgency and executing them to make the conflict unsustainable (ie we'll achieve genocide before the fall of the US if they push it far enough). We have the power and abillity in reality to end the entire problem in a couple of months. Hell, in an absolute sense the entire world survives at our whim because we alone have enough nukes to end the world 10x over if we ever just decided "hey you know, let's destroy the world for lulz!" we *might* be able to stop someone else from doing that with our anti-missle technologies if we wanted to, but nobody else could... that's a truely staggering amount of power. The US on the other hand is based on the principle of not flaunting our power (despite what we're accused of) and pursueing humanitarian goals, at our worst we're like a nosy cop that nobody wants around until they are yelling for help. Profiling violates our moral imperitive and the principles of proof and equality we long since established. Acting in a way to fight an "intangible" cultural enemy as opposed to a national one is directly contrary to our founding principles. As a nation we've been telling the world they should be living by our standards of proof, and using our level of military restraint, and it would be galling to many if we had to admit we were wrong, make the exceptions, and do all of the things we've been trying to define ourselves by not doing. Personally, I've been long since convinced we were wrong and need to face reality, thank Islam and Muslim culture for taking the dream of global co-existance and dumping it into the crapper by demonstrating there are people who can't co-exist with anyone else at all except under their own very specific terms (including things like the enslavement of women). A lot of people have not been, and think things will magically work out if we stick to our guns.... and neither side ever wanted there to be sides drawn about things like this.
Something that I feel, as an American and a Gun owner, should be brought up is that in the US the majority of the legally owned guns are owned by people living in low-population density rural and small town areas. Conversely, the majority of gun-violence and gun-related crime happens in high population density urban areas.
So you have one side that doesn't own guns, never have and likely never will own guns, doesn't know anyone who owns guns and what little the know about guns is from hearing about somebody that got shot.
You then have another side that owns guns, many many guns, their family owns guns, their neighbors own guns, guns-guns-guns, everywhere you look there are guns.... and nobody gets shot.
Wouldn't population density have as much or more to do with crime rates as gun ownership? Maybe this is just me, but it hardly seems fair to expect urban areas where millions of people (many poor) live packed together to have less crime or violence then rural areas, regardless of the availability of firearms.
But OT yeah, different cultural values is probably the culprit. Different societies react differently to different social institutions; terrorism, gun violence, riots, political corruption and so on.
Something that I feel, as an American and a Gun owner, should be brought up is that in the US the majority of the legally owned guns are owned by people living in low-population density rural and small town areas. Conversely, the majority of gun-violence and gun-related crime happens in high population density urban areas.
So you have one side that doesn't own guns, never have and likely never will own guns, doesn't know anyone who owns guns and what little the know about guns is from hearing about somebody that got shot.
You then have another side that owns guns, many many guns, their family owns guns, their neighbors own guns, guns-guns-guns, everywhere you look there are guns.... and nobody gets shot.
Wouldn't population density have as much or more to do with crime rates as gun ownership? Maybe this is just me, but it hardly seems fair to expect urban areas where millions of people (many poor) live packed together to have less crime or violence then rural areas, regardless of the availability of firearms.
But OT yeah, different cultural values is probably the culprit. Different societies react differently to different social institutions; terrorism, gun violence, riots, political corruption and so on.
That's kind of my point. It's not all that surprising that dense urban centers have more crime in general than rural areas, but that's not what the argument is about here in the US. In the US when the anti-gun side brings up the topic it's all about GUN-crime and GUN-violence and look at how awful these awful-awful GUNs are for bringing the scourge of GUN-violence upon our poor heads (cue pictures of NRA members twirling mustaches).
Which then causes the pro-gun side to go, "What the devil are they banging on about? No, honestly, we haven't got a clue because we've been busy cleaning our several hundred MILLION guns whilst singing 'Kumbaya'." Or maybe not quite that but it does paint a rather interesting picture of just how divergent the perspectives can be due to how little violence of any sort goes on amongst the segment of the population that owns the majority stake in he most user-friendly killing and maimery tools on the market and how that can create such vastly different opinions on what counts as 'reasonable' when it comes to gun regulation.
EDIT: On the original topic however my amateur maths skill seemed to indicate that of the 200-300+ Million guns in the US something like on the order of 0.01% of them are actually used to murder people which statistically isn't all that significant (speaking of statistics, more Americans are killed each year by automobiles than by guns) and outside of the raw numbers it's hard to get all riled up over something to a significant degree in a culture that is overall fairly comfortable with guns in and of themselves. But great jumping Jesus-tits are Explosions ever dramatic? I mean, PHWOORH!
I'm probably on of the very few who will actually read your wall-posts, Therumancer. I've found that they can be enlightening. However, I must disagree on a few statements for being too...sweeping, perhaps?
Therumancer said:
See, at the end of the day, ask yourself could the people of the UK for example ever have the right to bear arms like Americans can if they wanted it? The answer is no, they could not. The goverment would never let them have it, holding all the cards it has no real vested interest in changing that. The UK goverment wouldn't even need tanks and planes to put down a large scale revolt because the people just aren't well armed enough for it to be a factor, any revolutuon would have to worry about arming itself from the outside.
Given the centuries of history the UK has--including quite a few civil wars--perhaps they're culturally less inclined towards violent revolution than you might think. If so the argument that only a lack of firearms would preclude that path of social change seems exaggerated.
Granted the celebrations over Margaret Thatcher's death and the bone deep vitriol many English feel towards her and her government could suggest that I'm entirely mistaken.
Therumancer said:
Those who are anti-gun in the US tend to be very short sighted and/or victims involved in a kneejerk reaction. What's more it also doesn't go unnoticed that most of the victims tend to be stupid liberals who are themselves anti-gun and/or unarmed, not to mention that the lack of response in many of these cases is largely because of goverment limitations on armament.
According to some statistics the largest demographic suffering from gun related violence aren't liberals but victims of black on black violence. Rev. Jesse Jackson has commented on this fact many, many times over the decades.
Therumancer said:
A concealed carry permit being incredibly difficult to get nowadays (requiring connections) is a big part of the problem, as are limitations on where you can carry even then.
It is true that in New York City it is extraordinarily difficult to get such a permit. On the other end of the scale it is now very, very easy to get such a permit in Texas and other states.
Therumancer said:
"Sandy Hook" would have been a very differant scenario if the adults had been armed. Not wanting guns around the kids, and preventing the responsible caretakers from having them, also rendered it very vulnerable.
In a Time magazine article from a few months ago a former police officer who trains civilians (including teachers) to use firearms emphasized via a personal story of his from his law enforcement days that it takes intensive training in order for police (and civilians) to react in a rational, controlled manner in a shoot out. He spoke of several training programs which "graduated" teachers, etc, after as little as one week of training as being dangerously insufficient--including by misleading the graduates into believing that they were better prepared than in fact they were.
Apparently it takes training more on the scale of Special Forces intensity to properly prepare men and women for the reality of a fire fight. I'll try to look it up on Time's internet site and see if I can provide a link.
NOTE: One of the most interesting things about that particular story was it also involved medical studies of how people's adrenaline rushes effects their brain's ability to cope with the reality of a fire fight. That story in and of itself would make for an interesting thread.
Therumancer said:
With the Gun Violence there is a clear cost/benefit analysis involved, the price of the gunshot deaths is well worth the benefits in terms of limiting goverment power. With terrorism there is no clear question like that. In an objective sense we should be profiling people like crazy, and having our troops in The Middle East rounding up 1,000 civilians at random for every American that dies in a terrorist attack or the result of insurgency and executing them to make the conflict unsustainable (ie we'll achieve genocide before the fall of the US if they push it far enough). We have the power and abillity in reality to end the entire problem in a couple of months.
Vietnam taught us the dangers of such over-confidence. And the fallacy of believing in what we want to believe when viewing the world and its complexities through "rose tinted glasses".
Therumancer said:
Hell, in an absolute sense the entire world survives at our whim because we alone have enough nukes to end the world 10x over if we ever just decided "hey you know, let's destroy the world for lulz!" we *might* be able to stop someone else from doing that with our anti-missle technologies if we wanted to, but nobody else could... that's a truely staggering amount of power.
World wide genocide...always a cheerful concept to wave in people's faces.
Therumancer said:
Personally, I've been long since convinced we were wrong and need to face reality, thank Islam and Muslim culture for taking the dream of global co-existance and dumping it into the crapper by demonstrating there are people who can't co-exist with anyone else at all except under their own very specific terms (including things like the enslavement of women). A lot of people have not been, and think things will magically work out if we stick to our guns.... and neither side ever wanted there to be sides drawn about things like this.
Those who are anti-gun in the US tend to be very short sighted and/or victims involved in a kneejerk reaction. What's more it also doesn't go unnoticed that most of the victims tend to be stupid liberals who are themselves anti-gun and/or unarmed, not to mention that the lack of response in many of these cases is largely because of goverment limitations on armament.
According to some statistics the largest demographic suffering from gun related violence aren't liberals but victims of black on black violence. Rev. Jesse Jackson has commented on this fact many, many times over the decades.
I'd like to point out that Reverend Jesse Jackson is kind of a ****.
He's a celebrity of the black community who they trot out every time certain members of that community want to make a statement. In reality he's no more qualified to talk about gun violence than I am to talk about rocket science, so I would take everything he says about the subject with a boulder sized grain of salt.
I'd like to point out that Reverend Jesse Jackson is kind of a ****.
He's a celebrity of the black community who they trot out every time certain members of that community want to make a statement. In reality he's no more qualified to talk about gun violence than I am to talk about rocket science, so I would take everything he says about the subject with a boulder sized grain of salt.
And since it was revealed that the Reverend had sired a daughter outside of his marriage his stock plummeted even further with the younger generations who weren't around during the civil rights era than it had already been. From an NPR news story I heard last fall his public criticisms of Obama prior to Obama's being first elected to the presidency--criticisms which could be summed up as "he's not one of us old time trench fighters and doesn't kowtow to us like he should"[footnote]I'm paraphrasing, but I recall clearly that that summed up his comments.[/footnote]--also contributed to his decline in popularity and respect.
I used him as an example because it's more telling when such problems are mentioned by a civil rights legend (and let's face it--he at least used to be that) than from faceless statisticians.
Interesting reading there. I'll be honest, things like this make me feel a bit better about making broad generalisations jokes about Americans as gun-mad conspiracy theorists. Seriously, I get that it's rare for people to think their government is perfect, but the idea that you have that the government needs to be held hostage with a gun to its head (or rather, since you admit that the military would win in a confrontation between itself and an armed populace, it's basically the general population holding itself hostage) to stop it from oppressing the people is... pretty damn funny. Let's be clear, "gun envy" is not something I have ever even heard of expressed as a conscious desire, and I've lived in Australia for a fairly lengthy chunk of my life. This idea of needing to keep the government in check is very, very American. In most democracies if people get pissed off by a government, they vote for the other party. Have a bit of faith in democratic process, seriously (I never thought I'd ever hear me say that).
Anywho, I'm not going to bother with a point-by-point analysis because, as far as I can tell, we're not even operating on the same framework of how the world works. Still, thank you. A very interesting read, and a very different perspective from what I normally read about.
On topic, as others have said, it's really pretty simple. The UK has had a long exposure to terrorist attacks, the USA does not. The inverse is true regarding gun violence. They've each become accustomed to their particular kind of violence, and find the other particularly horrific.
I'm probably on of the very few who will actually read your wall-posts, Therumancer. I've found that they can be enlightening. However, I must disagree on a few statements for being too...sweeping, perhaps?
Therumancer said:
See, at the end of the day, ask yourself could the people of the UK for example ever have the right to bear arms like Americans can if they wanted it? The answer is no, they could not. The goverment would never let them have it, holding all the cards it has no real vested interest in changing that. The UK goverment wouldn't even need tanks and planes to put down a large scale revolt because the people just aren't well armed enough for it to be a factor, any revolutuon would have to worry about arming itself from the outside.
Given the centuries of history the UK has--including quite a few civil wars--perhaps they're culturally less inclined towards violent revolution than you might think. If so the argument that only a lack of firearms would preclude that path of social change seems exaggerated.
Granted the celebrations over Margaret Thatcher's death and the bone deep vitriol many English feel towards her and her government could suggest that I'm entirely mistaken.
Therumancer said:
Those who are anti-gun in the US tend to be very short sighted and/or victims involved in a kneejerk reaction. What's more it also doesn't go unnoticed that most of the victims tend to be stupid liberals who are themselves anti-gun and/or unarmed, not to mention that the lack of response in many of these cases is largely because of goverment limitations on armament.
According to some statistics the largest demographic suffering from gun related violence aren't liberals but victims of black on black violence. Rev. Jesse Jackson has commented on this fact many, many times over the decades.
Therumancer said:
A concealed carry permit being incredibly difficult to get nowadays (requiring connections) is a big part of the problem, as are limitations on where you can carry even then.
It is true that in New York City it is extraordinarily difficult to get such a permit. On the other end of the scale it is now very, very easy to get such a permit in Texas and other states.
Therumancer said:
"Sandy Hook" would have been a very differant scenario if the adults had been armed. Not wanting guns around the kids, and preventing the responsible caretakers from having them, also rendered it very vulnerable.
In a Time magazine article from a few months ago a former police officer who trains civilians (including teachers) to use firearms emphasized via a personal story of his from his law enforcement days that it takes intensive training in order for police (and civilians) to react in a rational, controlled manner in a shoot out. He spoke of several training programs which "graduated" teachers, etc, after as little as one week of training as being dangerously insufficient--including by misleading the graduates into believing that they were better prepared than in fact they were.
Apparently it takes training more on the scale of Special Forces intensity to properly prepare men and women for the reality of a fire fight. I'll try to look it up on Time's internet site and see if I can provide a link.
NOTE: One of the most interesting things about that particular story was it also involved medical studies of how people's adrenaline rushes effects their brain's ability to cope with the reality of a fire fight. That story in and of itself would make for an interesting thread.
Therumancer said:
With the Gun Violence there is a clear cost/benefit analysis involved, the price of the gunshot deaths is well worth the benefits in terms of limiting goverment power. With terrorism there is no clear question like that. In an objective sense we should be profiling people like crazy, and having our troops in The Middle East rounding up 1,000 civilians at random for every American that dies in a terrorist attack or the result of insurgency and executing them to make the conflict unsustainable (ie we'll achieve genocide before the fall of the US if they push it far enough). We have the power and abillity in reality to end the entire problem in a couple of months.
Vietnam taught us the dangers of such over-confidence. And the fallacy of believing in what we want to believe when viewing the world and its complexities through "rose tinted glasses".
Therumancer said:
Hell, in an absolute sense the entire world survives at our whim because we alone have enough nukes to end the world 10x over if we ever just decided "hey you know, let's destroy the world for lulz!" we *might* be able to stop someone else from doing that with our anti-missle technologies if we wanted to, but nobody else could... that's a truely staggering amount of power.
World wide genocide...always a cheerful concept to wave in people's faces.
Therumancer said:
Personally, I've been long since convinced we were wrong and need to face reality, thank Islam and Muslim culture for taking the dream of global co-existance and dumping it into the crapper by demonstrating there are people who can't co-exist with anyone else at all except under their own very specific terms (including things like the enslavement of women). A lot of people have not been, and think things will magically work out if we stick to our guns.... and neither side ever wanted there to be sides drawn about things like this.
When it comes to the UK I'll say that I'm going by periodic complaints by UK citizens when the issues come up on forums like this, one of which frequently seems to be out of control goverment there, with the goverment doing things from time to time that I do not think the US goverment would attempt for fear of the kind of backlash it could lead to, or simply the trouble inherant in getting the police to enforce the laws. In a less general sense look at the whole issue in the UK of constant "the second you leave your house" suerveillance, which has lead to some rather bitter complaints, where in the US it's very true that one camera or another catches you at any given time, the goverment's access to that information comparitively limited. If the people of the UK were not otherwise defenseless, I don't think the goverment would have pushed things to that level, as it is, what can the people do there except QQ ineffectively? At the end of the day if the goverment doesn't want to change, it's not going to, taken to the most extreme level in a conflict between the people of the UK and the goverment of the UK, the people will always lose, because at the end of the day they are entirely toothless.
I do not think the people of the UK are itching for an armed revolt right at the moment, but I do think they would find their situation a lot better if they at least had the possibility at their fingertips. At the end of the day the people of the US are better off and more empowered than the people in the UK are, and as I said, this is one right the people in the UK simply can never have, they would never be allowed to have it. In the US the only way we become declawed is
if we're stupid enough to give the goverment permission to do it.
When it comes to shooting, I will confess I flubbed there. When I mentioned liberals big the big victims, I was mostly talking about the recent rash of gun violence that has been making the news, as opposed to a more long-term examnation of things. While mostly it was pro-gun sources, the breakdowns I've been reading have largely pointed out that the cases the media seems to be lionizing for "America Goes Gun Wild" and fueling the current anti-gun crusades, have largely involved victims who were unarmed and unprepared to defend themselves.
As far as what it takes for someone to defend themselves in a firefight goes, let me be honest, if you ever DID show an article in TIME reinforcing what your claiming, that would pretty much sink their credability to the ground. Teaching people to be effective with guns in a firefight is stupidly easy, which is why they are such a big deal, and changed the world to the extent that they have. We live in a world where right now there are entire third world armies recruiting little kids like 7 and 8 years old and teaching them to use guns effectively and unleashing them on their enemies. TIME itself has even covered such things. One other issue is the constant accusation that the US loves to send it's military to other countries in small numbers to train rebels and gueriellas opposing regimes we don't like. With guns it's possible to turn out a fairly effective insurgent force inside of a week. If it was that hard to use guns effectively pretty much every modern gueriella movement or warlord takeover would have failed utterly because they didn't have time to "train for years to special forces standards". Now granted someone who trains with a real military and does it as a career is going to have an advantage, and someone who actually trains with the special forces and makes the cut, is going to be something really special which why they are *ahem* special forces. In a perfect world we could have some special forces guy on hand to conveiently stop anyone going on a shooting rampage, on the other hand some dude on scene with a personal sidearm can do in a pinch, and let's be blunt here, when your dealing with some teenager whose shooting up the local mall because his girlfriend dumped him or whatever, it's not like it's an invasion by Spetznatz, and honestly I think your typical fireams enthusiast is more than up to that task.... No, Rednecks are never going to outfight Seal Team Six, in a small unit skirmish but that's not what we're talking about here either. If a couple of teachers in say "Sandy Hook" had sidearms while there is no guarantee, it probably would have changed the entire situation, among other things if they were known to be armed it might not have ever been targeted.
As far as the ease of getting a firearm permit goes, it does vary state by state, but in general it's very difficult where the states where it's easy are an exception. Concealed carry permits usually requiring numerous referances and people in politics to sign off on them, which can make it nearly impossible for your average person to get a gun. Rather than being a right, it's largely become a perk for those who know people. In most states it's easy to actually own a gun, but that's differant from carrying one. A handgun for home defense in your night stand doesn't do much good if some dude who claims he's "The Joker" comes into the movie theater your attending and starts shooting. As I said, right now the American people are pretty heavily armed, but it doesn't much help when everyone has to leave their gun at home. You walk into the average mall and cut loose with an assault rifle, the odds of anyone shooting back at you are minimal because nobody is likely to be packing because the laws effectively prevent them from doing so. Sure, maybe things are differant in Texas and a few other states, but that represents an exception.
As far as the rest goes, I mention screwed up things like the abillity of the US to destroy the world and such because I feel it's important to understand the position of the US relative to other countries, and our hypothetical abillities. In making arguements on forums like these, I do not think people bother to consider all the options the US actually has, or how powerful it actually is. When discussing war, terrorism, and similar things the differance between "can't do something" and "won't do something" becomes incredibily important. It's not a nice, or politically correct, thing to point out but the world pretty much gets to exist because the US has so far decided to let it. Nations which have risen to rival us, and a lot of the problems as a result, are again because we allowed this to happen. When things change (and they will) it's because of desicians on our part and what we decided we would and would not do.
The point here being that if the US wanted to, we could pretty much exterminate the entire Middle East, borderline genocide would be child's play. Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, etc... do what they do because of self imposed limitations on how far we're willing to go, as opposed to any real lack of abillity to simply erase them from the map. Even in a hypothetical scenario of every hand raising against the US, the most that could be accomplished would be a situation where everyone on all sides dies, as things stand now the only thing that can defeat the US is the US.
It's not rose colored glasses, when I say that we could very much start killing 1000 Muslims for every American who dies at Muslim hands. We very much have that capability, and nobody could stop us. We simply choose not to do it because of our own internal belief structure that to do so would be wrong. We've conditioned ourselves to the point where the idea of a culture being an enemy is an anathema, as is the idea of killing someone who isn't directly responsible for something. Our actions, or rather lack of actions, in the current conflicts have been the the subject of internal debate since by definition if we behave entirely reactively, and only hold those who directly acted responsible (after they might have killed dozens, hundreds, or thousands) we arguably cannot win.
Veitnam is a messed up scenario overall, really it wasn't a failure due to any kind of naive "rosey" way of viewing the world. It failed because we pretty much got into a war due to our own proclaimed idealogy, stepping in to defend a nation that claimed to be democratic that really had no pretensions of being so, and looking to get a foothold for the USSR. We pretty much expected that we could waltz into Veitnam, behave like a bunch of White Knights, the VC would surrender under our fury, and we'd wind up with a friendly, progressive, regime in the region that would be happy to help us flank the more powerful commie nations in the region. In the end we wound up leaving because the regime we showed up to protect wasn't what was advertised, and just to destroy the VC would have involved fighting the kind of war we just didn't have the will for due to our own idealogy. There are cases on record where we did do what was nessicary, showing up and massacreing entire villages (sometimes after forcing the people to dig their own graves), but due to our own morality it had to be secret, wasn't on a large enough scale as a result, and ultimatly wound up with those responsible being accused of War Crimes and atrocities, which in of itself shows the problem since in a real war there is no such thing as a "War Crime" that's one of our over-civilized construct. In a real war, there is only whatever it takes to win. If anything we lost 'Nam, and arguably almost every modern military engagement, because the US is simply incapable of being the overt bastards it needs to be in order to win wars. What nasty things we do are always under the table, and not on a large enough scale.
In the scope of the point I'm making, our enemy is willing to show up and bomb a marathon just to cause psychological damage. It does not care about civilians, right and wrong, or anything else except doing damage. We on the other hand are not willing to respond in kind, and believe this makes us better. In reality it simply means we cannot win. My example of rounding up 1000 civilians every time an American dies, is something we'd consider an atrocity right up
there with forcing a village in 'Nam to dig it's own graves and then killing everyone in it. We would never bomb a bunch of Muslims in prayer in a middle city for psychological effect (the same thing as say attacking a Marathon). As a result we make no headway. In Veitnam our enemy didn't give a crap what it did to us, or how much collateral damage it caused in the process, we did care and punished ourselves when our own warriors dared think the same way... needless to say it didn't end well.
The thing is that questions like this are a little differant when they are happening on another continent, but now that we have terrorists attacking stuff in the US, it's raising some uncomfortable questions, especially seeing as we're hardly winning in any noticible sense. At the end of the day, we put our "Bosten Marathon" bomber on trial, and heck, let's say we even execute him. Big freaking whoop, all the other side lost was one dude who was ready to die anyway and he took out a bunch of people and did untold pscyhological damage. Our reactive methods are hardly a win for our side. It's not like the enemy we're facing, as nebulous as it is, is taking any serious losses in return.
In the end it's not a question of what we COULD do, but what we WILL do, an internal moral dialogue which makes people uncomfortable as these things happen. You know what side I'm on, but plenty of people, like you apparently, are on the other side apparently and find my ideas of retaliation disturbing. At the end of the day though, I suspect in part you find it disturbing because unless you invoke an entirely moral arguement, it's hard to say I'm wrong.
I also want to be blunt about something else, despite how it might seem at times I'm not a complete maniac. I have no actual desire to see a genocide or anything like that. I simply believe in the security of my own nation and culture, and of course wanting it to retain it's current position at the top of the pack. I'm pro-America in the way some others are pro-whatever their country/culture happens to be, and very much put the security and prominance of my own nation ahead of that of others because it is after all my nation for all it's faults. I believe that if we were to get a lot more heavy handed with our cultural enemies and start doing things like mass executions for every US fatality, that we'd solve the problem long before it came to a Genocide. That said if pushed I am very much willing to see the genicidal destruction of other peoples to preserve my own if things were pushed to the absolute limit. If it comes down to us (and our security) or them (whoever that may be) I will simply pick my own side, every time. Don't interfere with US interests or attack us, and I don't give a crap, but when the US is attacked I very much believe we need to respond to our enemies far more ruthlessly than we do now... or we wind up with crap like the Bosten Marathon attack. I suppose taken to a crazy and unlikely extreme, if we ever wound up with so many enemies that our destruction was virtually assured, that's when we pretty much dump our WMD wherever it will do the most damage and say "game over humanity". That's what MAD is about, mutually assured destruction, the US goes down, and anyone and everyone else comes with
us.
Something people (generally outside the US) seem to forget, or not notice, is that gun laws only impact... you know... legal guns. And while I don't doubt that a higher-than-insignificant percentage of gun-related violence in the US is due to legal guns, I seriously doubt that gangsters, wannabe gangsters, plain crazy people, etc. etc. are using legal guns.
Also, it's not exactly as though I, a plain citizen of the US with no criminal record, could actually go out today and literally just buy a gun. Even if I wanted a hunting rifle (since I live in a relatively rural part of the US), I'd still need a license for it, which would likely take a few weeks at least (I don't actually know, since I don't care about hunting).
That's not exactly true. 2/3 of all gun deaths in the US are suicides. The thing is, suicidal episodes come and go and if someone who suffers from depression has an easy way to commit suicide on hand, then they just kinda go for it. It was a cracked article (the fountain of all knowledge). One of the commenters pointed out how scary it can be to have a suicidal episode, then be fine a few hours later and realize they almost killed themselves.
This doesn't disprove what you said though. This is why we have waiting periods after all. But still, legal guns can be dangerous too
Interesting reading there. I'll be honest, things like this make me feel a bit better about making broad generalisations jokes about Americans as gun-mad conspiracy theorists. Seriously, I get that it's rare for people to think their government is perfect, but the idea that you have that the government needs to be held hostage with a gun to its head (or rather, since you admit that the military would win in a confrontation between itself and an armed populace, it's basically the general population holding itself hostage) to stop it from oppressing the people is... pretty damn funny. Let's be clear, "gun envy" is not something I have ever even heard of expressed as a conscious desire, and I've lived in Australia for a fairly lengthy chunk of my life. This idea of needing to keep the government in check is very, very American. In most democracies if people get pissed off by a government, they vote for the other party. Have a bit of faith in democratic process, seriously (I never thought I'd ever hear me say that).
Anywho, I'm not going to bother with a point-by-point analysis because, as far as I can tell, we're not even operating on the same framework of how the world works. Still, thank you. A very interesting read, and a very different perspective from what I normally read about.
On topic, as others have said, it's really pretty simple. The UK has had a long exposure to terrorist attacks, the USA does not. The inverse is true regarding gun violence. They've each become accustomed to their particular kind of violence, and find the other particularly horrific.
Err, well your missing part of the point. To clarify, in winning the military would destroy the nation. The goverment would wind up ruling nothing worth having control of. To put it into perspective, the military gets sent in to attack New York City, one of the most impressive natural harbours and trade centers in the world, and a city that accounts for a hug amount of the country's earnings. To defeat a popular resistance in the city, the military couldn't do it by trying to go gun to gun against a popular resistance, so it would be forced to use tanks, artillery, air strikes, etc... and start doing things like leveling skyscrapers and the like. By the time that was over the city would be rubble, so what did the goverment exactly get here? That is why the goverment isn't likely to try anything on a large scale.
THAT said, I'm focusing entirely on one aspect of things because the subject was gun violence. The US has other factors involved here, or is supposed to. Among them the exact way our "army of volunteers" is supposed to work, which makes it fairly unlikely that the goverment could ever get the US military as a whole to actually invade the US in response to a large scale, popular revolt. Our military would have a difficult time staying together in such a situation. Of course to be fair this part of the equasion is in danger because the US's increasing focus on a "smaller, more highly trained" force and "merit based promotion" has created a problem where your winding up with the abillity of the goverment to more easily control who is in what position at any given time, and with fewer people having control of more and more assets. Rather than being a military "of the people" so to speak, your increasingly seeing a situation where hypothetically a president who didn't want to cede power could over 8 years put loyalists into key positions and have a good portion of the military ready to go for a coup far more easily than ever before. The problem with merit based promotion is in who gets to decide who has "merit", the seniority system was kind of a safeguard in a way because with open recruitment it makes it much harder of anyone, including guys like The President, to decide who is in what position at any given time. But this is a tangent, so the less said the better.
I just wanted to clarify things since I don't think you quite "get it". Your also overlooking the point I made about law enforcement it seems.
At any rate, you are correct that it's a very American attitude I suppose. The thing is that having faith in the democratic process only goes so far when it's all up to the goverment and only the goverment to remain "democratic". When you look at things like the UK's level of public surveillance and some of the complaints made even in your own Australia, where the goverment walks on the people, that's pretty much good examples of why real Americans embrace
their right to bear arms.
Also, while I suppose you won't want to believe it, the US helps protect you against some of the worst possible excesses of your goverment. As much as people hate the whole "World Police" attitude, when the chips are down people usually welcome us when it's their turn to cry for help. If things ever got totally out of control in Australia with the goverment, the US would probably get involved, and the Aussie goverment knows that. While the US is corrupt it's a lot more "pure" than it would be without the armed populance helping to keep things in check, and probably would wind up the same way as a lot of other western first world countries if this right didn't exist. In an offhanded away, Armed Americans in America help preserve the degree of freedom Austalia possesses. Without an armed America I'd imagine it would turn into an entire circle jerk of "Help, our goverment has started oppressing us" followed by America going "well yeah, I'd love to help but I'm too busy slamming the heel of my jackboot into my own people".
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