I believe Canada is actually the most multicultural country in the world and again our crime rate is lower.
All you gun loving, tobacco chewing, pickup truck driving, deer killing, creationist, anti global warming Bubbas who howl and scream every time someone wants to make sensible gun laws are responsible for this. Nice job. How many people have to die before you give up your right to buy a big gun to compensate for your small whacker?
You may not realize this but that is a bigoted hateful intolerant statement. 40 years ago people felt comfortable and even righteous saying similar things about blacks and then it was accepted in common society. We were wrong then. You are wrong now.
You are that person today railing against a class of people you hate without knowing.
He's not originally from Georgia or the South.
are you gonna explain why or just make useless drive-bys?
you are possibly correct, as we do have a large number of white supremacist & Neo-Nazi hate groups in the USA.
there are alot more hate groups that
Why? Because they place bounties on the heads of innocent American citizens based on race? Because they intimidate voters at polling places? With clubs, no less? Because they get on public radio and vow to hunt down and kill people with different skin color that theirs, bury them, dig them up, and then kill them again?they are the most dangerous ones.
I believe Canada is actually the most multicultural country in the world and again our crime rate is lower.
The thing is, it's okay to speculate from a tactical standpoint whether the shooter's tactical advantage would have been diminished if some of the potential victims had been armed, it's fair to counter and speculate that more shooters would have added to the chaos, neither side knows for sure and both have good points. It is disgusting to try to advance agendas based upon the emotions of a fresh tragedy, it's bad enough to ever use it, but within minutes there were already classless people trying to leverage this for gun control, anti-muslim statements, etc.While I think that using this to advance a gun control agenda is despicable, I also think it's ridiculous to state categorically that armed citizens in the theater would have stopped the attack sooner. We have no idea what would have happened if people in the theater had been armed. There may have BEEN armed people in the theater.
In some cases, yes, you have the poor-to-struggling looking at Lifestyles of The Rich and Shameless and envying. But you also have the 35-50% of the population that can barely/not-quite afford what American norms consider a "decent lifestyle"... a reasonably comfortable home with electricity and air conditioning, a car that doesn't break down every month and isn't covered in Bondo or rust, health care insurance that covers important stuff adequately, a decent diet, and a little something left over for savings and entertainment, looking at the half of the population living in knocked-up-in-a-month McMansions, driving new 30k+ vehicles, and vacationing in Florida twice a year and feeling left out.
Sure, some of it is failing to pursue education and opportunities or laziness, but not all of it by a long shot. One factor is simply that blue-collar jobs in most states don't pay a living wage anymore, like they did in the 1950's and 60's. There are a lot of factors like outsourcing and cheap illegal labor, but thats a big subject all by itself and I don't want to derail the thread.
Suffice it to say that the PERCEPTION of being poor has a dramatic effect on crime rates, and that perception is based on what appears to be the norms in your culture, not in someone else's culture.
Perhaps. I would again point out that 99.98% of privately owned firearms are NEVER used in a crime as a counterpoint, however. This means, mathmatically, that only 0.02% (or less) of our "gun availability" is part of the problem.
As for the "gun culture".... again I think this question is a complex one that does not have a simple one-liner answer. I don't think that serious gun owners, people who actually know their weapons and hunt or shoot a lot, are part of the problem.
They are typically throughly aware of the danger factors inherent in firearms, and know from hunting and shooting what a hollowpoint round does to vulnerable flesh, and have no illusions about shooting people as a thing of "glory". More like bloody mess. I had to shoot an aggressive possum IN my house a few months ago, and my son and I had to clean up the bloody mess on the floor afterwards.... quite an education in de-glorifying shooting living creatures.
A certain sort of "Casual" gun owner, and those who possess firearms as part of "thug culture" or out of movie-and-video-game fantasies about "how cool it would be to kill someone" (like the pair of teenage "sniper"-wannabees we had here in my state a couple weeks ago) are where the "gun culture glorification" problem really lies. Here is where you have most of the people who do not respect or understand their weapons, or what it is like to use them, or the enormity of taking life with them. This subculture is where you most often find people who fail to properly and safely store their firearms, or get drunk and accidently shoot Granny, or have unrealistic fantasies about how badass their going to look waving a gun at their asshole neighbor. This sub-set is a minority, but they get a lot of media attention because they're loud and cause lots of problems.
I dislike movies where the hero fires his gun and the bad guy grabs his chest, where there is mysteriously no visible wound, and falls instantly dead.... then the girl comes and stands by his side while he stares into the camera looking manly and the movie ends right there. It is unrealistic in so many ways. When people get shot they tend to bleed, scream, thrash around, and suffer quite a bit before they die in most cases. The hero is probably going to be taken into custody and questioned by the police, and may have to spend a lot of money on lawyers and several months or years in and out of courtrooms getting cleared of all charges in the case, in many jurisdictions.
Then you have movies, music and video games glorifying "thug life".... Grand Theft Auto jumps to mind, as do a lot of rap songs and rapsploitation movies like "Tupoc". If they showed the real consequences of thug life... broken families, broken-hearted mothers, abandoned children, monotonous years in prison, or an ugly early death by violence or drug overdose, instead of glorifying it we might have a little less crime.
If they showed more movies with truly realistic features like that, I think it would put a serious crimp in the unrealistic fantasies of thug-wannabees, Walter Mitty's and so on.
But serious gun owners are typically not a part of the problem.
I believe Canada is actually the most multicultural country in the world and again our crime rate is lower.
It's as easy as putting a seperator between ammonia and bleach and tossing it into a crowd, it's a crude form of mustard gas. Anyone who desires murder can figure out how to cause it, the trick is to stop them.Crazy (and evil) will find a way--sarin gas, bombs, cyanide, whatever.
I still say a lot of it boils down to parents not taking the time to explain the difference between fantasy violence and real violence and the consequences of the latter. It doesn't explain everything but would explain the uptick in the the mass murders, another problem I feel is that some depression and bi-polar meds have worse side effects than just learning to cope with it.I think the American culture is rife with the adoration of violence. It's in our love of guns, fascination with military, sports, TV, video games, movies, etc. On top of that we're creating a whole generation of spoiled brats that are digital idiots who can't differentiate fantasy from reality.
I would say Canadians in general, deep south U.S. residents, Hawaiians, and small town British citizens tend to be the most polite people I've ever encountered. I think it's just a cultural thing.Hm, maybe not. I can't remember for certain. I've been in Quebec and Ontario, and whatever that province is just west of Ontario, I forget what you call it.
One of the things that really struck me was that the vast majority of Canadians I encountered were not only more polite than most Americans, but more cheerful.
There were exceptions sure, but on the whole I found most Canadians to be remarkably nice folks.
Another problem I feel is that some depression and bi-polar meds have worse side effects than just learning to cope with it.
Gun availability is a problem in the case of ease of availability like it was in the Colorado case. I don't think the 99+ percentage necessarily negates that. It speaks to something different.
I think you and I agree on much. But I will say this about your last statement. I agree that serious gun owners are not part of the problem in terms of they misusing weapons. I would however say that some of them contribute to the glorification of firearms and the elevation of them to the status of a playboy centerfold in the way they describe them and talk about them. I live in the Detroit area and I know guys who have pictures of cars on their walls and talk about them the way guys put up pin-ups of big breasted women. It borders on the perverse. I do think that there are gun folks like that and they contribute to the glorification of guns in our culture regardless if they abuse them or if they are responsible.
As far as other cultures go - yes, you can compare us to Mexico or third world cultures where the murder rate is much higher than ours. But is that the standard we want to use? I think it is much more fair to compare us to Canada or Great Britain or Ireland or even Japan. And that comparison is not a kind one for us.
Yes. AND, within school systems, at least here in Illinois, children are led to being diagnosed such that they will be prescribed meds. The more diagnosed, the more students in special education, the more money to the schools. Very very sad.
It's as easy as putting a seperator between ammonia and bleach and tossing it into a crowd, it's a crude form of mustard gas. Anyone who desires murder can figure out how to cause it, the trick is to stop them.
I do pity people going through that, but there is no excuse for those around him not to at least nudge him towards help. We have all had someone in our lives who fit some definition and scope of crazy, most harmless, but if my relative was so bat**** insane that I worried they would snap I'd have to do something to get them help, I would consider any blood they spilled on my hands otherwise.The world inside his head was messed probably due to some of what I said and possibly chemical imbalances. You don't want to know what was in his mind to make someone do that because it's literally unbearable to be that insane. I pity such an unfortunate soul who's driven to cause such horror.
How then do we prevent someone like the Colorado shooter from buy a gun legally? Had he been commited involuntarily? Not that I know of. Was he heavily medicated and did his shrink consider him potentially dangerous? I don't know. How do we accomplish this, denying guns to the unstable without unreasonably restricting the law-abiding? I have yet to hear a good answer to this question.
Well, what would you have of us? Those of us, responsible and sane gun owners, who like and enjoy firearms, who hunt and target shoot and keep weapons for self-defense... shall we be ashamed of our weapons? Shall we hide them and take no pride in the fine rifle we spent months saving up money to buy? Shall we treat our passion as a perversion and hide it? Consider ourselves social pariahs? Refrain from discussing firearms in polite company, as if it were a taboo subject? Act as if there were something wrong with it?
If that is what you are suggesting, I find the notion as utterly alien as treating a passion for fast cars like a perversion, and must reject it completely.
If that isn't what you wish, what DO you want us to do? What is your solution?
How then do we prevent someone like the Colorado shooter from buy a gun legally? Had he been commited involuntarily? Not that I know of. Was he heavily medicated and did his shrink consider him potentially dangerous? I don't know. How do we accomplish this, denying guns to the unstable without unreasonably restricting the law-abiding? I have yet to hear a good answer to this question.
Well, what would you have of us? Those of us, responsible and sane gun owners, who like and enjoy firearms, who hunt and target shoot and keep weapons for self-defense... shall we be ashamed of our weapons? Shall we hide them and take no pride in the fine rifle we spent months saving up money to buy? Shall we treat our passion as a perversion and hide it? Consider ourselves social pariahs? Refrain from discussing firearms in polite company, as if it were a taboo subject? Act as if there were something wrong with it?
If that is what you are suggesting, I find the notion as utterly alien as treating a passion for fast cars like a perversion, and must reject it completely.
If that isn't what you wish, what DO you want us to do? What is your solution?
I think it's because we've removed the consequences from the bad ones. Take "Jersey Shore" for example, they wouldn't have stayed douchey like that into their twenties in the south during even the '80s or '90s because our law enforcement would look the other way if these jackasses got "tuned up" by someone who didn't like their braying, hell they would have been arrested after getting the **** kicked out of them for disorderly conduct, now, the people who would have corrected that life fail would get assault and battery and the DTP charge would be ignored. The loudest have no corrective mechanism anymore and they of course get the most attention because they make the most noise.I think you are overstating it, but you do have a point. When I was a kid, "courtesy" was very very important in social settings; now it has been replaced by "attitude". Rudeness is mistaken for strength, arrogance for ability, selfishness for ambition, and pride no longer needs to be based on actual accomplishments. Sometimes our society does seem like a "death of a thousand tiny cuts" and there are plenty of opportunities for haters to find an excuse for their hatred.
Even so, there are still lots of good people out there. They just seem to be few because the bad ones are so loud and so visible.
I think it's because we've removed the consequences from the bad ones.
Perhaps the difference is one of maturity and considering everything in its proper place and worth. I will make no bones about it Goshin - when I read and hear some guys going on and on and on about guns - and you can find it here in plenty of threads - it sounds just like some 16 year old boy bragging about the size and rigidity of his own erection. It just reeks of everything negative not to say rather immature. Does that sort of "look at my pin-up pic of my latest weapon" even exist in European nations where guns are considered essential to have in the home?
Even if those folks do not abuse firearms - and I have already stated that for the most part they do not - I do think they contribute to the worship of the gun as part of American culture. And that is part of the problem.
Perhaps the difference is one of maturity and considering everything in its proper place and worth. I will make no bones about it Goshin - when I read and hear some guys going on and on and on about guns - and you can find it here in plenty of threads - it sounds just like some 16 year old boy bragging about the size and rigidity of his own erection. It just reeks of everything negative not to say rather immature. Does that sort of "look at my pin-up pic of my latest weapon" even exist in European nations where guns are considered essential to have in the home?
Even if those folks do not abuse firearms - and I have already stated that for the most part they do not - I do think they contribute to the worship of the gun as part of American culture. And that is part of the problem.
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