Years ago, while I was looking for a room to rent, answering an ad, a woman came out gun in hand. And that was in Springfield, VA. Hard to appreciate.
Pretty much the same here.
I used to be different. I did - and still do - think it is insane how much gun culture has permeated through American society, but I have given up discussing with Americans. I’m not going to change anyone’s minds and even then it is probably already too late to change how things are there now. So whereas I used to discuss this, hell I have probably posted on this board several times about guns and the US, now I don’t. I just accept that they want it their way and I want it mine, so as long as they don’t lecture me about the evils of Universal Health Care, Social Democracy or whatever the anti-European topic de jour is, I’ll refrain from discussing American gun culture and other similar topics. And they can keep all their guns over there and I’ll live in a much more gun-free society here.
Having discovered thanks to this board that actually a lot of American gun laws aren’t that different from those I’m used to, what’s different is the way people view guns, I think the politicians are trying to solve top-to-bottom something which is, depending on your point of view, either a bottom-to-top problem or no problem at all (call it a cultural idiosincrasy).
Ttb solutions to btt problems are horribly paternalistic and don’t work well, since they’re designed and implemented by people who didn’t understand the problem in the first place.
Nava,
What is a bottom-to-top problem and how is it so?
You should have told him that 27 Amendments would beg to differ.
Really the correct answer is that the Constitution does have a mechanism for change enough people believe it to be “wrong”.
Something is a problem if it’s having undesirable consequences. And it’s bottom-to-top if what needs to be changed is the underlying culture and/or circumstances, not the rules being handed down from above.
Example: Spanish law said it is illegal for a person to kill another for a loooooong time, yet “I killed her 'cos she was mine” was pretty much considered an acceptable reason until the mid-1980s. Eliminating violence as a “family communication method” will take a while, but the problem wasn’t the laws about murder, it was and is the attitude.
American chiming in here:
Not gonna reply directly to the gun control debate here (goodness knows I deal with that enough at work, along with religion, gay rights, physical fitness, nutrition, and the morality of banning the open display of pinups of women in swimsuits in a customer service area in a business having no relation to swimsuits. And yes, I’ve been subjected to all of those debates in my office.)
Instead, I just want to address the bits about the Constitution:
We hold it in high regard because it is the very foundation of all of our laws. Any law written that contradicts the Constitution, by definition, is wrong. The Constitution, contrary to popular belief, is not infallible, but thankfully, there is a way to address that: Amendments! The first ten, known as the Bill of Rights, had to be added to it before the Constitution could even be accepted, so it’s debatable as to whether the Second Amendment was “originally” part of the Constitution or not.
It’s irrelevant, of course, because the Second Amendment is part of the Constitution now, thus any law which conflicts with it must be wrong, from a legal standpoint.
That said, if one feels the Constitution, including the Second Amendment, is wrong, then the answer is to get a new Amendment passed. It’s what they did when the scourge of alcohol was destroying the nation’s moral fiber, and what they did a number of years later when everybody agreed that outlawing alcohol was actually not a particularly inspired idea.
What many folks have a problem with, from a constitutional standpoint, are laws which openly set out to restrict rights set forth in the Constitution. Most recently the hot-button topic there are laws restricting legal ownership of firearms. Until an actual amendment is proposed and passed removing the civilian right to bear firearms, so the argument goes, any attempt to outlaw said right can thus be found as unconstitutional and therefore wrong.
As far as I know, none of the lawmakers in favor of gun control have proposed such an amendment.
I think you set out to refute that Americans behave (irrationally) as though the Constitution and its Amendments were written by the Finger of God.
But, although you qualify with “from a legal standpoint” and emphasize that there is a process for God’s Finger to rewrite, your equation of “Unconstitutional” with "Wrong™ " rather confirms a view of the American obsession as irrational.
If this isn’t clear, let me ask what you’d think of an American who said “Failure to regulate guns is wrong for practical and moral reasons.” Is he “wrong” to think this before the 2nd Amendment is repealed?
So what’s the cause and what’s the effect?
Honestly, I don’t perceive Americans as living in fear because everyone has guns. They seem to have guns because they live in fear.
I mean, as a Canadian, I could legally own any number of guns. I could buy a shotgun or a rifle with less hassle than it takes to buy a car or get a driver’s license, and I could keep it at hand to defend my home from criminals. GEtting a handgun would be a harder thing, but it’s possible - but anywat a good Mossberg would do the job for home defense. “Gun control” does not mean “total gun banishment.” But I don’t do that, and I don’t know anyone who does; I literally have never known a single Canadian, in my entire life, who kept a firearm at hand for home defense. (Lots of people own hunting firearms.)
It would be easy to say this is because of the difference in crime rate, but crime rate is not consistent across all places in the USA. In amny places it’s pretty much the same as it is in Canada. Yet we’ve seen people on this board, and I’ve met Americans IRL, who live in cities and neighborhoods where the chance of home invasion and such really isn’t any worse than it is here, and they still have guns at the ready.
You have to figure out why that cultural difference exists before any discussion of gun control will matter.
Actually, I’m trying to avoid addressing the irrationality-vs-rationality of it all, just hoping to explain (my understanding of) how the Constitution is supposed to factor in all this. I freely admit that there are folks on both sides of the debate that really need to calm down and stop making their side look ignorant and crazy.
And no, he’s not wrong to think that, that’s protected by the First Amendment. My only issue is folks trying to circumvent the Constitution because they know they can’t actually get it changed to suit their preferences.
Fundamentalist Christians would very much like to turn back the clock to a time when Christianity was the de facto religion of the state, not just one among many. They are driving this meme “what the founding fathers…” because they wrote everything in Christian language. The tea party wants to return to prayer in school, etc. Republicans want to turn back time on abortion and contraception, gay rights, union rights etc.
And they all misguidedly believe the very language of the constitution “under God” and the founding fathers, makes their argument a sure win and divinely endorsed.
And they make up half the population! It astounds, truly.
That’s all well and good to say, but it doesn’t seem like it’s feasible. Not just that there wouldn’t be enough support for that particular Constitutional amendment - I think it’s pretty much impossible in the current political situation. With all the blind partisanship in American politics right now, I don’t think you could convince 2/3 or 3/4 of the House or the States to pass an amendment on anything, let alone anything even mildly controversial.
How can you say that when a mandated, trans vaginal ultra sound for anyone seeking an abortion passed? As did giving the police power to check ‘ethnics’ for immigration status violations whenever they felt like it. They stripped unions of their bargaining powers. And isn’t the argument about your employers religious beliefs determining employee access to contraception headed to the Supreme Court?
Spend a few weeks abandoned without electricity or water during a collapse of law and order and you may have an inkling as to why so many of us (particularly in the Gulf coast) are quite hesitant to disarm and trust the government not to leave us high and dry* again.
*no pun attended
You saved me the typing. Thanks. 
Oh, you forgot the culture of fear, too.
The issue at the core of the befuddlement of our Australian, Canadian and UK observers is simply that aside from sharing a somewhat similar language and culture, the US is really nothing like these places.
The first and second amendments are at the foundation of what the country was built on. The second amendment doesn’t say anything about a right to go duck hunting, or to target shoot or any other gun use that is accepted in your society. It addresses only the security of the State and the personal right to bear arms in regard to the State.
Gun control proponents are setting up the issue as one of reasonable gun use for hunting, target shooting, etc. These issues are not addressed as rights anywhere in the Constitution. Framing the argument in these terms essentially voids the 2nd amendment, hence the push-back by even reasonable gun owners against further restrictions.
As a US citizen I find it astonishing the ease with which citizens of Australia and the UK cede their personal liberties to their own State. This is not widely regarded here as an admirable quality. We really do not like being told by the government what to do. If you understand this trait you will see it as a factor in other areas such as the resistance to universal health care, among other things.
Again, the cultures are much different than outward similarities may imply.
What’s bizarre to me is that this radicalization is fairly recent. The Republican Party platform used to be much more centrist. The rabid xenophobia, worship of the corporation, income disparity “got mine, fuck you” attitudes have grown to this incredibly broad, half-the-country thing just within my lifetime. And it seems to have accelerated very recently… say within the last 15 years or so.
The American political spectrum got skewed, and I wish I knew what happened to do that. What’s considered moderate or even a bit conservative everywhere else in the First World pegs on the liberal end of the scale in America.
FWIW, I don’t believe that it’s actually half the country, but that an oligarchy got into power, money, and media-reach, and is manipulating a hell of a lot of people through selective, grain-of-truth-wrapped-in-lies fearmongering. I’m disappointed that it works; and the more they do it, the more they convince people not to do any self-educating or research on their own, so it become a self-perpetuating cycle.
Interesting that you should say that. reflecting back, and I’m 62 years old, I’d say that Canada and America were somewhat in the same place in just about all cultural aspects except for ice hockey during the 50s and early 60s . But something changed during the Vietnam War. We Canadians quietly disposed of social issues such as abortion, the death penalty, contraception, and gay marriage among others. In America, these issues never go away.
I agree 100%. I would not have phrased it quite that way, since I come from one of those other cultures, but I do see your perspective completely. It’s one of those things that make the US what it is. There is a balancing act between individual liberty and community benefit, in all countries. Some liberty gets traded for the good of the whole group, but too much is not good for the individual, or eventually the whole group due to lack of ‘buy-in’ from the unhappy individuals. On the spectrum of personal liberty vs community welfare, the US is notable in standing out fairly far on the personal liberty side. But each point on that spectrum has it’s pluses and minuses. We have too many petty council laws restricting what we can and can’t do. We don’t have to worry a medical event will wipe us out financially, even if we recover physically, nor do we have medical care tied to employment status, for example. The good and bad consequences to our spot on the spectrum are reasonably acceptable to us. Same as the good and bad consequences to your spot on the spectrum works for you guys. I don’t think the US should come and occupy our spot on the spectrum, because you can’t just import what we do onto you, without all the cultural ‘buy-in’ already being in place. And that’s extremely unlikely to happen.
And all that is completely separate from all the other factors that come into play with the gun debate. It’s not only about ‘a right to bear arms’, re: the personal liberty vs community side of things. There’s also the fact that culturally, many people feel the need to have these guns, a feeling of need that just isn’t the same in other countries. I think that’s the ‘culture of fear’ aspect that I don’t wish to get into. I’m just saying that there’s a ton of factors, and individuality vs community is a huge one, but still only one of them.
Anyway, that’s my reaction / perspective on the US gun control debate. Some mild bemusement, because I don’t see the world through the same lens you guys do (culturally), but I don’t think you should do what we do at all. I don’t think most non-Americans who have given the matter any thought think you should do that either. And I hope that’s not the impression that you guys are getting from this thread. We can express bemusement, without thinking you’ve got it all wrong. It’s more of a raised eyebrow, followed with a shrug and a “you do what works for you, we’re doing this because it works for us” kinda thing.
I think some Americans confuse “personal liberty” with “the government won’t stop you,” however, and don’t realize that there are a hell of a lot of people who, for example, do NOT have the liberty to see a doctor. In the name of “personal liberty” they agitate for policies which reserve real liberty only for the elite. They have it completely backwards, and cling to it out of the misguided belief that liberty comes from isolationism. Hell, this was talked about a lot before the last election – those who insisted that they built their businesses ALL BY THEMSELVES DAMMIT and getting bent out of shape when it was pointed out that their businesses rely on things like roads which OTHER people built. No one can be successful, or free, in a vacuum.
Except it’s not working. This is the most polarized our population has been, by more than one measure, in decades.