Americans are barbaric savages; they want to kill each other and if they didn’t have guns, they’d have to rip each other apart with their bare hands–something rendered impossible by their ever-increasing obesity. Personally, I’d rather have them shoot each other. It’s cleaner.
No politics, no safety, no hunting–just plain, old-fashioned malignity and ruthlessness; it’s really not that complicated.
…you’re welcome.
Do you have anything to add that isn’t just blatantly hateful of Americans in general, or are you really what your nickname claims you are?
He’s just another loudmouth moron who likes to stir shit but doesn’t know amything at all. Besides, he’s up there in Iceland, so what happens here is none of his damn business.
Yes it does. How can you possibly believe this? My goodness, it’s too daft to imagine.
So, where did he get the gun, huh?
It doesn’t matter to me where he got it, Arwin. The only thing I find relevant to his case (which has no bearing on me) is that he committed a crime.
Unfortunately UselessGit, we aren’t all lucky enough to live in an irrelevant wasteland that is absolutely dependent on fishing of all things for economic survival.
Your jealousy is obvious. You want to live in America so bad you can taste it.
Have a nice day!
GusNSpot, you’ve just given an example of the only situation in which virtually every European agrees owning a gun is understandable and probably wise - in a lawless society where you have to fend for yourself. In fact, we Europeans often get accused of seeing the U.S. as exactly the kind of horrible place you describe, except that fortunately most of us know that there are vast differences between one place and the next.
You have to ask yourself though whether you want to allow a legal purchase of guns in the whole of the U.S.A. because society crumbles in certain parts of it. You have to ask yourself whether you can sleep at night by saying - hey, they have it really bad there, let’s allow guns to be sold, so at least the good guys can shoot back every once in a while, instead of actually dealing with the problems there. Having such areas in your country, and you find it more important to send your military to Iraq to uphold the law under apparently similar considitions instead? Obviously priorities are off-base here. I’m not saying you couldn’t do either, but basically you’re not.
Who does not fear the way you describe your life? We’d be nuts to want to live that way. You’d be nuts to want to live that way.
It is very insensitive of me to say so, and I am aware of that and make no excuses. I must ask: can you honestly say that you don’t do exactly that yourself? Didn’t you get a gun because of tragedies in your life? Is the only difference that you probably don’t call that knee jerk response? These are not rethorical questions, I’m genuinly interested in hearing your answers.
(and I am very willing to disagree with you about England. Very violent bunch, particularly when drunk.)
Nonsense. You live in a society that is tolerant of an increasingly worse off underclass that ends up living in a no-prospect, lawless environment. We only try to make sure we never allow our own problems to escalate that far. We look at your problems with awe and respect, and try to learn. This means dealing with problems early, and trying to make sure people don’t drop out of society, and make sure that ghettos don’t form. We’ve had such issues on a small scale in all our great cities, and we have to do our very best to deal with them. Even many of the softy liberals you so despise who are against guns in your country aren’t as stupid, naive, or heartless as you make them out to be - on the contrary, many of them recognise your problems and want to deal with them.
In return, I can just as easily ask you what you know of other places to make this judgment. The US of A has a big spotlight on it and people from other countries are watching it a lot better than the US of A is watching other countries (except maybe when it comes to terrorism, witness a commercial flight with 276 passengers on route to Mexico being sent back when approaching American airspace because two passengers were on the No Fly List - not necessarily saying this is bad, though it seems a bit - ineffecient)
But some of those protesters have lost people to guns (30.000 a year) and they are disagreeing with you for the exact same reasons. What I would want when the legislation allows people to carry guns, is a detailed account how they recognise that their policy fail, how badly, and that they cannot provide protection to their citizens. I want them to honestly recommend gun-possession in areas where they think a citizin will be better off possessing one, giving credible and well-researched data on how bad the situation is, and how the costs outweigh the benefits. I would also want them to continuously consider what should and could be done to improve the situation in terms of crime-prevention and law-enforcement, so that one day people don’t need to carry guns in their homes(surely we can progress beyond sherrif, deputies, vigilanties, and bounty-hunters in even the worst places in the U.S. at some point in time)
It’s terrible beyond description and while I have a pretty decent imagination, I’m willing to admit this is far beyond it. As said above, I can understand you feel that guns are a necessary evil for you here. But would it be required to make guns legal in this scenario? Couldn’t you easily get one anyway?
But many places do enough to make guns have a negative impact on that society rather than a positive one.
Except that I am willing to bet they didn’t think about that with a much lower crime-rate, the Canadian police will consider them a relatively large threat and respond in force.
If I were in your position, I would probably have a gun myself. But if there’s any shred of the current me left in that warzone, I would still dream of living in a society where I wouldn’t need one.
Myself, I don’t live in a warzone, and I’ve never experienced any crime to my person.
However, I will keep my guns. For a couple of reasons.
1.I like to shoot them.
2.I live pretty far out in the sticks. If I need to defend myself, I’m all I got. I also believe one of the reasons there is so little crime around where I live is that it’s common knowledge that just about everyone has firearms.
3.Protection from critters (use them to scare Black Bears off). I guess I could get one of those special noise makers designed for that, but I’ve heard there are issues with forest fires and those things. Also, when outside, trying to scare a Bear away, it’s comforting to be armed (maybe a false sense of security, but it’s better than nothing).
So, while I don’t necessarily need a gun, I see no reason for me not to have one.
Reading most of the posts,especial those who live in the USA…appears to me that AMERICANS must live in a constant emotion of fear…and fear will breed violence.
What is the cause of this fear and is it real and justifed or is there an agenda to keep people in fear.In To-days world through the media,wars, murders,and court trials of murder are brought into your homes. A constant diet of fear is fed by the media it’s a good product,it sells.
This attitude can’t be changed overnight,but surely some trial solutions could be effected that may have positive results…tis pointless to take sides …you all want to live in relative security to feel safe and secure and live without fear… F.D…Roosevelt said ‘the only thing to fear is fear itself’; I think he was right.
Well, here’s one American who isn’t particularly scared.
I live in the Bronx. I grew up here during the worst times it ever had, in the 70s, with fires and murders and drug addiction raging all around me. I’m not afraid. I have no interest in carrying or owning a gun, and only two relatives do–hunting rifles only.
I’m fatalistic in some ways, and demographically lucky in others. I’m a woman, I’m white, I live in a neighborhood where there’s been one murder in 25 years (some guy killed his uncle for money). But I’ve also learned to be street-smart. I never did drugs. Never got drunk with strangers. Never picked up random guys. Rode in the subway car with the conductor in it. Never picked fights. Never argued with idiots. Never carried serious grudges with exes. Never flashed jewelry or money. Been mugged once by other unarmed kids, had my purse snatched once. Big deal. Neither thing even happened in NYC, but in rich neighborhoods!
Now, can random evil strike random people? Of course it can. But even during the bad times the statistics were vanishingly small that it would strike ME. And now I live in one of the safest cities in America. So, aside from being alert and not walking into obvious war zones, I could make another choice: to enjoy life, enjoy my city, and rely on God and skill and luck to make my way through life. Without hardware. Not that I can get too excited about law-abiding people who need the hardware, although having instant access to deadly force seems to be a problem for SOME of them who can’t control their anger, jealousy, or greed, and I wish there weren’t so MANY guns out there. But cars and medical mistakes kill a lot more people.
There’s plenty of Americans like me. Don’t worry so much. And stop watching Bruce Willis moves. 
Forgot to add: my Dad was exposed to far more violent news and entertainment (though not as explicit), so it’s not a new thing at all. And it certainly isn’t an American thing either–go look at some Japanese stuff sometime.
And anybody who thinks that the media does what the government thinks it should do, or will listen to any sort of agenda–HA!! They’re lucky if they listen when they ask them not to show so much smoking in the movies!
Naw. At least not myself or the people I know.
A lot of folks own guns for fun. Self defence is a bonus. For myself, it’s just practical. I’ve had guns all my life, many Americans start shooting when they are kids. Let’s see, 5 hand me downs, a .22 as a gift when I was about 11, and a relvolver from my brother about 5 years ago. It’s seems like a very normal thing to me.
The people that seem to live in fear, in my opinion, are those folks that are afraid of guns. Seems like a fear of the unknown to me.
When a guy’s dick stops working, he still has his gun. That’s all there is to it.
See, that’s the sort of gun ownership I’m not worried about either. FTR. It’s not really people with guns, it’s overemotional/ unstable/ criminal people with guns that worries me And the trick is balancing the rights of the former with somehow minimizing the latter.
And once again I have to reiterate that different parts of this vast country will have different ways of trying to pull off this trick. It’s one of the things you can use to choose where to live. So it’s pointless to say “America is _____ about guns” when the experiences of people within even the same state can be so different with them.
Mehitabel,
It’s nice to see someone that is ‘anti’ gun have a reasonable attitude about it (if you could even be called anti).
Most anti-gun folks seem to fall somewhere between childish Beavis/Butthead snipes (Evil Captor) and quite a bit less moderate than you. Many of whom don’t know enough about guns to have a discussion about them, much less write policy/legislation.
Afraid of guns…they that do live in fear…i would bet you friend ENIPLA that not only have I seen but used more guns in a month than you have had hot dinners in your life time…I lived through over 25 years of urban gurrelia warfare…i have seen friends and enemies torn apart with bullets and you with your little toys know about guns…go give my feckin head peace…you not only know fear but you know nothing of courage in the face of fear…
Uselessgit does make one interesting point.
In the U.S.A., we kill more people with bare hands than most other countries total murder rate. The U.S.A. is considerably inherently more violent than many of our European cousins.
The only criminal violence I’ve ever had directed against me (I don’t count the aforementioned Anti-Gun protestor as criminal violence, but as political violence) is a mugging, in which an unarmed kid jumpd out of a bush at me in an apartment complex in Dallas; he tried to wrestle my wallet out of my pocket. We tusseled a bit, and he gave up and ran away, with me holding a fairly nice watch of his.
The pro-gun community overall seems to believe that most of our gun crime is mostly in one small demographic (minority gang-bangers), while the pro-control community believes it’s either people who “just snap,” or by husbands and boyfriends killing wives and girlfriends.
Neither of which are true. The stats show that by relationship, most firearm murders are “unknown.” Meaning, the cops don’t know who or why one person killed another.
Only one thing is certain: a healthy majority of violent crime is in the most economically depressed urban centers. And there are plenty of excpetions to show that population density and economic factors aren’t the full story. Look at how vastly improved New York city is (compared to its rate from the 70’s and 80’s), while places like Little Rock, Arkansas, and Gary, Indiana, had explosively skyrocketting crime rates.
But New York City’s gun-control laws were pretty well fixed during this period, during both the increase and decrease of it’s crime rate. What changed? As far as I can tell, it was the Police Department size, arrest rates, conviction rates, and incarceration rates and terms. Other factors, like community support programs such as after-school programs for kids, (to keep them away from drug-dealers and gangs), drug-awareness programs, drug-rehabilitation programs, etc., etc., may have come into play as well, but I’m not from New York City, and I’m not sure how prevalent these programs may have been.
Well Finn, interesting that you think laws that criminals are going to ignore anyway are the answer to anything, I assume that car bombs are totally illegal where you live, but from watching the news that doesn’t seem to have stopped them from being used to great effect (and carnage) over the last umpty-ump years.
sings
A nation once again,
And Ireland, long a province, be
A Nation once again!..
I admire your courage…BUT don’t insult a PADDY…with your feckin’crap of Bruce Willis…Plenty of Americans like you…yea wait till the shooting starts…Mehitabel…
Nah, that’s not it. People fear guns for what they do know about them, not for what they don’t know them. Hunting accidents, passion shootings, crime, etc. I treat cars with the same respect. But whereas cars are still a necessary evil, the boons of guns rarely outweigh the dangers.
Mind you, there are definitely examples, places and situations where the boons do outweigh the dangers. If you live in the middle of nowhere, sure. If you say there’s a threat, there’s no backup, and you’re on your own, that’s fairly similar to living in a lawless society in a way, isn’t it? And the consequences of owning a gun in a sparsely populated area to anyone besides your own is relatively insignificant. Not entirely sure if some bright fireworks with lots of smoke might be a better defense against that bear, but otherwise …
It’s just a different perspective. Here, we think you shouldn’t have a gun, unless you have a very good reason to do so. Over there, it’s the other way around. That works for some areas, but in others its simply too dangerous.
So many claim that those who want to restrict guns want to take guns away from everybody who needs them and that they, out of mindless fear apparently, mindless file guns under ‘evil’. But that same criticism, when reverse, of course never applies.
Pro-gunners say that guns are always a good thing, with little respect to the cost and dangers of having guns readily available. There are responsible gun-owners, and they seem to either always consider all other gun owners equally responsible, or claim that since criminals will always be able to get guns, their helpless victims should pack too to balance the scales.
I think the question shouldn’t be wether or not guns are dangerous - I think both sides might actually agree on that one, as that’s both a gun’s biggest advantage and a gun’s biggest downside. The question is does the benefit of gun-possession always outweigh the cost, and what can be done to best deal with that. I’m convinced the best way to decrease gun-related deaths is to decrease poverty and increase social cohesion, but certain types of crime (crimes of passion, organised crime, etc.) also greatly benefit from having guns readily available.
On a larger scale, you could look at nuclear weapons. If every country and organisation had access to them, the chance of a nuclear incident, by accident or on purpose, would increase correspondingly. Guns are no different, and so limiting access to them can actually make sense. Something to ponder over.