MaxTorque,
It’s shameful that a child can acquire a gun.
It’s shameful that a criminal can acquire a gun.
It’s shameful that a mentally unstable person can acquire a gun.
It’s shameful that the NRA and its supporters (Max?) refuse to acknowledge that even limited gun control can benifit society without infriging on the rights of legitamate gun owners.
My guess is that the US would stack up pretty well against most of Europe when it comes to things like mob riots and public disturbances. But when it comes to actual homicides, I’m sure we rank quite poorly among the more advanced nations. Relevant factors include the following:
availablity of handguns.
Americans are attached to firearms, historically and culturally. I know of no other nation that counts gun possession among its people’s protected “rights.” The actual scope of the right extended under the second amendment is far from clear as a matter of legal history and constitutional analysis, but the existence of this provision has certainly operated as a brake on any serious legislative effort to regulate firearm possession.
ineffective and dysfunctional criminal justice system
The penalties for criminal conduct in this country are not particularly uniform from place to place, time to time, and (in some cases) judge to judge. Moreover, those penalties are almost never imposed in anything approximating a “speedy manner,” thereby depriving them of whatever general (societal) or specific (individual offender) effect they might otherwise be thought to provide. Delays exist pretrial and post-conviction; the latter phases (and there are MANY of them, see below) can sometimes take decades to complete. The rules generally governing American criminal procedure create opportunities to avoid (or at least delay) prosecution, conviction, and imposition of criminal sanctions to a degree unheard of in the rest of the world. At the outset, no one can even be convicted at all until proved guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” a extremely high standard that, like the presumption of innocence, is designed to ensure against wrongful conviction, but which is NOT in use throughout most of the rest of the world. Without denying its utility, one must not overlook its costs: it allows many guilty people to go free.
One might think that for all the safeguards against wrongful conviction we’ve put in place (wisely, in my view) at the trial level, the post-conviction processes could afford to be a little more streamlined. Guess again. The degree of post-conviction review afforded here approaches a level of compulsiveness: Not only are convicted criminals permitted to appeal their convictions, they are also entitled to a second round of state “collateral” review, all designed to uncover “errors” that somehow escaped earlier scrutiny; if a prisoner finds those procedures unavailing, he can take his complaints to yet another court system by use of federal statutory writ of habeas corpus–any denial of which gives rise to (you guessed it) yet another appeal. Reasonable people of good faith can disagree about how much time and energy we should to devote to second-guessing, triple-guessing, and quadruple-guessing guilty verdicts. And I expect they will.
Shameful that a child can acquire a gun: true. Who is allowing children to acquire guns, responsible dealers or irresponsible parents?
Shameful that a criminal can acquire a gun: true. Will another law against over-the-counter purchases keep a criminal from obtaining a gun, or do criminals obtain guns by other methods?
Shameful that a mentally unstable person can acquire a gun: true. It’s also shameful that they can obtain cars and knives. How should we monitor for mental stability and decide who may purchase what they want?
Shameful that the NRA and its supporters refuse to acknowledge that even limited gun control can benifit society without infriging on the rights of legitamate gun owners: false. The NRA (of which I am not a member) SUPPORTS many kinds of gun control, including the instant background check. They do NOT support legislation such as that in California that seeks to outlaw guns largely based on appearance.
Do you really believe that a bayonet or a flash suppressor really makes a gun more dangerous? Or that a clip located in front of the trigger rather than inside the handgrip (a trait of many sport target-shooting pistols) makes the gun more dangerous? Nope, but they do make the weapon look scarier, so, they’re against the law.
I don’t believe that everyone should have access to firearms. However, a person of appropriate age with a clean criminal record should be able to purchase a firearm without persecution or undue hindrance.
Private firearm ownership is how we drove off King George in the first place, fer Pete’s sake; it’s an easily-overlooked but extremely important freedom.
Fuck it. We’re just better shots.
Switzerland and Israel consider it a responsibility rather than a right. You pretty much have to have a gun in the house, whether you like it or not.
While I believe this is true for Switzerland, it is most certainly not for Israel. People presently serving in the army (women serve from age 18-19, men from 18-20 and typically both serve a few weeks a year in reserves until they are 35) usually have weapons. Only a small number of women are armed, as in Israel, like the US, women do not particpate in combat units. HOWEVER, to own a personal handgun, people are required to go through safety training. A friend of mine had a gun, which he kept in a safe at home, and when he had it out, he kept it with him at all times, so that no one who wasn’t properly trained could get their hands on it.
It should also be mentioned that Israelis have a very different idea of violence than most Americans. Violence is not a video game or a movie to them - it is something very real. I know college students with bullet wounds, who have lost friends and family to fighting. As a result, street violence is very rare.
~Kyla
“You couldn’t fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.”
Do you want to know why I think the cities are violent?
All together now… NO.
Too bad.
Where to start? I’ll start in the middle and backtrack if need be.
The inner city fell apart. It was the civic and cultural center, but fringe growth and inner city legal and space restrictions caused the innards of our metropoli to collapse upon themselves. Collapsed inner cities made for cheap housing, which made it a haven for the poor. With the poor come the (hard) drugs, the dealers, the guns, and crime. Some people blame this on the blacks, or the immigrants, whatever. That’s not true. Sex is more prevalent, at a younger age, the poorer you get. And with being poor, you lose the ability to purchase birth control. The boy knocks up the girl, then jets. The girl then has a kid to deal with, if she doesn’t abort it, and no money to do so. The kid has nothing, so turns to petty theft to get what he wants. He also has no male role model to guide him, so Trey ends up following around whoever is available, who often isn’t the best role model. From there, a gang forms. Crime grows, guns, killings, nightly news reports.
In the suburbs, the parents are well off. They have alot of stuff, and alot of stuff to pay for. They’re ‘upside downers’ as some call them. They buy what they can’t afford, because they can’t stand to not have it. They have to keep up appearances, after all. So they spend all day, and late into the night working. If they do get off early, they’re too tired to make Tommy’s baseball game. The kid grows up in daycare, with no personal interaction with adults, no one to mold himself from. He ends up trying to be his own person, and depend only on himself. Problem is, he doesn’t know how. No one has ever taught him. Tommy has no social skills, no way to acquire them, and no way to deal with problems. Lack of healthy outlets for anger and frustration lead to rage, against the bullies, against the teachers, the parents, the fence. Whatever. They kill cats with bats, and dogs with flogs. One day, their limited development can no longer handle what it is feeling, and they snap. They get an AK and wipe out 10 classmates. Then, Tommy kills himself. Everyone wonders why. Ask his parents if that new Lexus and 55" TV was worth never seeing your kid grow up, never making it to his ballgames, or asking him why his girlfriend dumped him, and I love you Tommy, what can I do for you? I gave him stuff. Well, he didn’t really need stuff. He needed you, dammit.
Immigrant crime? Some guy escapes from some country with the shirt on his back, the wife on his arm, and the kid in her hands. He gets to America. He’s heard of America. He can make a new life here. No he can’t. He has no green card, doesn’t speak the language, and has no way to make it. The only housing he can afford is the run down projects. His kid has a dad, but dad is working his ass off in the kitchen of the local Olive Garden, feeding Tommy’s parents. He has to quit a few jobs, move around a few times, to escape the INS. Never mind a few extra bucks a month to get English lessons, or pass the test to be naturalized, Guillermo doesn’t have the time or money it takes. So Antonio ends up in the shitty school in the shitty house in the shitty part of town, in class with Trey. Trey tells Antonio about these cool friends. Tony likes the idea. He wants friends. And they don’t care that he doesn’t speak english very well. He starts doing what they’re doing, stealing stereos. Someone gets a gun. It goes on from there.
It’s not the country. It’s not the guns. It’s the greed. It’s the fucking GREED. People want more. Gimme more, dammit, I want more. I want that car. I want to steal that Playstation. Gimme your stereo. Gimme your fucking wallet. The restaraunt, the lawn care service, whoever. They don’t pay Guillermo much. They don’t have to. He’s not legal, he has no one to complain to. So they save 2k a year. Tommy’s parents have to have this, or that, or whatever. They both work, ignore him, and give him stuff to make him go away. Their greed makes him greedy, too. It’s the greed. It’s the commercial greed, the personal greed. It’s so valued, it’s explained away, it’s rationalized. It’s what’s killing us. It’s what’s killing you and me. We have to learn, we cannot always have everything. We don’t need everything.
Farm kids? They just fuck their sisters.
We are the children of the Eighties. We are not the first “lost generation” nor today’s lost generation; in fact, we think we know just where we stand - or are discovering it as we speak.
And that’s not even to touch on lack of personal pride, respect for oneself or one another, respect for ones property, parenting practices, stupid people, bad drivers, bad parents, talking horses, or religion. But did you really want to hear all that, anyway?
–Tim
We are the children of the Eighties. We are not the first “lost generation” nor today’s lost generation; in fact, we think we know just where we stand - or are discovering it as we speak.
You know what, Homer? I was reading your post and thinking, “Finally, he has said something worth reading, for the most part.” I was impressed by your views and the way you worded them. This post was much less mindlessly ranting than your other ones. I had actually almost changed my mind about giving up reading your insipid posts.
THEN I read the last line of your post about farm kids.
Whether or not you meant this as humor, you are stupid.
You are a troll.
You are a waste.
Born O.K. the first time…
If you are born again, do you have two belly buttons?
Actually, the crime/violence rate has declined to levels of the late 1960s and our rates are nowhere near those in countries like China, India, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, England, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Vietnam and so on. It’s just that the press likes to talk a lot about it (freedom of speech and all that) and ratings.
In India they have a problem with husbands killing wives to get their dowry money. Things like a woman being killed by boiling water being tossed on her has a tendency to be termed an accident even though the husband remarries shortly after. In England, the thugs tend to use knives and fists, preferring to beat a person nearly to death and in Northern Ireland, well, anything goes there. In many middle eastern countries, spouse abuse is not a crime so there are no reports. A husband may beat his wife nearly to death legally. In Africa, people are killed so often on the streets and their bodies sometimes burned right there that it hardly causes the passerby to break stride. In some other countries, a man may kill his wife with impunity if he is angary at her. In some, men may damn near kill each other to settle a score and it never reaches the news. Here, we consider acts of violence against the law and newsworthy, while in many other places people consider it a fact of life.
There are a couple of countries where they abolished the death penalty, but do little things like hack a thief’s’ hand off and let him find his own medical attention. They also find no problem with blowing up people in a religious strife.
Mark
“Think of it as Evolution in action.”
Purple Toenails: I look over the Atlantic and i see enormous amounts of violence and brutality,why?
I look over the Atlantic, and all I see is water.
You must be pretty tall to see us over the horizon. 
AWB - resident smartass
AWB… he is. I get neck strain just looking up at him. =)
“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing, does the painter do good
things.” --Edgar Degas
Revolutionary War. ah ha ha.
Hey, some guy posted violence stuff about the usa and he was from Iceland & we chewed him up. Was that Thor? Anyway, should England want a rematch after the RW, we would be more than happy, wouldn’t we, to give them that chance?
AWB said:
It’s not that he’s tall…but you can see an amazingly long way when you’re up on your high horse.
Live a Lush Life
Da Chef
Simple.
The United States offers much freedom compared to most other nations.
With freedom comes many responsibilities.
Many human beings are simply not responsible enough to handle these freedoms.
And the responsible ones, while loathing the irresponsible ones, realize that infringing on these freedoms would hurt the responsible ones more than help them.
Yer pal,
Satan
Hello all, this is you TourGuide Coldfire speaking.
Come to The Netherlands !
You are six times less likely to be killed violently than in the US ! Also, good beer and legal grass ! Tulips ! Windmills ! Cloggies !
Coldfire
“You know how complex women are”
I think vilence in the US stems from crowds at sporting events getting too excited, starting huge brawls, rushing on the field, and making general idiots of themselves while watching what is essentially a kids’ game.
Oh, no wait. That would be the other side of the ocean.
Well, shut my mouth. It’s also illegal to put squirrels down your pants for the purposes of gambling.
Mullinator: damn god job they haven’t got guns as well, though, isn’t it?
What Codfird (Codfird? sorry - Coldfire) says, minus the windmills and clogs
…good job…carry on, Codfird…
Homer is, I regret to say, on to something.
Here in the Nashville area, a movement is springing up to “rebuild the inner city”. It seems to be working. Many of Tennessee’s larger cities (Nashville, Chattanooga, et al) are cleaning up & reviving their inner cities. The effects are remarkable.
Homer was right about everything. Except country kids fucking their sisters.
That’s what sheep are for. 
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