And BTW, only fucking racists talk about hate being “genetically predisposed.” If you have a cite that humans are born hating instead of taught how to hate, I’d love to see it.
You offer nothing else.
You were invited to do exactly that. Whaddaya got?
What unit did you serve in? The same one as Archie Bunker?
What problems do you refer to that are unique to us, and *how *are they unique in a way that allows dismissal of anyone else’s experience with guns?
Certainly. That may be why I didn’t say that the U.S. has been free from conflict in its past. The point is that you’re referring to ‘other countries’ (i.e., Europe) as being more civilized and advanced than the U.S. when in fact its history is full of war and conflict between the countries that comprise it. Europe’s conversion to liberalism is a fairly recent occurrence, and predictably it isn’t working out very well either, as I alluded to in my post above.
As for our incarceration rate, it goes back to the uniqueness of our problems. We have a lot of freedom in this country, and with freedom comes a higher degree of lawlessness. Still, our incarceration rate hasn’t always been this high. We had what is known as a counterculture revolution in the late sixties, whereupon the country’s liberal faction set out to fix things and make them all better. As a result, the crime rate skyrocketed, and along with it, the incarceration rate. Still, silly me, I’m of the opinion that if people break the law they should go to prison. And further, that our incarceration rate is still lower than it would be if everyone who broke our laws and deserved to go to prison were found out and went to prison.
I suppose we could be like our liberal European counterparts and start to downplay the seriousness of crime and the length of time served. I read not long ago on one of the British news sites where one of their nogoodniks was sentenced to all of five years for having committed rape, and the comments sections of every one of those sites I’ve visited are rife with complaints from British residents about the light sentences their criminals receive. Or we could be like Norway where even the most heinous crimes draw a maximum of 20 years and most sentenced to that amount don’t serve anywhere near that much.
So in consideration of all this it’s far from conclusive to me that ‘other countries’ are superior to the U.S. in either their crime or their incarceration rates.
Hardly. People are genetically predisposed to lots of things. This is why genes have significance. One can be genetically predisposed to have blue eyes or red hair. One can be genetically predisposed toward brilliance or talent or attractiveness. Or one can be genetically predisposed to illness, disease or deformation. Is everyone who acknowledges or comments on these factors racist? Obviously not.
But apart from all that, it strains credulity that an inborn hatred of inequality equals inborn hatred of people because of their race. I suggest you rethink this line of attack.
Hatred is not one of those things. I asked if you had a cite that stated otherwise, and I will assume the lack of such a cite means you have nothing other than your opinion. Since I don’t give a single fuck about your opinions and you appear to have no facts, I think we are done here.
Funny (as in rancid), every map I look at shows higher incarceration rates generally trending toward the more reactionary states. You anti-liberal bias does not seem to hold much water.
First - please do not namecall in this forum.
Second - If you’re done here, that’s fine. If not and you wish to continue to engage, please dial back the hostility.
[/moderating]
I don’t cite the obvious. People are genetically predisposed to all sorts of emotions and behaviors. Aggressiveness, pacificity, love, laughter, hatred and the urge to mate and to kill are all common among inborn traits amongst humans, as are predispositions toward art, math, language, sports, etc.
All of which is quite apart from your equation of hate for inequity to hate for people based on race. What about hatred for animal abusers? Hate for wife-beaters and child-molesters? Hatred for any of these is intrinsic in most people. Are they no better than racists in your mind?
I should hope so.
By ‘reactionary’, I presume you mean conservative. And yes, I would imagine that conservative states would be more likely to strenuously prosecute and jail their miscreants. This says nothing about whose ideology is more responsible for the circumstances leading to their crimes. The skyrocketing crime rate in the immediate aftermath of the counterculture revolution, however, does.
Let’s see how all those liberal states are doing when it comes to incarceration:
Maybe it is just me but I am seeing a lot of conservative states up there and not so many liberal ones. Freaking Turkmenistan has a lower incarceration rate than everything else on that list.
You have to go waaay down the list till you get to a western European country. Is it your contention that these liberal western European countries have more crime than the US and just do not bother to jail their citizens out of some touchy-feelie hippie ideas of loving everyone?
It’s the fucking war on drugs. But now the gun grabbers want to create a* war on guns *and put even more otherwise good citizens in prison.
I thought if guns were outlawed then only criminals would have guns leaving the poor, law abiding folk at their mercy? That’s what gun nuts keep telling us.
“Conservative” is a very nebulous term. The way you seem to use it correlates precisely with my understanding of “reactionary”. Conservatives tolerate progress, just at a more measured pace. They do not seek to restore the old days. What you post is mostly reactionary.
Clinging to an ideology that drives more people to crime and regards incarceration as the go-to approach for dealing with suggest that, yes, it does matter
Nothing reactionary to see here :rolleyes:
I was surprised to learn, after the 2011 shooting spree, that Norway not only does not have the death penalty, but they don’t even have a “life without the possibility of parole” sentence. Something along the lines of “touchy-feelie hippie” came to my mind at that time.
Denver recently banned bump stocks. They sent people a politely-worded letter asking them to turn them in. No one complied.
How many of them have been arrested for possessing a bump stock?
I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were none.
Did you see my previous post? Since the amendment (and the funding cuts) research has sunk to a fraction of what it was; there’s only been a handful of studies in 22 years. Versus what evidence the CDC ever was advocating any position?
This is why so many medical groups, dems, and even many republicans think it should be repealed.
Let’s take a step back: do you think there should be studies in what works regarding making us safer and even* finding out *what the data are on gun deaths? Do you think the CDC should spend more than $100,000 per year on this topic?
So, to my post, where I said “It’s like comparing traffic fatalities to India” your response is essentially yes, and you’re fine with that.
In terms of homicide rates, there is a strong inverse correlation between wealth and homicide rates.
The US bucks this trend. It’s one of the wealthiest per capita countries but has, as you say, a median homicide rate. It appears (though I didn’t check thoroughly) that no country in the same *half *of the GDP per capita table as the US has anything like the same homicide rate.
But let’s handwave this statistically significant fact and talk about el salvador or something.
while (haveErection)
Shout( “USA!” );
Ok. Not sure what point you are trying to make when you posted that then. There is a law that is unenforced and no one pays any heed. Politicians scoring cheap points for doing “something” by passing that law.
If your point is ineffective gun control laws I am not sure this is the one you want to hang your hat on.
Jay Dickey, author of the Dickey Amendment that this is all based on, regrets it. Attempts have been made to repeal it but they have all failed.
Interesting that you blame the incarceration rates on the counterculture rather than pointing to the massive number of people jailed for using the “wrong” drugs. When the laws are written to punish black or brown people (or white people imitating black or brown people), it is a matter of “breaking the laws” rather than noting that the laws are wrong.
(Note that when the drugs were mainly “non-white” drugs, it was a matter of Law and Order, but when the crisis is white folks overdosing on opioids, it is a health problem.)
We do better than that, Brock Turner, (white guy, of course), only got six months.
Also, your post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument completely ignores the fact that crimes tended to rise with the rise of male 18 - 35 year old population and fell as that cohort grew older, (leaving mostly prisons overstuffed with bad drug law victims.)
Our “unique” problems have more to do with racism than overall culture.