bssage said:
I agree with this. And I believe haveing groups on both sides of the fence who are completely unwilling to concede even a single point. Makes things that much more difficult. And reduces the effectiveness of their own campains.
yeah, I agree with you on this.
I know if I look back at my own views on this issue from say, five years ago, before I even heard of a systemic approach or complexity theory, I would have definitely be part of those unwilling-to-concede people.
Since then, I learned and realized how everything is interconnected and how the gun issue in US is so central to its culture (and to the world culture as it is shifting with globalization, too).
bssage said:
I think this should be two items. The second I completely agree with. But one thing I think is often over looked when discussing a ban in the states. Is the sheer mass of illegal arms available. And that if law abiding civilly conciseness people were to submit to a ban and turn in their legally owned weapons. There would not only be a few criminals with guns. There will be a massive amount of criminals with guns.
I think that the core issue here is the difference between short term and long term.
On the short term, yes, any ban on guns in US at large (not getting into specifics here) would result in law abiding citizen having less access to guns, while criminals continue to have black-market access to guns.
I think this is totally true and I don't see how this cannot but be taken for anything but fact.
On the long run, however, the idea is to shift from the spiral of escalation to the spiral of de-escalation.
The key question here is
why is the fact that criminals could continue to have access to illegal guns should be an argument against the ban? After all, most mass murders were not criminals anyway, before they committed their act. They are usually deeply troubled people with mental issues. If you stop categorizing them as "evil" - they are just people with issues that were never helped.
At the bottom of this question lies the core assumptions behind the US culture, IMO: why assume criminals are necessarily out there to hurt you? It may sound totally evident to you, and if it does, then I would encourage you to wonder why it seems so evident.
To illustrate this, let me give you the perspective of a Canadian living in its biggest city. Can some criminals here access some illegal guns on the black market? Of course. yet I don't own any gun myself. I have lived here for 40+ years, never had any, never needed any, nor my family or parents ever before me. Yet I live in a 2 million people city, where violence do happen, just like everywhere else, to a certain degree.
But... in 40 years... I have never been robbed. Never been assaulted. Never witness an assault or even a break in. My parents were robbed twice. Both time, we were not there. A window was broken. A few stuff were stolen. No big deal: insurance covered it. End of story.
Were the people who robbed us armed? Possible, but doubtful. They knew that carrying a weapon in and of itself would make them much more likely to get a strong sentence if they are caught; and why would they need it anyway? 99.99% of chances, they will break into a house where people aren't armed either. If I meet the person who is breaking in, whether he is armed or not, hey, go on dude, take what you want. I am certainly not going to bother: my insurance covers it anyway. Not my job to stop you.
That's the Canadian mentality.
It only works here in Canada though, because it stems from a totally different overall culture. We haven't started an escalation of weapon. We don't think in term of "defending ourselves" with a gun. But on the flip side, we NEVER have strangers come in to rape us or murder all of us or things like that. Although violent crimes do happen, a HUGE % of it is between rival biker gangs or mafia gangs; most of the rest is a mad boyfriend over a breakup with his girlfriend or other similar situations you can find everywhere, and these situations rarely go THAT bad because, well, it's not even in the mentality of a mad person to get a gun (which they don't have on the spur of the moment anyway because no one has guns in their houses in big cities).
Back to the original question.
So criminals have guns and citizen don't have them anymore. So what?
Most criminals are only looking for a bit of cash, some materials to steel or some food to eat. The vast majority of them are NOT out to get you, to rape you or to murder you - at least, not in Canada.
If they do in USA, it might be because, well... there are more poverty, more people unhappy, more systemic issues that add increasing amount of pressure on the population and less access to a social net.
Or it might just be that the US population <I>
thinks</I>that they are out there to get them, even if they aren't any more than in Canada.
Could be both, for all I know.
bssage said:
IMHO without a doubt. And while I am a huge fan of "Free Speech" I am also a fan of being socially responsible. Kind of the "unsolvable riddle" type of thing.
Free speech is great, and I am a fan of it too.
But nowhere is it pushed as far (to the point of ridicule) than in USA, where ANYONE can sue anyone for anything, yet at the same time, where the media can blatantly LIE to you about topics as important as election topics and policies and get away with it. Free speech is well, but hate speeches should never be tolerated; nor blatant lies to the public, IMO.
Yet in USA, the court case about the code of conduct requirements for news medias went all the way to the supreme court, who stated that news are a consumption matter owned by the news channel and so they can say whatever they want on it, with no more moral obligations from reporters and news staff. Crazy stuff, but it's true.
bssage said:
Not really sure how that could happen. I would think the average person would have and average education. Unless my understanding of "average" is incorrect.
I meant below average compared to the rest of the industrialized world.
No need for extensive diagrams or data to know this. When university costs you 20K to 50K per year, and the average education debt is 100K, and the vast majority of the people are considered poor (as the middle class get smaller and smaller every year), it's no magic to realize the difference in education. It's also why the South remains, IMO, so religious. Not even 50 years back into our own history in Canada, we were totally religious too, under Duplessis. And it took what was called here the "quiet revolution" - when education became a prime target for government and measures were taken to provide near-free education to everyone - this quietly killed religion and the grasp of church on people within just a couple decades.
bssage said:
This could easily make a topic on its own. And although I agree cant argue the facts you state. I believe there is a lot of room to debate the details of our prison system and laws that keep the us in the number one spot.
Yes. This was not written as a critic of all prison systems, nor a door to debate prisons in USA; only to make the point that as part of the US culture is the idea of retribution and punishment, as opposed to rehabilitation or coaching or education.
At the core of US culture is the idea of this "bad" and "good" person, the good one according to popular myth, being the one who should always be able to "fight" his way out of a shitty situation and work his way up by sheer force of will and work. Therefore, if you are in the criminal system, if you are stuck at the bottom, if you are poor, if you are uneducated, for US people, it means you are not a "good" person, you deserved it, why should law abiding citizen pay for them, etc etc.
bssage said:
Again I understand your use of this for this subject. But I do think you have oversimplified (probably for the sake of brevity)
Yes, I apologize for this, I did. We could discuss for hour on that topic too! Fact remains: 47% of the whole PLANET military is USA alone. This number should make any person seriously think about what it means, in terms of USA culture.
.../follow in next post