Quote:
Originally Posted by maytag
Do you wonder, (i do) if China would have a better record vis-a-vis human rights violations, if their citizenry were armed? I'm sorry, but generally speaking, China is a bad example to emulate for something like this.
But I think there's still soone meat on that bone that we can gnaw on.
I think there's a culture problem in America, too. In the last 50 years or so, we've gone from a country where most of the pickup trucks in the high school parking lot carried a loaded shotgun in the rack, yet there were very few incidents, to a country where guns are prohibited nearly everywhere, and we have shootings daily. Again..... it seems to be a culture problem, not a gun problem.
But let's look further into the china comparison. Let's say it was determined that we are going to "hard ban" guns, as you described? Picture that for a moment. You're going to need a method of gathering them all up. And where will they start? Of course: the law-abiding folks. The "bad guys" will become more brazen, because they'll recognize they're the only ones still armed. But we'll spend a fortune prosecuting as criminals, those citizens who decide to lie and keep a gun for protection. We criminalize the good guys, then. But worse? We start a revolution. Because trust me when I tell you that most of the mid-west and the other red states will say "come pry this gun from my cold dead fingers".
I can think of another country that went around and collected their citizens guns..... that whole thing ended in concentration camps.
I'm sorry, for better or worse, guns are here to stay in America.
That doesn't mean we can't find meaningful ways to regulate them. But that's swatting at the leaves: we need to cut down the problem at the trunk.
As Americans, we must ask ourselves: what is different in society from 50 or 75 years ago, when shootings almost never happened? This is a conversation that'll very quickly become inflamed and personal. But nothing good is ever easy. Let's start at the very basic unit of American society: the family. What is different now than it was then? How about at school?
I think we can learn some things we probably don't really want to know.... but must. If we're just willing to ask the hard questions and answer them honestly.
But asking today's Americans to "dig deep", to be honest with themselves even if it hurts, to actually look at truth, instead of "my truth, your truth", yeaaaahhhh........ not gonna happen either.
We're on a train that's run out of tracks. It's only a matter of time before it crashes catastrophically.
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Maytag, I realize and understand the cultural aspect, and respect that. So am I respecting the other societies' views on their firearm policies in their own country.
I'd like to ask this though; what is the ratio of legal gun owners vs crimes committed with them. Could it be 0.02% or some figure as little as this? Perhaps another way to ask; how many civilian guns are held legally in the US (or Canada for the same matter) compared to the number of guns used in violent crimes (in a year, let's say). Must be like 1,000,000:1 ratio?
I'm wondering about this figure because I'm trying to understand what you mean by cultural "problem". Can't imagine for a minute that the culture of guns is on the edge of becoming a crisis, or a problem (yet anyway, mind you)
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edit:
Just found the answer to my question. Well, perhaps closer to the cause of the problem. I'll venture in to say that your problem with guns is not ownership nor cultural, but "
education". Looking at
this report most if not all of the armed crimes, violent or not, were committed by individuals with little or no education background whatsoever.
You want your crimes and gun problem to be solved? reform your 'over-priced' education industry nation-wide and that'll go away by itself. School books for free and libraries open source, etc. You get the idea...
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