Quote (dro94 @ Mar 14 2018 03:20pm)
The primary variable you can't compare with any other country is the rampant gun culture over there. The UK or Australia never had it, if the US didn't then a blanket gun ban would be the optimal solution.
I can't really see gun violence in the US decreasing much without a blanket gun ban. It's objectively safer with no guns, but not feasible considering US history and culture surrounding guns. Also have to consider the circulation of guns being so high that illegal gun purchases would be so much easier under a ban when compared to any other country.
every other country in the organized world had a similar story. caveman moves in, slowly cultures the area, natural resources are slowly depleted until they smart up, relatively small country size, single language, modern day. to be incredibly general about it. nowhere else on the earth is a country made up of the poorest most desperate citizens of the entire world that entered into a country with more natural resources than their countrymen could even conceptualize with a primitive people that we could literally beat with sneezes and a few angry finger points. our gun culture is born from a circumstance in our creation that few other nations have had. Australia is one really good comparison to use in that regard, but the population in that arid place has localized and cultured FAR quicker than here. culture centers are crucial and we have a largely rural population, and had an almost entirely rural population for like 200 years. Canada is similar, but different enough to prevent that same comparison. 75% of the country is uninhabitable by many standards.
overall my point is that abject poverty breeds violence, as does the struggle to gain hold physically in a new unlimited world. our country was built on the poor of the world struggling for a foothold. we literally paid people to go and pick a spot out west, kicking and scratching each other the entire way there. that is the kind of stuff that takes hundreds of years to smooth out, so i get a bit irked when euros forget their ancestors smoothed it all out 500 years before they were born and just focus on the "well its not like that here" narrative.
Quote (fender @ Mar 14 2018 03:27pm)
trying to justify the "solution" with the problems caused by it in the first place - that's some olympic level mental gymnastics...
that being said, that strange sense of exceptionalism (especially when you're out of actual arguments) does NOT make reasonable and fact based comparisons invalid. this might come as a surprise to many americans, but each and every country is unique in more than just one way, each one has unique problems, history, cultural oddities and other factors - but that does NOT mean countries just outright dismiss promising and well proven solutions that DO work in other countries. that was never the case, neither in europe not in america - it's just an incredibly lazy and dishonest way to say "i don't want to listen to common sense and solutions i personally don't like, so i just pretend they wouldn't work anyway because we are sooooo special"....
quote me like a man you knob.
i want to hear all of your solutions, and i want to judge them based on their comparability between the country it works in and our country. my post is about people stating lazily that apples to apples comparisons are in play. they aren't.
your reactionary post labeling me as an anti gun control talk poster is nonsense. i want posts like mine to lead to better talks, not no talks. no talking is what people like you cause.
This post was edited by thesnipa on Mar 14 2018 03:32pm