FAO Ellewoods The other link is 'Century of The Self' which I strongly recommend as it goes to the very core reasons why America uniquely has these issues.
I will check it out later tonight. I havent slept in 2 days and it is 5:45 am and I am really trying not to pass out until the game is over.
Yeh that is pretty messed up. I think overall your point about gun banning being impossible is most likely accurate but I think there's some serious education needed, even if it's for the next generation, to help people make different decisions. Maybe that's a way around it. Maybe courts should be stricter when it comes to the self-defence laws. Maybe incidents like burglary, mugging, drunken incidents should be analysed more and there should be stricter penalties if the court felt that someone unnecessarily pulled out a gun on someone, when he/she could have instead easily called the police. It's not easy but if the thief or criminal was proven not to have a weapon on him then the "victim" that shot him, should be punished. There should not be any self-defence if the culprit didn't have a gun.
I recently moved to a town called Paradise in northern california. I was born in wyoming in the rockies, i moved to rural virginia, then west germany, then greece, then back to rural virginia, then a suburb of dc, now here. I only said all that thinking you were wondering what region I am from as that does effect ones opinions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_California wikipedia says 26,000, I dont know how that is possible, no one lives here, half the appartments in my complex are empty, half the businesses are boarded up. I would think that if you counted the town as a 15 miniuet drive radius, maybe there is 20,000 people tops.
Yeh it does actually help get a bigger picture. Please don't think that I was labelling you in the same category as those americans that blindly defend the 2nd amendment, they don't even understand what it actually is. I know for sure that the type of upbringing and surroundings (what kind of town you were brought up in) affect greatly what you become and ones opinions. A lot of people can't help it, they've never travelled, they just live in this small world of 20,000 habitants but hence my comment about education. It sounds like left-wing crap but I really believe in it. My girlfriend is from south africa and like America a lot of habitants own guns, pretty much everyone. Although I would say it is slightly more justified there because of the high crime rate and the lack of police. The danger levels there are far higher than Newton Connecticut. Anyways, her mum had a gun when they lived there and my girlfriend was raised/told NEVER to touch it, or even look for it. There was great emphasis on it being used only if someone was there to kill them. As a matter of fact, it remained unused and was thrown away when they moved abroad. I really think there's too much freedom of usage in America. Owning a gun is one thing, taking it out of the cabinet is another. Carrying it on you in my opinion is probably one of the worst things. It implies you expect danger. You expect to use it. You are ready to take it out. SO before anything has happened, some americans are 24/7 ready to use it. Without any analysis of the situation/predicament they might get in. I mean that is a serious issue in itself. A gun in a hand should be the last thing you ever attempt. If you're gonna take someone's life, you have to be 100% that it is because yours is genuinely threatened. If that is not the case and you shoot someone you should pay similar consequences to a homicide.
Our laws are very much geared to protect you after you shoot someone. In some states they have "Stand Your Ground" Laws. That means that if someone comes at you, you have the right to kill them, you do not have to make any attempt at avoiding the situation. Other states it varies what consitiutes legitiametly killing someone. Most states to my knowledge work on the concept that if you "feel" you were in jepordy of being physically hurt you can kill them. I do believe that in those states you have to have no other option to get out of the situation. We have multiple levels of homicide which is possibly part of the problem as well. We have 3 degrees of murder, 1st, 2nd, 3rd. Then you have manslaughter and involentary manslaughter, and others involving specific things like cars. I could be off, I think that 1st is the only one eligible for the death penalty or life in prison, the others work down from there, manslaughter does not necessarily involve going to prision.
Wow incredible. I knew some of that but not all of it. That's another thing, all these different laws in different states... surely that doesn't help unifying a nation and getting people to do something about it. Anyways we'll see if anything is at least attempted by Obama
In a lot of ways it is better to think of us as a collection of countries as opposed to one country. Like the EU for instance. Each state has its own house and senate and govener and judical system. Then our federal government has all those things as well. Sometimes laws passed in a state contradict the federal government or another state. We also have a costitution and also every state has a constitution and sometimes they contradict each other.
I have been to the US on a number of occasions, great country and 99% of the people are very nice and friendly. There are some areas I was warned not to go into eg South side of Chicago and some parts of NYC....though I have never felt unsafe in NYC. It is ironic that this terrible event should happen in a quiet rural area and not in a big city. But Thats America. Even those with mental problems have access to guns, and that it a recipe for a disaster. The right to bear arms is in the constitution and no matter how many die in these type of events the powerful Rifle Association and what not will prevent a change to the law.
Unfortunately for the Newtown area they'll have to put up with a Westboro Baptist Church protest soon. As if it wasn't bad enough. Utter scumbags. http://www.examiner.com/article/wes...o-protest-newtown-when-obama-visits-on-sunday
We've got nutters here and all, but they're of the Muslim variety. They've tried the same ****e as the WBC have, with British soldiers' funerals.
The fact is that **** like this happens everywhere. It isn't a problem that is limited by culture or country. It isn't a modern thing either. There is simply a type of person who is deluded in his or her make up. They believe that the solution to a problem is to take lives and the easier the target the better. The right to bear arms will be seen by some as the only way to defend against this type of attack. In some home, sat at a computer, there will be a sad basket case who gains some sort of excitement from the tragic event.
I think the kid had some personality disorder of the Asperger Syndrome variety. Not the same as being some kind of gung ho nutter.
I think it's a bit rich rubbishing America's faults when we have so many of our own like the class system, the tolerance of public drunkenness and violence etc The extra media attention distorts the view of the USA. Don't forget that Western Europe has the same population as the US and there are plenty of gun incidents in Belgium, France, Germany despite the much more limited access to firearms.
