60% of the US is classified as wilderness and many people in a population of 300m live in remote areas and rely on game for food. Hunting is part of life in many parts of the states. Walk into any Bass Pro http://www.basspro.com and your eyes would be on stalks seeing what you can buy. (Think Milletts x 10 and more dangerous) Americans are very nice people and have a completely different culture and mindset, which from the outside can look odd compared to the way us Brits view things and they have grown up as a nation of gun owners. Will there be more gun related deaths in the general population where guns are freely available? Is mental illness constrained to one part of the world? Can the Sandy Hook atrocity happen in other parts of the world? Is it guns? Providing better support for the mentally ill? Wider societal issues/ culture? Lots of questions that governments, politicians and citizens will never get round to answering because the will to change is not there. We can pontificate all we like about the whys and the wherefores and feel outrage and sadness and sympathy. Some things are just inexplicable and it's in our nature to want to have control over our lives. When faced with such horrors we know deep down that we are all vulnerable.
It isn't the hunting issue that differentiates much of Europe from the US. I live in Sussex and many people have shotguns. A few have hunting rifles. We have a lot of deer around here. A lot of hunting goes on in France and Germany for deer, wild boar etc Obviously we don't have handguns now in the UK. The US justifies the need for these in homes for self protection and I'll buy into the argument that in some, wilder parts of the US, it may be justified under strict licence. But assault rifles and machine guns? These have to be the first to go imho...this time for good.
I spent many years in the USA in the early to mid 90s and found the majority of yanks decent, but very short sighted people. I remember sitting in a bar in the north east chatting with some locals and asking how they were finding the world cup(USA 94). Didn't have a clue & thought it was some kind if boat race!! Don't forget they call their baseball tournament the'world' series!! Whilst in the north east I managed to buy a gun in a second hand shop without too much hassle, which at the time I was rather blahzay about but looking back is ****ing scary!!
Putting a different complexion on the thread. A gun is an inanimate object it cannot work on its own,it takes a human to fire it, ergo its not guns that kill people it's people what kill people and as a race we having been doing it for thousands of centuries before guns were even invented. So even if you take the gun away the dysfunctional person with a mind to kill will still do it but just use another method.
Two excellent films that say a lot on the subject are the documentary Bowling for Columbine and the fictional but no less powerful Elephant
On that subject, this for me was the craziest moment of the film, a bank offering a free gun to anyone opening a new account. Clearly NatWest have missed a trick over here... [video=youtube;cglnvXzitOQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cglnvXzitOQ[/video]
There's not a shred of doubt that they're decent. Any of them that I have met have been extremely friendly and courteous. I just find a lot of the small town white dudes a bit simple, that's all. Maybe they're not stupid at all and its simply a totally different culture and mindset to our own. I was talking to a bunch of guys and asked them why they all drive such huge Pickup trucks and to a man the first thing they mentioned was safety. They figured that if they smashed head on into a car, they'd come out on top because of the sheer size of the things. When I pointed out that they'd probably annihilate everyone in the car they ploughed into, they said well then they should have been driving a truck. When I then pointed out that if everyone drove trucks, it would eliminate the advantage of having a larger vehicle in the first place, they said then they'd go out and buy an even bigger one! To me it comes across as a kind of childlike innocence but maybe its just that Americans are brought up to think for themselves and themselves alone. The kind of spirit of individuality that is part of the American psyche. In another instance, a guy (well educated with a good job) was telling me how he was against abortion under any circumstances. I asked him what if his 15 year old daughter was raped, would he force her to keep the child? He said that he'd kill the rapist but not the child. I said, forget about the perpetrator for a second, what would you do about your daughter? But he couldn't separate the two in his head and kept on saying how he'd shoot the rapist dead. I find that American Conservatives try to put everything into one box or another and everything is either black or white with them. On the surface at least, they seem to be a bit dim-witted but maybe its just their way. This gun thing is just another example that.
Its gathering pace. They're trying to send Piers home! Check out this portly little ignoramus getting all hot and bothered: [video=youtube;D-tsHlDviuA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-tsHlDviuA[/video]
we dont want the ****, there's millions of nutters in America with guns so put it to use and kill the prick rather than innocent schoolkids
I'm exhausted just watching it! Believing 9/11 was a Bush Government conspiracy says all you need to know about this joker. Not often someone make Piers Morgan look reasonable
