Quote:
Originally Posted by Tethra
There's also a lot of "ethnic diversity" (couldnt think of a better word) in most european countries. It seems like a crappy excuse for having by far the most gun-related killings.  |
First off you didn't read my full post if you think that's my excuse.It's not a excuse it's reality. In Western Europe it doesn't matter because the effects of that diversity have been long stamped out by old conquests and suppressions. Do the Scots still rebel against England? How different can they really claim to be anyway? Regardless, that was never my point with the statement. In European nations the sheer volume of time and history has forced a feeling of greater community and "family". It is fairly religiously homogeneous in it's nations and its people are settled in the same places they have been for centuries further reducing the potential friction between groups. All that comes together to give Europe a different mindset than the U.S., a nation of primarily voluntary immigrants all bringing their own aspects of culture, belief and how things should be done. Few things bind Americans in the same way Europeans are bound because unlike Europe, our neighbors are quite often different than us. I don't say any of this as an excuse for our violence, just to point out that mentioning that Western Europe, with it's history of monarchies and compliant peoples under such, is radically different from the U.S. and that making blanket comparisons to almost any other nation is borderline ludicrous.( There are exceptions to the homogeneity like Ireland and the Basque region of Spain I acknowledge, but overall I stand by my point.)
The actual answer I gave to the violence is that guns have relatively little to do with it. There are deeper causes of the violence that need to be addressed such as a lack of community,chronic poverty and more oft than not, mental illness. The time, effort and money being wasted on new gun control laws for the law abiding in a country awash in guns would be better spent taking care of those issues instead. Those are the same jackasses who somehow think that violent/sexual media, to include video games and music, should be censored to protect us from more Columbine's.
The D.C. gun ban had minimal effect; if it actually worked beyond far fetched theory, D.C. would never have been murder capital for 2 years straight and close runner-up for 4 more if I remember it right. Just think how much of the lobbying money spent on that ban and other gun control could have been reinvested in police and aid for drug and crime addled communities.
Re: Yay for 2nd Amendment
