Is it an American thing?

There are four basic reasons for the second ammendment in the United States.

Every one of the founding fathers is on record to the effect that private
ownership of firearms, the 2'nd ammendment, is there as a final bulwark against
the possibility of government going out of control. That is the most major
reason for it.

At the time of the revolution and for years afterwards, there were private
armies, private ownership of cannons and warships. . . The term "letters of
marque, and reprisal" which you read in the constitution indicates the notion of
the government issuing a sort of a hunting license to the owner of a private
warship to take English or other foreign national ships on the high seas, i.e.
to either capture or sink them. The idea of you or me owning a Vepr or FAL rifle
with a 30-round magazine is not likely to have bothered any of those people.

The problem with drug-dealers owning AKs is a drug problem and not a gun
problem. Fix the drug-problem, i.e. get rid of the insane war on drugs and pass
a rational set of drug laws, and both problems will simply go away. A rational
set of drug laws would:

• Legalize marijuana and all its derivatives and anything else demonstrably no
  more harmful than booze on the same basis as booze.
  
• Declare that heroine, crack cocaine, and other highly addictive substances
  would never be legally sold on the streets, but that those addicted could shoot
  up at government centers for the fifty-cent cost of producing the stuff, i.e.
  take every dime out of that business for criminals.
  
• Provide a lifetime in prison for selling LSD, PCP, and other Jeckyl/Hyde
  formulas.
  
• Same for anybody selling any kind of drugs to kids.
  

Do all of that, and the drug problem, the gun problem, and 70% of all urban
crime will vanish within two years.

But I digress. The 2'nd ammendment is there as a final bulwark against our own
government going out of control. It is also there as a bulwark against any
foreign invasion which our own military might not be able to stop.

Admiral Yamamoto, when asked by the Japanese general staff about the possibility
of invading the American homeland, replied that there were fifty million
lunatics in this country who owned military style weaponry, and that there would
be "a rifle behind every blade of grass". This apparently bothered him a great
deal more than the 200,000 or so guys in uniform prior to the war.

A third obvious reason for private ownership of firearms is to protect yourself
and your family from criminals and wild animals. In particular, there is no
real reason for people to have to surrender that right when they go outdoors,
hence concealed carry laws.

And there's a fourth reason for the 2'nd ammendment, which is to provide the
people with food during bad economic times. When you listen to people from New
York and from Texas talk about the depression of the 30's, you hear two totally
different stories. The people in New York will tell you about people starving
and eating garbage, and running around naked. The Texans (and others from more
rural areas and places in which laws and customs had remained closer to those
which the founding fathers envisioned) will tell you that while money was
scarce, they always had 22 and 30 calibre ammunition, and that they always had
some damnd thing to eat, even if it was just some jackrabbit.

probably similar to oz in terms of long guns, mostly used for hunting

handguns however are much harder to obtain (legally that is)

Re: Is it an American thing?


That bit of propaganda has often been repeated by the gun lobby. It is true that the Nazis prohibited Jewish gun ownership.

Nevertheless, gun laws had been very restrictive in Germany before 1933. The Weimar Republic had very restrictive gun laws that included, at certain points in history, not only severe punishments for gun ownership, but also for knowledge about a third person owning a gun.

The Nazis liberalized these laws considerably when they issued the "Reichswaffengesetz" (Reich Gun Law) in 1938. The stated goal was to have an armed populace. Of course "populace" in the Nazi definition excluded the Jewish population.

After 1945, the Allied Military Government drastically curtailed peoples' rights to own arms. The Allies wanted the complete demilitarisation of Germany. The army and Reich police forces were disbanded, and gun ownership (even for the new police force that was recruited later) was completely prohibited.

It was not until 1952 that German citizens were again allowed to own guns. At that time, with (Western) Germany becoming a sovereign nation again, the Reichswaffengesetz was essentially re-instituted and remained in effect until 1972.

(So, to sum this up: the claim that in Nazi Germany the government was in sole possession of weapons is nothing but a propaganda lie.)

Our worst massacre by Martin Bryant led to far more gun control in Australia, which appears to have worked very well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_bryant

OK, guns don't kill people, but I'd like to see them try it with a stick.

I understand (thanks to A2K) that Americans generally view gun control in a very different way to the rest of the world. It has more to do with history, nationalism and dogma than logic or common sense.

Hoddle street shootings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoddle_Street_Massacre

Queen street shootings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Street_Massacre

Nods to Set on US west history. I usually don't argue about history, about data, though I argued with Timber, bless'im, on summary once or twice. I'm also an old hollywood child, for good or ill. I'm aware of that impact, and the probable circular arguments about it and us, all of us. Not that hollywood formed Cho. But, see, there is this backlog of interests we have in our mainstream media. They do add up cumulatively to the easy, the emotionally shocking, the obliteratingly spiking movie/tv climax.
I don't hate hollywood, but I sure wish it would diversify. I doubt it is capable. I look at other countries' movies for clues to human behavior.

I don't bring this up as causing behavior in Cho. I do think movies and videos affect the whole culture. Remember, I am not interested in censorship, quite the opposite. I'd like other people to wake up and go in other interesting directions. Life is not just one violent line.







Tangent, of course.

I saw the results of a study (that I can't find right now) that showed one of the leading causes of gun massacres is...previous gun massacres. Brace yourselves for the ripple effect, folks.

One thing I noticed is that it was nearly on the anniversary of the Columbine killings. Cho would have been 15 at the time.

I sympathize with that creative writing teacher. Even if all creative writing teachers were licensed psychologists, could they pick the problem person from the possibilities, and, hmmm, intervene? Tricky business. She did report. I can understand the many reports and legalities a university deals with.

Maybe there should be notes for roommates...

NO NO, I"M NOT SERIOUS. Lotta roommates in my day would have been dragged off.

Yeah, there's been a lot of talk about identifying people with the potential to do this. Personally, I hope that NEVER becomes possible.

Glue some feathers onto the stick, and it's not that hard to do. This year's crop of compound bows can compete directly with black powder weapons; I mean, don't take my word for it...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=O8MlzJDcOv8

That's a 100+ yard deer kill with a bow.

Then again, gun control is about control and not about guns. When control freaks run out of guns to control, they start looking around for other things like kitchen knives e.g. the recent efforts to outlaw kitchen knives beyond a certain length in England. The ultimate goal apparently is having English people eating kibbled food out of bowls on the floor like dogs and cats.

They say the three basic psychic drives for humans are food, sex, and sleep. You should assume that when they control freaks figure they hae food totally under control, say in about ten years, they will start in on one of the remaining two.

The proposed knife ban:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm

And poor Columbine, such a weight.

My business partner went there, years ago, as did, I gather, many thousands of others, it being a big school in the area.

But, sure, people will fix on things, perhaps especially at fifteen. Me, I was being in love with a book character. But I can understand other fixation, er, interests.

Some of that is simple notariety with which someone can identify. And some of this probably explains the pitiful but flailingly powerful neonazis.
Connection + rebellion. A big jump, just talking.

An aside-

Eorl, I've noticed, not quite sure when, that you've jumped the forum gap to post in other threads... I'm glad. Maybe it's been a while but I've just noticed recently.

Yeah, been making a deliberate effort to spread the genius around a bit more

Yes...I was wondering about that.


These things, as I said earlier, tend to lead to one another.


We nearly had one in my city, immediately after Columbine, but the kid came back with his gun, then shot himself instead.

This holy constitution thing reads oddly other than in the US.

Like the founding whatsits were able to predict the kind of gun problem the US has today. Not.

Grow up.


If enough Americans are happy to have huge numbers of your fellow citizens killed because of whatever makes Americans so violent, plus their ready access to really effective killing machines, because you like having a gun, own up to it.


I feel so sad for the huge numbers of you who feel differently, but have to live with what you create, though.

Hiding behind paens to "freedom" and nonsensical crap about being slaves if you can't kill each other in massive numbers is sheer crap.

Speaking of Columbine, there was a young woman who was a highschool student at Columbine at the time of the shooting, who was on campus, as a graduate student, at Virginia Tech on Tuesday. They interviewed her anonymously (she didn't give her name) on BBC radio yesterday. Can you imagine the nightmares and PTS potential this poor woman now will have to endure for the rest of her life. Even the people who aren't wounded or killed will be affected.

In terms of the whole media attention thing and the "just do it" attitude of these kids- the focus on the numbers of this whole thing is scary. American kids are told they have to jump higher, run faster, not only get 4.0 grade averages, but 4.8889999's- I'm sure these people who are just twisted enough and disenfranchised enough and feel that they aren't accomplishing enough are looking at those numbers- and saying, "Columbine was 12 or 14 (including teachers)- I've gotta get at least twenty." Now there's an even new mark to strive for.

I was talking to my parents last night- they sounded just so sad and tired. My mom said, "I just can't believe it." I asked her why she couldn't believe it, it happens all the time now. She said, "But not like this..." So this kid made his mark . My father said, "I don't understand what these kids have to be depressed about...their lives seem pretty good to me."
I think maybe we've taught American kids to expect to much of everyone or everything else, and not enough of themselves.

Oh, thanks a bunch. And may the bird of paradise give you a pearl.

The massive amount of trauma these episodes leave behind them is of great concern.


I am wondering how the survivors of all of them are doing. And the poor bastards, like police, ambulance people etc. who can become deeply traumatised, themselves, by such out of the expected daily run of blood and misery events.



There tends to be a lot of silence about these effects.


I have heard survivors and rescue people speak about the horror of their memories of the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, many still clearly sufering severely from them, and it was so chilling that I had to turn it off. And I am used to hearing awful stuff.


The injuries that we can inflict on each other are truly devastating.