Mega-Thread: Gun Control Thread

[diller]

Lol, unified culture. If I take a drive south for about 2 hours and I speak my own language, no one will understand me. When I drive 2 hours to the east, no one will understand me. What's the driving time to drive from Pacific to Atlantic?

And that's just language, which is a huge part of culture. We are a melting pot of different cultures. In my street alone, there are neighbours of Turkish, Morrocon, Surinam, Indonesian and Caribian descent. Not even mentioning the recent addition of some Polish and Ukrainian people.
And don't say those Polish and Ukrainian people have the same culture.
You can keep your thinly veiled racism for yourself.

His take was entirely racist, he just didn't explicitly say that, but that was what he meant by "a more unified culture combined with an overall higher quality of life".

[Grinning Serpent]

GOOD. Mass knife attacks rarely end in fatalities. Explosives that kill anyone are likewise rare, most are small and create some burns. The big ones are supremely rare because nobody ever can get the ingredients for a big bomb without getting on a federal list. Acid is likewise not fatal.

Arson is traditionally the most common "alternative", and it's plenty deadly even in the modern era of automatic fire control systems. I'm also not sure we should be going "well, they're only left with permanent disabilities and disfigurement" as though it's a win of some sort.

Saying that "people will find a way to hurt other people" is not a defense of gun culture. It's the opposite. If people are always going to hurt other people no matter what, guns should never be a part of the equation. They're weapons of war and hunting. The party of "all life is sacred" sure doesn't seem to want to find solutions that would preserve life.

Because it's the party of fellating gun manufacturers, duh. It's not like America is the only country to have a healthy, active gun culture. We're just the only ones with a sick, fucked up culture. Pretending like we can make the guns go away or even meaningfully limit them further than we already do is pure fiction. It's not feasible, and it's not politically viable either - it's not like Democrats or liberals are unified in "we need more gun control." There is a meaningful minority of voters that you will alienate by trying to take away their (access to) guns, and I'm not talking about the people that vote Republican.

But we can sure as shit do something about the gun culture we have. We can normalize safe, responsible gun ownership and use. Proper storage of guns. Proper training with guns. That sort of stuff. We can write laws that encourage such things, such as tax discounts or waivers for the purchase of safe storage devices. We can look into how our justice system addresses unsafe/irresponsible gun use/ownership, such as increasing penalties for when a crime happens with a stolen or unattended weapon. These are examples of laws that might actually get passed (assuming they're written by people that actually understand guns and our country's gun culture, not a bunch of ignorant morons), and which could have a significant, positive impact over time.

In the same way we have normalized treating gay folks as actual people and not sinful monsters, and then normalized the idea that these people can actually marry and have normal lives without being some kind of horrible demons, and the way that we are gradually repeating this process for treating trans people as normal people, we can do the same for guns and gun culture. Make it clear that current attitudes towards guns, with irresponsible use and ownership and the overwhelming amount of proto-fascist apologia it's surrounded by, ain't acceptable. Get more people into the sport and hobby of marksmanship and the idea of self-defense. Increase representation of women, LGBTQ+, and minority groups to dispel the notion that it's a right-wing evangelist white man's club (this is already taking place, but there's no reason we can't try to accelerate it.)

Trying to implement feature bans or whatever is just not going to happen. It's pointless to discuss it other than to tell people they're being dumb and need to accept their ideas aren't functional here. America isn't like other countries, not even like Canada. But who knows? If we fix our fucked up gun culture, maybe those feature bans and such *would* become politically feasible in the next 50 years. You gotta stop putting the cart before the horse.

Today's mass shooting: 6 people killed in Mississippi.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbu...mass-shooting/

When you have >1 mass shooting per day on average, something is wrong. But we're almost at 2 mass shootings per day (average).

There's a lot wrong with our country. The guns are a symptom of the underlying problems. Why did these crimes happen? What *besides* access to guns enabled/created them?

[Edge-]

There's a lot wrong with our country. The guns are a symptom of the underlying problems. Why did these crimes happen? What *besides* access to guns enabled/created them?

Almost all those problems are not exclusive to the US. Yet this kind of gun violence is exclusive to the US.

Do you reckon there's a commonality? Maybe that one thing that you want to specifically and dutifully ignore?

Or maybe we're just way more trigger happy and murderous as a people? It's like, in our DNA?

[Grinning Serpent]

Or maybe we're just way more trigger happy and murderous as a people? It's like, in our DNA?

Not our DNA, no. But our culture? Our way of looking at the world, the way our government and institutions treat its people? America is rather different from her peers in a lot of respects, or is worse off in ways her peers are not. As we've said before, it's not like Canadians or Australians or Norwegians or whatever western peer-country you'd like to use can't or don't own guns. Yet they aren't using them to murder each other like they're trying for the Costco murder bulk sale. Why is that? Do you really think it's *solely* or even primarily because it's *slightly* harder to obtain a gun there?

Endus, you're Canadian, right? How different would you say "American culture" is from "Canadian culture"? How about the way the Canadian government treats its people, versus the way the American government treats its people? How does Canadian government treat corporations and businesses, versus American? What about law enforcement? Does the typical Canadian feel safe around a typical Canadian cop? Do they feel like they will be treated fairly, that the police will take their concerns seriously, that any crimes that are perpetrated against them will be taken seriously and that the police will do their best to resolve those crimes?

[Edge-]

Not our DNA, no. But our culture? Our way of looking at the world, the way our government and institutions treat its people? America is rather different from her peers in a lot of respects, or is worse off in ways her peers are not. As we've said before, it's not like Canadians or Australians or Norwegians or whatever western peer-country you'd like to use can't or don't own guns. Yet they aren't using them to murder each other like they're trying for the Costco murder bulk sale. Why is that? Do you really think it's *solely* or even primarily because it's *slightly* harder to obtain a gun there?

Largely?

Fucking yes. Because that's what the mountains upon mountains of data, even in the US when comparing places with more strict vs. less strict gun laws and more widespread vs. less widespread gun ownership, continues to show.

Yet you all continually wave your hands around about how we just can't know these things that we abso-fucking-lutely known simply because you disagree with the conclusions of the studies.

Beyond that, poverty is more of a driver than anything culturally related and yeah, America fucking sucks at addressing domestic poverty, especially extreme poverty. Maybe we should be looking towards ways to reduce insane inequality and extreme poverty as like, a legitimate public health and safety initiative?

Government isn't the enemy here, though I will say that one particular political party that makes up government does tend to largely propose and support measures that harm people and would rightfully make them appear to be the enemy. Largely the same party that thinks the solution to an ongoing epidemic of gun violence isn't to study it and learn about it but to simply arm more people in public.

Because short of that you're functionally arguing that America is a failed state, which while we're heading in that direction at a quicker pace thanks to the aforementioned political party, isn't exactly true.

Or a good thing. You talk about it as if there's just nothing that can be done and this is simply the price we must all pay for being Americans.

[Grinning Serpent]

Largely?

Fucking yes. Because that's what the mountains upon mountains of data, even in the US when comparing places with more strict vs. less strict gun laws and more widespread vs. less widespread gun ownership, continues to show.

There's a lot of issues with making state-to-state comparisons. State laws are not federal laws. You can say you can't buy a pistol in New York, but that's not going to stop someone from buying one across state lines and then (illegally) trafficking it into New York. If the limitation isn't federally enforced, it's always going to be of questionable validity. And anything at the federal level is almost guaranteed to be challenged under violation of the Second Amendment. And, of course, the issue of private sales. But actually *enforcing* laws against private sales (even if you somehow unilaterally outlawed them) is... problematic. The guns already out there are, for the most part, not registered with any kind of federal institution. You could institute a law stating that new guns must be registered, but that's not even a drop in the bucket compared to what's already out there. Without a registry, tracking those guns (particular in regards to punishing people for selling them without official paperwork) is going to be more or less impossible. Best you could do is punish people after the fact, but that is not going to have a significant impact. Some folks will obey the new laws, most will not. And I'm talking about "normal people" here, people who generally do not break laws and have no particular desire to.

There's similar issues with country-to-country comparisons. The data is useful but you have to remember there's a huge number of factors going into those figures, and you can't ignore the ones you dislike or the ones that you don't have hard data on.

Canadians own more guns than the rest of the world, except for their idiot cousins down south. If availability of guns is the primary factor in mass shootings or gun violence in general, then logically they should be second and they should be second by a huge margin. But they aren't. Doesn't that strongly imply that there are other, potentially more important, factors involved in gun violence or mass shooting data?

Beyond that, poverty is more of a driver than anything culturally related and yeah, America fucking sucks at addressing domestic poverty, especially extreme poverty. Maybe we should be looking towards ways to reduce insane inequality and extreme poverty as like, a legitimate public health and safety initiative?

Government isn't the enemy here, though I will say that one particular political party that makes up government does tend to largely propose and support measures that harm people and would rightfully make them appear to be the enemy. Largely the same party that thinks the solution to an ongoing epidemic of gun violence isn't to study it and learn about it but to simply arm more people in public.

Because short of that you're functionally arguing that America is a failed state, which while we're heading in that direction at a quicker pace thanks to the aforementioned political party, isn't exactly true.

Or a good thing. You talk about it as if there's just nothing that can be done and this is simply the price we must all pay for being Americans.

Honestly I've been fucking blown away by Biden. My expectations for him going in were "well he's not a fucking Nazi," and he's completely blown past them. I've gone from a "not Trump" vote to a "hey he's pretty okay" vote. I don't like how fucking old he is, but changing horses in the middle of a race has traditionally been a terrible idea politically.

If Trump had gotten re-elected or Biden was a nothingburger "at least he's not Trump" president, I'd probably argue about us just kicking the can down the road to a failed state. But if Biden can maintain momentum and keep picking up the wins here and there, I think we might actually get somewhere eventually.

[Endus]

Not our DNA, no. But our culture? Our way of looking at the world, the way our government and institutions treat its people? America is rather different from her peers in a lot of respects, or is worse off in ways her peers are not. As we've said before, it's not like Canadians or Australians or Norwegians or whatever western peer-country you'd like to use can't or don't own guns. Yet they aren't using them to murder each other like they're trying for the Costco murder bulk sale. Why is that? Do you really think it's *solely* or even primarily because it's *slightly* harder to obtain a gun there?

That and the unwarranted sense of entitlement that the 2nd Amendment creates, and the direct identification of armed violence as inherent to the American character in a whole suite of ways (idolization of police and military as agents of violence, a film industry highly focused on very violent films to the point that they freak out more over brief nudity than they do gory violence, celebration of violent terrorism as their foundational principles, etc and so forth).

And I just know someone's gonna take issue with the characterization and examples listed, which will just prove my point, because it's so normalized that they can't even see it.

It's not just gun ownership, but the first way to trying to combat the cultural is gun control. If that first step can't be taken, you're never going to change anything.

Endus, you're Canadian, right? How different would you say "American culture" is from "Canadian culture"?

Well, see above. Rather than a violent guerilla rebellion that broke all the rules of warfare for the era, Canada just, like, asked for independence. Repeatedly. Until the UK gave in. There's really nothing like the copaganda and military worship here in Canada; there's a lot of respect for veterans, but our national observation of our laudable military history is largely predicated on grief for those lost, not a celebration of valour or victories. And we don't really make TV shows (other than for the American market) that really push the violence in police action; it's almost always more focused on investigation and saving others. We still get a lot of American shows, so it's not like that content doesn't exist, but it's not produced for the Canadian market at anywhere near the scale of US programming.

Largely, we only respect violence as a tool only to be used when absolutely necessary.

How about the way the Canadian government treats its people, versus the way the American government treats its people? How does Canadian government treat corporations and businesses, versus American?

We're still capitalist, despite people calling us socialist. We're better-regulated that the USA ("better" as in "more effectively to protect citizens", not "more regulations"). The government's pretty hands-off on citizens, though. More so than the USA. We have way more government-protection unionization, too, which does a lot to protect workers.

What about law enforcement? Does the typical Canadian feel safe around a typical Canadian cop? Do they feel like they will be treated fairly, that the police will take their concerns seriously, that any crimes that are perpetrated against them will be taken seriously and that the police will do their best to resolve those crimes?

If you're white, sure. We've got some pretty significant issues with police abuse of indigenous peoples. It's a recognized issue that's actively been admitted to and is being worked against, at least. I'm not gonna try to speak to how indigenous peoples feel around cops, since I don't have that experience to speak to. I've definitely felt more threatened in the USA by police while traveling than in Canada; I've experienced multiple traffic stops, but it wasn't until the USA where the officer approached the vehicle with their weapon drawn. For a warning about speeding, we didn't even get ticketed, because we weren't locals. Which I only mention to be clear we weren't pulled over for suspicion of something more serious that might justify the weapon.

- - - Updated - - -

Canadians own more guns than the rest of the world, except for their idiot cousins down south.

You should really look into what kinds of guns Canadians own. Assault-style weapons are (now) banned, with an amnesty until next October to turn such in. Handguns were always heavily restricted and are now illegal to buy or sell. The vast majority of firearms are hunting rifles and shotguns.

And then there's that open-carry basically doesn't exist. You can have a gun in your vehicle, unloaded, if you're going to/from hunting or the range or something. But not just for general carry, and definitely not on you while going around town. Not without a specific permit and you're gonna have to show you have a specific need, like being an armed security guard or a specific fear of a threat like a violent ex-husband who's repeatedly violating restraining orders to assault you and who's threatened to kill you, say; if it's not that specific and clear you're not gonna get a carry permit for self-defense.

[Grinning Serpent]

That and the unwarranted sense of entitlement that the 2nd Amendment creates, and the direct identification of armed violence as inherent to the American character in a whole suite of ways (idolization of police and military as agents of violence, a film industry highly focused on very violent films to the point that they freak out more over brief nudity than they do gory violence, celebration of violent terrorism as their foundational principles, etc and so forth).

And I just know someone's gonna take issue with the characterization and examples listed, which will just prove my point, because it's so normalized that they can't even see it.

It's not just gun ownership, but the first way to trying to combat the cultural is gun control. If that first step can't be taken, you're never going to change anything.

I think that would make sense if you didn't already have more guns in civilian hands than in the hands of all the world's military services combined, with room to spare. At that point, you're putting the cart before the horse. Fix the culture, work in legislation here and there to encourage it (this does not need to be actual gun control, see my suggestion of waivers or bonuses to purchase gun safes or similar), and you can potentially introduce more limitations over time as gun culture moves from viewing guns as an extension of your penis and glorification of violence, to useful tools and hobbyist materials and treating using the gun on others as an absolute last resort, not a first stop. Then again, if people are more responsible and safe with their guns and their attitudes towards guns, will the extra legislation even be necessary? Ain't it the Swiss that are sent home with their service rifles? Don't see those folks shooting each other very often despite quite literally having weapons of war on hand.

You should really look into what kinds of guns Canadians own. Assault-style weapons are (now) banned, with an amnesty until next October to turn such in. Handguns were always heavily restricted and are now illegal to buy or sell. The vast majority of firearms are hunting rifles and shotguns.

So? It's not like a hunting rifle or shotgun won't kill the everloving shit out of people. A rifle chambered for .308 is used to hunt deer and deer-sized game. An adult male whitetail is roughly equivalent in mass to an adult male human. If it can reliably and humanely kill a deer in a single shot, it will absolutely kill a human in a single shot as well. The .308 and .30-06 caliber were, in fact, the caliber of American battle rifles for two world wars. We didn't stop using it because it was ineffective, we stopped using it because it was too large/heavy for general purpose use, particularly as we developed selective fire rifles and we decided it was important that soldiers actually hit what they were aiming at. But none of that's going to matter for the purposes of some sick fuck taking a rifle and using it to shoot a bunch of unarmed, unaware people in an interior space. The absolute best case scenario is you're trading total number of victims (tube magazines are smaller and typically a little bit longer to reload) for total number of dead (each shot has a great deal more energy behind it.)

And then there's that open-carry basically doesn't exist. You can have a gun in your vehicle, unloaded, if you're going to/from hunting or the range or something. But not just for general carry, and definitely not on you while going around town. Not without a specific permit and you're gonna have to show you have a specific need, like being an armed security guard or a specific fear of a threat like a violent ex-husband who's repeatedly violating restraining orders to assault you and who's threatened to kill you, say; if it's not that specific and clear you're not gonna get a carry permit for self-defense.

See, that sounds plenty reasonable to me. But American culture has had a sea change in the opposite direction, so it's a no-go here. We had gun control groups trying to ban or otherwise heavily restrict handguns in the 80's (well before our country's gun culture really metastasized into the circus it is now) and failed. Overall attitudes and laws shifted from "may issue" (wherein the decision to issue a carry permit is entirely up to the county sheriff, it is not guaranteed) to "shall issue" (if you qualify for a carry permit and apply for one, you must be issued a carry permit) over a period of about 15-20 years, and we're seeing it happen again with the shift from "shall issue" to what they optimistically call "constitutional carry" or just "permitless carry." The ship left the harbor a long time ago, there's no recalling it. Incidentally, the shift from "may issue" to "shall issue" is also tied into inclusiveness - it's probably not surprising a lot of sheriffs offices would refuse to issue a permit due to a variety of "unspecified" reasons. Typically because the applicant was female, was not white, or hadn't shown proper enthusiasm (donated to the sheriff's re-election fund.) I don't imagine these were primary reasons for the sea change, but they were certainly present.

[Edge-]

There's a lot of issues with making state-to-state comparisons. State laws are not federal laws. You can say you can't buy a pistol in New York, but that's not going to stop someone from buying one across state lines and then (illegally) trafficking it into New York. If the limitation isn't federally enforced, it's always going to be of questionable validity.

Show your data then. Y'all love to talk in generalities and with vagueries, but show the data that supports this argument.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/f...uns-and-death/

3. Across states, more guns = more homicide

Using a validated proxy for firearm ownership, we analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and homicide across 50 states over a ten-year period (1988-1997).

After controlling for poverty and urbanization, for every age group, people in states with many guns have elevated rates of homicide, particularly firearm homicide.

Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. Household firearm ownership levels and homicide rates across U.S. regions and states, 1988-1997. American Journal of Public Health. 2002; 92:1988-1993.



4. Across states, more guns = more homicide (2)

Using survey data on rates of household gun ownership, we examined the association between gun availability and homicide across states, 2001-2003. We found that states with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm homicide and overall homicide. This relationship held for both genders and all age groups, after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation (e.g., poverty). There was no association between gun prevalence and non-firearm homicide.

Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. State-level homicide victimization rates in the U.S. in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001-2003. Social Science and Medicine. 2007; 64:656-64.

For example, multiple studies here cited as showing evidence supporting the conclusion that the increased presence of guns unsurprisingly consistently results in higher levels of gun violence.

"But of course, there are more guns!"

That's the point. They're controlling for other societal factors to look at how the increased availability of firearms impacted gun related crime. If guns weren't a primary factor here and it was down to people, one would assume that with other societal factors controlled for that rates would be similar. They're not.

That's the point.

And anything at the federal level is almost guaranteed to be challenged under violation of the Second Amendment.

...non duh? We've been around this track multiple times. The point being that the Second Amendment, being unique to America and with the extensive data supporting it, is direct cause of our high levels of gun violence and it serves no meaningful greater purpose in society. It results in regular mass shootings and school shootings that make us the joke of the world.

And, of course, the issue of private sales. But actually *enforcing* laws against private sales (even if you somehow unilaterally outlawed them) is... problematic.

We do it with motor vehicles, I'm not sure why it would be any more complicated with private firearms. License them and the license of ownership transfers at the time of sale, with that sale being registered with the respective state officials. Do it online? Doesn't matter, still gotta get that gun registered to the new owner.

The guns already out there are, for the most part, not registered with any kind of federal institution. You could institute a law stating that new guns must be registered, but that's not even a drop in the bucket compared to what's already out there.

Why does the "pro-gun" side keep pretending that solutions have to be 100% perfect and immediate? Especially given the cultural factors here and the gross amounts of misinformation that continue to be spread - remember, Clinton er...Obama...er Biden is coming to git yer gunz annnnyyyyyyy dddaaaayyyyy now (I'm sure you don't personally believe this, but this is an example of what I'm talking about) - it's going to be a slow, imperfect process. Like any major change.

The Affordable Care Act wasn't insanely popular overnight, but after folks overcame the extensive misinformation campaigns and saw many of the benefits it brought to how health insurance works in their personal lives they started coming around to a lot of the major components of it. For example.

And I'm talking about "normal people" here, people who generally do not break laws and have no particular desire to.

That's fine. Guns that are illegally sold and used in crimes now will still be illegal and their use in crimes will still bring additional charges.

There's similar issues with country-to-country comparisons. The data is useful but you have to remember there's a huge number of factors going into those figures, and you can't ignore the ones you dislike or the ones that you don't have hard data on.

That's why studies work to control for differences as best as possible to limit their impact on the results and data. This is literally how the entire field works, it's not some arcane science that nobody can ever truly understand. Sure it's not a perfect science either, nobody is claiming it is, but the notion that these are things we simply can't research and learn about feels, frankly, kinda dishonest.

Canadians own more guns than the rest of the world, except for their idiot cousins down south.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estima...ita_by_country

Going by this, they don't. Not per capita and not in total, though they're fairly high up there.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/co...ths-by-country

And per this data, if it's anywhere accurate, that's 2.26 firearm deaths per 100K, compared to 10.9 for the US. Definitely lower, and actually fairly close to the 2.7 or so it would have being that it's got bit over 1/4 the estimated guns per 100 people (120 in the US vs. 34.7 in canada)

There's an important difference I'll note as well: Even before the latest gun legislation, firearms are federally regulated in Canada based on my understanding. That means that they're a privilege, not a right. Canada is, by all measures, very much a success story of a country that can still maintain fairly high levels of gun ownership for responsible owners while ultimately limiting harms caused.

If availability of guns is the primary factor in mass shootings or gun violence in general, then logically they should be second and they should be second by a huge margin. But they aren't. Doesn't that strongly imply that there are other, potentially more important, factors involved in gun violence or mass shooting data?

Not just mass shootings, but gun violence in general.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...cres_in_Canada

Canada still has mass shootings. There was one last December, the fairly major attack in Nova Scotia, and others. It's just rare. I won't pretend that societal factors aren't at play here but again, you're basically attributing 100% of the differences to that while apparently working with some incorrect information underpinning your beliefs here.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Arson is traditionally the most common "alternative", and it's plenty deadly even in the modern era of automatic fire control systems. I'm also not sure we should be going "well, they're only left with permanent disabilities and disfigurement" as though it's a win of some sort.

And yet there would be far far far far far less deaths. Again, "People do crime no matter what" is not a defense of guns. It's an indictment of guns. Don't let people get their hands on them easily, and people will die less. Period.

[PickleballAce]

[Mekh]

So what you're saying is, no civilian needs an AR-15, because if Russia invades, they will be handed out as needed? Sounds good.

[Santti]

Is there meant to be some issue with this somewhere?

Maybe it's the socialism angle? The government is handing them out for free, and that's just so awful, you guys!

Also, that's 1 year old now.

[Edge-]

Was there some kind of argument or point you're trying to make with this? Or is the image supposed to somehow be a self-contained argument itself?

[Endus]

Are you trying to imply that there's supposed to be some kind of contradiction, here?

Because there isn't any.

Unless you're incapable of understanding the difference between a civilian population in a time of peace, and a militarized populace fighting war for their very survival against a foreign oppressor.

[Doctor Amadeus]

It's a combination of mental health and a fracturing dying culture. American has really lost most of its identity and has instead become a hodgepodge of drastically different cultures with different values all competing with one another among dwindling resources.

If you banned guns and somehow could reduce their use in crimes to 0% knives,explosives,and acid would take their place. Gun violence is a lot like a tumor. It will kill you and has to be treated but it isnt the underlying cause.

Dont get me wrong I'm not offering solutions just highlighting the issue. I have no idea how you solve the American addiction to illegal labor, broken social contracts, mental health, or any of its other issues I'm just an asshole on the internet.

I actually agree with a lot of this, but not likely from the same point of view as you.

I think as we learn more about this country and it's history, but between conspiracy theories and online demigod personalities and idiotic influencers coupled with the reach of Online social media. Yeah we are in trouble.

Keep in mind this isn't NEW back around the late 70's and early to mid 80's we had A lot of the same issues, the only difference is we had AM TALK RADIO and guys like Rush Limbaugh or G.Gordan Liddy. As a result we also had farmers shooting up banks and violence and riots happening too.


The difference is people could take a break to collect themselves, and their thoughts, people could be comfortable with fables and lies not always being confronted or challenged and for everything else we did have resources for mental health care and facilities, Until Reagan.

SO yeah I agree with most of what you say, but from my perspective above that is why things are different and worse in many cases.

1. More people.
2. Less Push Back and resources against disinformation.
3. More resources to help those with mental health issues besides jail or prison.

- - - Updated - - -

You see it creeping in slowly in Canada. I think it jad more to do with population density myself.

No, this is not slowly happening in Canada, Canada has ALWAYS had the same issues, and as times have changes in the U.S and the world same with Canada. I would say a large chunk of the problems Canada actually has is in large part to it's proximity to the U.S.

Just like the bullshit Trucker Convoy bullshit Sponsored by Alt-Right here.


However UNLIKE the U.S Justin Trudeau and the Majority of Canadians put an end to that bullshit. Along with terrorist organizations like The Proud Boys. Canada uses its resources to help people going to mental health crises. Along with general health.

Of Course Canada has ALL the same problems we have in the U.S, like poverty, homelessness, racism, sexism etc. But the difference is they DEAL with it

Consequently you have less bullshit than we allow in the U.S

Canada has a SHIT LOAD of problems, but the reason they don't and won't have our problems is because despite some attitudes to the contrary, Canada is NOT the U.S.

So NO, the problem we have with shootings in the U.S are not suddenly creeping into Canada.

Sure it will have SOME effect, but Canada already has prudent healthcare and gun restrictions.

[unfilteredJW]

Oh god, Mall back and agreeing with the recent pop up.

This is my shocked face.

[Endus]

Kevin Trudeau

Kevin? Seriously?

[Grinning Serpent]

So what you're saying is, no civilian needs an AR-15, because if Russia invades, they will be handed out as needed? Sounds good.

I mean, if you're serious about the whole "citizens ready to defend the homeland" angle, you'd probably just do something like South Korea does and just have a year or two (or is it four?) of mandatory military service for every able-bodied man and woman between a certain range of ages. Guns are more effective than everything we've had before, but you still need some degree of training to use them effectively, just like you would a crossbow or spear or whatever other weapons conscripts would've been given in various parts of history.

The major issue I have with this is, the American military is a force of colonization and oppression, so I'm ardently against pretty much anything that funnels more people into it. If we were more like the world's paramedics, and not the world's pigs, then I'd probably recommend it as a pretty good idea.

- - - Updated - - -

Are you trying to imply that there's supposed to be some kind of contradiction, here?

Because there isn't any.

Unless you're incapable of understanding the difference between a civilian population in a time of peace, and a militarized populace fighting war for their very survival against a foreign oppressor.

I just read it as typical Twitter idiocy. I've never seen anything intelligent or worthwhile come from that particular "news" outlet, much less Twitter in general. As though retweeting something some scummy yellow journalism rag is "standing with the brave people of Ukraine"...

[Doctor Amadeus]

Kevin? Seriously?

Lol Justin.