There are definitely parallels in the US with the communities you’re describing. I think where the parallel breaks down is over the past 30 years or so those communities have increasingly moved towards stockpiling arms that go way beyond what is needed for hunting, or even protection of their land, both in type and amount. Gun ownership is not distributed uniformly in this country - there are more guns in the US than there are people, but only about 1/3 of Americans own guns, meaning they are being concentrated in a subpopulation. What we’ve seen over the past years (since Obama’s election, and the Heller decision) is a considerable increase in gun sales, and that is being driven by a portion of the existing gun owning population buying more and more. I read a statistic that in the US a person is less likely to own 1 gun than they are to own 0 or many.
For me I think a change in gun policy is important to impact the ease with which people can them and the sheer numbers of them. But I think even more than that is we need a symbolic change as well, something that repositions the role of guns in society away from this romanticization of them. Addressing these sorts of private arsenals I think goes a long way towards doing that, but would legit start war (see ruby ridge, waco, Oklahoma city, the bundys).
The reality is though there is more red tape and investigation of bulk purchases of items like fertilizer and ammonia (ingredients in the making of home made bombs or meth) than there over people buying multiple guns in short order. That’s madness.
So someone who goes hunting protects the rights of someone who goes down the road to the local kindergarden with assault rifle in hand and a bag full of other guns and ammunition to kill kids, why?
what are these fuckwits affraid of, a few controls that might mean they end up with 3 guns less (yet still have 10 in the cuboard)? or that they want the right to go down the local kindergarden to commit a massacre?
So let’s protect people who commit attrocisties because, because well it tastes good and is cheaper! FFS fuck off!
I’m just going to drop the rest of the conversation on this as I see a legitimate purpose behind owning a hunting rifle which has a designated use. I don’t agree with handguns, semi-automatic weapons being in the hands of a civilian. I just don’t think that society benefits in any way from it.
there’s a lot of it lost in a generational gap as well, culture is evolving rapidly to become (what I feel) overly dependent on supply chain and convenience. if two years of Covid has taught us nothing, it’s self-sufficiency is a survival trait being forgotten with the next generations and soooo many people have no idea how to provide for themselves. Have no idea how to cook “from scratch”. Shit, I’ve had my own garden for 5 years now and still haven’t figured out how to capture seeds for the next year’s planting.
Much of this information is crucial for society to survive beyond the control of the corporate and government entities.
See the following, and what’s happening in Ukraine right now. The ramifications of Covid and Russia’s invasion haven’t even come to fruition yet. China’s the world’s largest wheat producer and already experiencing shortages.
But again, this isn’t in context of a mass shooting in America. That is a social issue unrelated to self-sustenance in other countries. So please take this with a grain of salt.
Yes why? And even if mental disease cases need to be focused and helped, it’s not an either or. You can ban or tighten restrictions on gun ownership and still help mental disease patients better.
If people like Cruz were forced to face that type of questioning more often then they might be more willing to confront the absurdity of the positions they take. It has always amazed me just how deferential reporters are to politicians in the US , and how easily they are allowed to slip off the hook and evade giving any meaningful answers besides political talking points and clichés.
I think this term is somewhat dangerous. As used currently, it put disaffected/disenfranchised young(-ish) men under the same umbrella as people with real/diagnosable diseases. The former is a societal problem and the later a medical one. I would hazard a guess that most of the mass shootings are perpetrated by the former. There is a grey area here where chronic societal disaffection can lead to forms of (or exasperate) mental health disorders but surely a pill isn’t the answer.
The system that has been created there would not be tolerated in any other ‘real’ democaracy on earth. Add to that a Supreme Court that is now just an extension of the conservative , freedom loving , far right propaganda machine and you really are witnessing a dystopian nightmare. I try and detach myself from party politics but if I lived there I would be militant as fuck. To have to live , and suffer , under what is now ,in effect , permanent minority rule (it makes not a jot of difference having a Democrat in the WH when the Senate is permanently held hostage by Republicans , whether they have the majority or not , and the SC invariably rules in favour of the right on each and every important issue) would be intolerable.
True, but parents know fuck all about what is going on inside, as do the police. Hence they don’t just rush in guns blazing - for all the police know the gunman could have rigged explosives to all the doors which could have lead to even more kids being killed.
At times like this, the best thing parents can do is shut up and let the professionals do their fucking job without getting hassled by idiots with no idea about what they are doing
I dunno mate, if my girls are in a school building and I hear shooting and the cop are basically just waiting outside I’m running in. If I get shot then I get shot
You know how they could have known he hadn’t rigged explosives? If the fucking cowards hadn’t ran away when he was shooting outside the building for 12 minutes before being allowed to walk in.
