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Too many guns, or too many sick, violent f*cks?

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:10 pm
by Elmo
I've long felt two topics are missing from the gun policy discussion.

First, why limit the discussion to guns owned by civilians? We (U.S.A.) also have the most heavily armed (and violent) police of any western industrialized country, and a heavily armed interventionist military spreading mayhem around the world. Liberals and Leftists, of all people, shouldn't be overlooking either of those aspects or taking them for granted. I'm not suggesting the relationship between civilian and police/military armament is simple or causal, just that it should be considered.

Second, doesn't it seem like this country is awash with sick, violent f*cks? Look at the games we play and the sports and films we watch. Barely suppressed violent rage no longer registers as pathology because it has become normal.

Here is an interesting take on these themes, written back in February 2015, that I just came across.

http://voxpopulisphere.com/2015/02/22/a ... massacres/
America has an identity crisis. This is a relatively new country compared to the rest of the world, yet it’s the bully that pretends to know war and democracy like no other. Unfortunately, generations of Americans have been told by their political leaders that they are more exceptional human beings than the rest of the world – this sense of privilege is incredibly toxic.

Today Gen Xers and Millennials are raised with unhealthy levels of entitlement, and despite the long dead American Dream, continue to assume that if they just “work hard” they too will become millionaires. Too often than not, they end up in soul sucking positions just to pay off college debt. We are coddled like children in terms of our political knowledge and truncated worldview to maintain mindless consumption, yet told to fend for ourselves when it comes to surviving in the real world. What does this kind of cultural vapidity do to a society?

Children of the empire feel entitled to wealth and power, while seeing their government pillage countries and commit atrocities with total impunity, killing millions of people with no empathy nor consequence. It’s a recipe for internal disaster, where people are taking out this confused sense of self on innocents before removing themselves from the earth.
I mostly agree with the author, Abby Martin, although I wish she hadn't made it a generational thing in the second quoted paragraph above. From what I have seen, my generation ("boomers") and my parent's generation were no better.

Re: Too many guns, or too many sick, violent f*cks?

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:15 pm
by senorgrand
According to the FBI and the ATF, we have more guns in private hands than at any time in American history, yet the murder rate is at a 50-year low.

But you wouldn't know that by watching the news.

There's a big discrepancy between the facts on the ground and what the media is reporting. Sort of like the run-up to the Iraq War.

Re: Too many guns, or too many sick, violent f*cks?

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:23 pm
by sikacz
The world is full sick violent f*cks. The relative ease that military options are used should be up for discussion. If the countries in this world can't refrain from the use of military power to resolve issues why would anyone expect individuals to disarm. The example is that might makes right and the weak have to bow to force.

Re: Too many guns, or too many sick, violent f*cks?

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:25 pm
by sikacz
senorgrand wrote:According to the FBI and the ATF, we have more guns in private hands than at any time in American history, yet the murder rate is at a 50-year low.

But you wouldn't know that by watching the news.

There's a big discrepancy between the facts on the ground and what the media is reporting. Sort of like the run-up to the Iraq War.
And there is this.

Re: Too many guns, or too many sick, violent f*cks?

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:29 pm
by TrueTexan
Could we be compared to other imperial empires such as the Romans or the British in Africa and India. We don't conquer other lands and bring the people back as slaves anymore. We leave them in there own countries and slave for our corporations. We don't put our condemned to the lions we give them botched lethal injections. Also have the condemned in jail work for almost slave wages living in squalid brutal unsafe conditions. Our poor white and non white citizens are mistreated and not allowed to complain without retribution.
We lock up non citizens seeking a better safer life after we have ruined their country in crowed interment buildings without due process. We hold citizens in "holding " buildings without due process and threatened them with jail and injury to have spy on others.

And the list goes on and on. We are well down the slippery slope to crap.

Re: Too many guns, or too many sick, violent f*cks?

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:34 pm
by Bacchus
senorgrand wrote:According to the FBI and the ATF, we have more guns in private hands than at any time in American history, yet the murder rate is at a 50-year low.

But you wouldn't know that by watching the news.

There's a big discrepancy between the facts on the ground and what the media is reporting. Sort of like the run-up to the Iraq War.
This.

Re: Too many guns, or too many sick, violent f*cks?

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:40 pm
by dougb
I think the world is actually in a calmer state now than the media represents. But now, I get first hand live color coverage of every act of violence within range of a satellite broadcast. In the 50's, a 20+ person shooting might be seen on the front page of a newspaper, unless it involved UN troops in Korea. More coverage in the 60's with front line coverage of bodies in Nam on the TV, but not for a full 24 hour day. There are probably more crazies running around now with guns, but there are more people also, living closer together.

I suppose a live color shot of people not shooting each other, not being violent with each other, isn't worth a lot of air time. I just got back from shopping. Thousands jostling and pushing and line cutting in a mall. Nobody got shot. There were guns present, but very few cops and no shots. Good news. The world is not falling apart, any more than usual.

Wonder what would happen to violence levels if drugs were decriminalized and the education model changed from "12 years and out" to "reach a good level of performance and out", so that everybody had a chance to get employable.

Re: Too many guns, or too many sick, violent f*cks?

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:44 pm
by senorgrand
dougb wrote:I think the world is actually in a calmer state now than the media represents. But now, I get first hand live color coverage of every act of violence within range of a satellite broadcast. In the 50's, a 20+ person shooting might be seen on the front page of a newspaper, unless it involved UN troops in Korea. More coverage in the 60's with front line coverage of bodies in Nam on the TV, but not for a full 24 hour day. There are probably more crazies running around now with guns, but there are more people also, living closer together.

I suppose a live color shot of people not shooting each other, not being violent with each other, isn't worth a lot of air time. I just got back from shopping. Thousands jostling and pushing and line cutting in a mall. Nobody got shot. There were guns present, but very few cops and no shots. Good news. The world is not falling apart, any more than usual.

Wonder what would happen to violence levels if drugs were decriminalized and the education model changed from "12 years and out" to "reach a good level of performance and out", so that everybody had a chance to get employable.
There was some truly scary shit happening in the late 60s and early 70s -- we're living in a paradise compared to that insanity.

Re: Too many guns, or too many sick, violent f*cks?

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 8:08 pm
by lurker
yes, but.
every nation that has ever been was built on violence.

Re: Too many guns, or too many sick, violent f*cks?

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 8:27 pm
by sikacz
lurker wrote:yes, but.
every nation that has ever been was built on violence.
Best not disarm or you'll be built on. Kind of a catch 22.