All hail the gun god

[luzribeiro]

Just a bunch of snippets and cartoons. The hand-waving I leave to our resident 2nd Amendment worshipers (you know who you are).



Don't forget, ANOTHER mass sacrifice was made to the national god the other day (and it has become the norm to such an extent that it was barely even noticed). Which of course calls for the requisite "thoughts and prayers".

As well as "now is NOT the time......." (Well, I did wait a few days after the event, but I'm not sure it's ever enough).



I'll only add that if you feel the need to arm yourself for your own protection, then your country is fucking broken. Plain and simple. A complete breakdown in trust in your institutions. Ironically, I think most people feel they need to protect themselves from the other citizens who in turn need to protect themselves from them. Couldn't pay me enough to live there. From Clinton to Bush then Obama to Trump!? Wtf!? A bi-polar nation that's obsessed with guns? I'll pass, thanks.

And I'm actually saying this as a citizen of South-fucking-Africa.

Comments

[mahnmut]

[luzribeiro]

And yet they vote in swaths, and elect representatives who then go ahead and perpetuate this narrative. Doesn't sound like "no one" actually feels that way.

"Americans are not obsessed with guns. A political party is obsessed with them"

Don't know, I've even met liberals on this very community who've defended the current state of gun regulation in the US. Perhaps they've given me a false impression? I mean, on any other issue like taxation, LGBT rights, etc, there's a distinct difference of stance. Not on gun law, in my observations (maybe in some minor nuances). Perhaps it's better to let an actual outsider make the call whether Americans are obsessed about something, rather than judging from within?

[luzribeiro]

Oh, they were quite liberal. And often self-identified as such.

It's not an ad hominem. I'm suggesting that being detached from an issue possibly allows a more impartial assessment of said issue.

I don't feel like dwelling on your previous sources of butthurt, quite frankly.

(frozen) (no subject)

[luzribeiro]

"You are literally discounting my opinion, because I am an American. That is an obvious ad hominem."

Am I?

"you evidently lack real-world experience with Americans"

And then YOU complain about people trying to insult you.

Fine. You think Americans are not gun-obsessed. I think they are. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

(frozen) (no subject)

[luzribeiro]

You know what? Whatever. Do not let anyone be wrong on the Internet, and please do have the last word as you usually do. (I'm just saying, you know).

(frozen) (no subject)

[abomvubuso]

I suggest you back off. Right now. Unless you insist on deliberately burning yourself.

[nairiporter]

I have lived in the US for quite a while, in a very blue city, and I've had friends from all over the place. Friends raised in rural areas, friends in science and business and in studies (which is my field) - and most of them have spoken at least once on the gun control subject at one point or another. While all of them do favour some form of gun control, most of them (both those who self-identify as liberal and conservative) have expressed opinions that the US level of gun control (in that blue city or elsewhere) can be explained as being "part of the US culture", hence should not be touched - or if changed, it shouldn't be altered "too much" (one of my friend's words, a liberal one by the way). Their argument? "This is the way we are as Americans, and you can do nothing about it" (not that I ever attempted to).

Gun control wasn't the only reason they talked about guns, by the way. At least a couple have shared the fact that hunting and spending time at the shooting range is a favourite pastime of theirs - and on one occasion, a couple other people who overheard this also intervened and said "most people are like this" (apparently meaning most people in the US), as if that was supposed to serve as an excuse for something.

I even had more than one conversation with a lad who was briefly on this forum, who self-identified himself "as liberal as liberal goes", and he was among the most ardent advocates for the argument that "guns don't kill people; people kill people, and good people with guns can protect other people from bad people with guns". We had several long arguments with him, and his conclusion was exactly that "you Europeans don't understand the American mindset so you shouldn't judge" (I am not even European by the way, I'm South African, but I digress). When I pointed out the discrepancy between the liberal idea of a responsible state that cares for its people and his supposed liberal political affiliations, he said the more irresponsible course of action would be to deprive people of their "right of self-defense", citing the old well-known trope that guns would help citizens defend their civil rights in case a power-grabbing government decided to take them away at some point. He also mentioned that, while open carry is not very useful (because "it disrupts peace and causes more concern than calm"), people should have the right to posses as many arms as they like at home, "just in case". He cited the Swiss experience, which prompted an even longer discussion involving our resident Swiss denizen who provided clarifications about some very important distinctions that my US friend had failed to take into consideration while making his argument.

Another person, who at some point described herself as left-centrist, I think she was from California, argued that many of those mass shootings would have ended up with much more blood if there wasn't at least one responsible gun-carrying citizen to stop the shooter (because "the police are always far away from an incident").

Most Americans I've talked about this at all, have invariably argued that gun control, the way it's being proposed by some non-Americans (like Australians and British, or a Swede in one case), would be more detrimental than helpful, because it would only remove guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens, while keeping the channels for those who want to violate the law anyway, to obtain guns and gain the upper hand. When confronted with the simple proposal that adequate background checks should be implemented, they have either backed off somewhat, or chosen to ignore the argument.

In any case, of all the hundreds if not thousands of Americans that I've personally interacted with, both in person during my stay there and here online, have actively participated in the gun debate, most times they themselves initiating it, which indicates a strong involvement on the subject. And like I said, a good amount of them have admitted they partake in gun-related activities on a regular basis, be it "just for fun" or to "keep in form", depending whom you ask.

I wouldn't call that a non-gun-obsessed culture, especially considering the comparison I could make with similar circles that I've frequented both in Europe and here in Africa, where no such level of involvement with the gun topic (or indeed, gun-related activities) has ever come even remotely close to what I've experienced in the US. I'm not sure if my anecdotal experience is more noteworthy than yours, and frankly, it shouldn't matter - what should be more reliable and relevant in this case is statistical data. If we look at the statistics for gun ownership per capita, gun-related crime, gun-related deaths, frequency of shootings and number of casualties per capita in the US and compare that to the rest of the developed world (and here I emphasise, on the developed world, because those are the standards we should be adhering to, right?), then the assertion that Americans are not gun-obsessed, somehow flies right out the window on its own. Of course, one could try to twist the definition of "gun obsession" into all sorts of arcane ways to make it fit into this argument or the other, but all in all, I do trust that we are all basically on the same page when it comes to definitions as general as these.

Then again, I am prepared to accept the criticism that no matter how long I have lived in the US and interacted with Americans, I would probably never fully grasp the American mentality as profoundly as an actual American could. Perhaps I have missed something very fundamental in the whole picture, granted. I am merely sharing my observations as someone who has come from outside, experienced this society for some time, continued to be interested about it and to maintain contacts with it, and is giving her interpretation of what she has observed.

The blue city was New York, by the way.

[nairiporter]

Like I said, in most cases it was not me who brought it up.

I have not actively sought opinions on the subject with Americans, not more actively than with non-Americans anyway. It just so happens that the topic tended to pop up every now and then when Americans are around. Nothing of the sort with Africans or Europeans or Australians.

I would be interested to know what you think the real problem with gun violence in the US is, if it's not really obsession with guns. Why has the American society had bad ideas about what the nature of the gun problem is, like you said; and why has it allowed a donor-driven political party to run on an agenda focused on expanding gun ownership. Why has it become such a big issue, and why are these people allowed to wield so much influence?

[halialkers]

Ah, see, protecting people hasn't got shit to do with it. The gun cult is a mini-religion of paranoiacs that are deluded enough to think their assault rifles will stop tanks, bombers, and heavy artillery like they're the Viet Cong willing to send 10,000 men against 500 Marines and end up with 10,000 corpses for fuck all for years until the Marines quit.