I am forced to conclude that “america” collectively does not care if you get shot at a supermarket, or your kids get shot at school.
This is what real leaders do, when they refuse to be controlled by gun lobby and paranoid gun owners.
Yup. Pretty much.
I’m afraid that collectively, this is true. As a whole, the USA is a violent bully, dedicated to murder, control and the enrichment of a few at the expense of everybody else, around the world and in our own country. And a huge case of Stockholm Syndrome where the grist for the murder mill (us) has too high a percentage of people who think they’re just one good day away from being the ruling class. We’re fucked up, to say the least.
With some exceptions, to be sure.
I know for a fact I’ll never be a part of the ruling class, and I don’t want to be. Too much work.
Even a jaded cynic like myself, however, has a grip on a slim and slippery strand of hope. I mean, we’re still typing and communicating and not murdering or slandering or enslaving other humans, amIc’rect?
My 1st ex-husband is a firearms nut. My take: A lot of it has to do with the Patriarchy, because he’s not inherently evil. Guns are a way to gain power when one feels powerless, and since they’re phallic, usually it’s men that use them; women who want to remain non-victims of their violence co-opt themselves to stay safe. I was once one of those women; plus, it was one of those magazine things (I read a LOT of those when I was married to him) - “Show Interest in His Interests!”.
But when things were going bad in our marriage and he got drunk and tried to shoot himself and ended up shooting my wardrobe in the bedroom closet (no cops were called, btw), I started to question the whole gun thing (I’d done that when Lennon and Reagan had gotten shot, too).
No change is going to happen in our life-times, I don’t think. (back to jaded cynicism) Unless we have some massive “First Contact” -type event soon.
capitalism the way we do it in america is look out for yourself, and fuck everybody else. Why would we handle guns any differently. “Nobody” cares if you get shot, especially when there is money to be made selling guns.
The only reasons guns exist is to kill people. Not to build, but to destroy.
Why do humans want to destroy other humans? (rhetorical, mostly)
And who’s going after Patrick? I despise him! Hm, this guy:
Putting together a couple of post from my thread:
Notice how, in the world outside the USA, the correlation between guns and mass shootings is weak to nonexistent?
But:
Unlike with mass shootings, the correlation between guns and death is consistently high across the world.
Because almost all of the gun toll is due to suicides, accidents and domestic homicides, not public massacres. Both inside and outside the USA.
It’s the frequency of the public massacres where the US is the real outlier, even though they still represent a very small fraction of the total death toll.
Although they certainly don’t help, the guns are not the actual cause of American mayhem.
Both the guns and the violence are a symptom of the underlying causes: white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and empire.
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BTW, since we’re presumably about to hear all the usual arguments rehashed online:
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I live a few hours’ drive from the site of the Port Arthur massacre which prompted Australia’s infamous gun law reforms.
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At least two of my three neighbours own guns.
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They use them to shoot at wallabies/snakes/possums, and I can hear them doing so every week.
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Although this is not fun for the possums, it does no real environmental harm. There’s no shortage of furry little dudes down here.
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It doesn’t particularly bother me. Although I admire and greatly enjoy wildlife, I tend to be unsentimental about death [i]. So long as they keep their bullets on their side of the fenceline, it’s no skin off my nose.
I mention all this because it might be useful context when speaking to the majority of Americans living with the delusion that Australia actually banned guns or that Australians as a group are fanatically anti-gun people.
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[i] At any given moment, there is almost certain to be at least one disintegrating corpse somewhere on my property, usually due to non-human predation. Wild animals die all the time, that’s just how nature works.
My basic take on the US gun situation:
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Personal weaponry should not be required in a civilised nation.
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The USA is not a civilised nation.
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As with every other issue, the establishment Dems are primarily interested in this as an opportunity for fundraising.
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In the unlikely event that any gun control legislation passes, the enforcement of that legislation will be heavily biased by the USAs plutocratic and white supremacist status quo. Wealthy white people will very occasionally get a polite warning or small fine, while the same laws will be used to justify a massive and sustained murderous assault upon poor and nonwhite people.
People in America, or as I call it, America, don’t like this shit. Stop calling the arms industry “America”.
One of the things that minorly pisses me off is the number of European gun manufacturers who continue to make guns that can’t possibly be sold here, and they ship them all to the US. I’m all for capitalism, but that’s just wrong.
Hey, for profit, people have to die. It’s a part of life under capitalism, 'sall.
