On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 9:13 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 2 April 2015 at 19:40, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote: > >> On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 12:19 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> On 1 April 2015 at 20:50, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote: >>> >>>> On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 1:40 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> >>>>> I hope that isn't an April Fool! >>>>> >>>>> Well, this isn't rocket science... >>>>> >>>>> In 2013, it was more likely Americans would be killed by a toddler >>>>>> than a terrorist. In that year, three Americans were killed in the Boston >>>>>> Marathon bombing, while toddlers killed five, all by accidentally >>>>>> shooting >>>>>> a gun. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Because all those guns make you safer... >>>>> >>>> >>>> Guns can be very dangerous, but like drugs there is no way to stop >>>> people from obtaining them. It's already possible to 3D print one, and this >>>> technology will only improve from now on. >>>> >>>> So how does every other country in the world manage to have less guns >>> per person than the USA? Magic? >>> >> >> Independently of Brent's remarks, with which I agree, my point is that >> even if forbidding people from owning guns works -- and I'm sure it works >> to some degree at the moment -- such restrictions become increasingly >> ineffective as technology progresses. >> > > Who suggested banning guns? >
Sorry, I assumed you were arguing my point that "there is no way to stop people from obtaining them". There are societies where people have a less desire to own guns, but I don't think there is any simple answer as to why. > Are guns banned in, say, New Zealand? No. Yet there are less per head, and > less injuries and deaths caused by them, probably because Kiwis own guns > only for the reasons one might expect - hunting, for example - rather than > whatever reason it is Americans do (it looks from the outside like a sort > of national fetish, a theory that the glamourisation of violence in many > American TV shows and movies would seem to support). > This is another tough question. My guess is that puritanical values and a repressive stance on sexuality have something to do with it, and we also see high levels of violence in other societies that are (even more, of course) sexually repressive. But my guess is as good as yours. > > > So, anyway, any comments that address the actual situation? > Yes, serious social science. Really trying to figure out why so many kids in America want to start a rampage at their schools. Being willing to accept the real answers to this question instead of avoiding the parts of the answer that might be less palatable. > >> Home 3D-printed guns are at the prototype level at the moment. Both the >> designs and 3D printing technology will keep improving and becoming >> cheaper. People are already experimenting with 3D printing ammunition. >> > > The technology to make atomic bombs in your basement exists. So, should > that be made illegal? What do you think? > Like all other things, one day technology will have advanced so much that making them illegal is irrelevant. Hopefully by then we figure out how to be nice to each other -- or we finally discover the solution to the Fermi Paradox. > >> The trouble with trying to solve problems by restricting access to >> technology (in this case firearms) is that, as technology progresses, the >> laws have to become increasingly repressive to keep up. Preventing people >> from owning guns will soon devolve into a multi-prong approach where you >> have to restrict access to information on the Internet (if that is even >> possible), regulate the sale and ownership of 3D printers, worry about the >> availability of the common components that go into gunpowder, etc. For any >> difficulty you pose, there will be eventually a technological solution, and >> the only possible response from the regulatory mindset is to forbid more >> things, until we need permission to do almost anything. >> > > Now that we've got the straw men out of the way, I find my question still > stands. So, why *does *the USA have so many firearms per head compared to > anywhere else in the world, even a few was zones? And why does it have the > highest rate of firearm related deaths and injuries per head in the first > world, and close to the highest in the world (outside war zones) ? > Ok, but this is a slightly difference perspective to assuming that the other countries are actively doing something that works in preventing firearm violence. It could be simply because of easy access to firearms but there is a lot of empirical data that casts doubt on this hypothesis -- at least on the hypothesis that this is the unique or main factor. I would look into protestant puritanism and its many ramifications in what society values, what it's like to grow up with puritanism (especially if you don't fit the mold) and so on. If this turns out to be right, I would also be very weary of directly attacking organised religion. This usually results in another, even more nasty organized religion (e.g Stalinism). > > Once you've answered that, then we can argue about whether there's any > reason to fix the situation, and if so how to go about it. But so far, the > cart is before the horse. > >> >> The real problem we have to solve is this: how to attain a society where >> we can trust each other? >> > > Stop glamourising violence, perhaps? As an exercise you could try watching > some NZ films (say) that involve violence, e.g. "Black Sheep". > "Critics Consensus: With an outrageous premise played completely straight, Black Sheep is a violent, grotesque, and very funny movie that takes B-movie lunacy to a delirious extreme." I will definitely watch it. :) > Now try watching some US film that involves violence (too numerous to > mention). See which one makes it look horrible and painful and nasty, and > which makes it look kind of cool and sexy. Just a symptom, of course, not a > cause. > I agree that this might be an important clue. It might also just be a symptom of America's talent for making money. The reality is that (mostly younger men) all over the world love these movies. To quote the German band Rammstein: "We're all living in America, America is wunderbar". And I can't resist another quote from the same song: "We're all living in America, Coca-Cola, sometimes war". > > >> Repressive regulation goes in the opposite direction and it misses the >> point. Brazil is on the lower end of the scale in your map, yet is has much >> more gun violence per capita than the US, which shows us that lowering the >> number of guns per capita is not guaranteed to solve anything. >> > > You think that Europe has repressive regulations as far as guns are > concerned? > As with many other things, Europe is very heterogeneous in terms of gun laws. The EU is slightly less heterogeneous because it imposes minimum regulations to join the free trade zone. Some countries go above and beyond them (like Poland) while others resent them (like the Czech Republic). I think overall the regulations are too repressive, especially as the police starts to look like a para-military organization. Go to any main train station in Paris and you will walk by small groups of gendarmes and even soldiers carrying machine guns. > Can you find any Europeans who agree with you (apart from the odd > psycho-killer?) > It's not easy, and I understand why. Europe had a very bloody history until quite recently. I think there is still a lot of trauma surrounding that. Also, being interested in guns is seen as very low status around these parts, and Europeans really really care about status. Unless it's firearms for hunting and you have a nice property and family name. Then it's fine. > > So far the only counter examples have involved India and Brazil. But > restricting things to western democracies - Europe and America and > Australasia, say - still shows up the same disparity. (It isn't too > surprising that people in Brazil and India have different problems to > people in the 'west', after all.) > > Oh, wait, I forgot Switzerland. But since I haven't yet been told if the > map is wrong on that front, or if Swiss households have a lot more people > in than American ones (or if Brent was mistaken, perish the thought) I > can't really comment on that. > Switzerland is a special case. Their army is structured in a weird way. All men up to a certain age are technically in the army and are actually obliged to have a weapon and keep it in their home. We are talking about assault rifles (there are about half a million of them in Swiss household) as well as regular pistols. So this might mess up the statistics, because they might not be counted as weapons owned by a civilian household, even though they are available as such. On the other hand, this also means that all of these gun owners receive military training on how to handle the weapons. Telmo. > > >> >> >> >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. 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