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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - World Affairs/Debate - Looks like the Dems are winning |
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Ziff B2BB BACKTOBASICSBITCHES                   Since: 11-18-05 From: A room Last post: 6279 days Last view: 6279 days |
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Originally posted by BiteMark1992 ...What? What is the logic behind this? |
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emcee Red Super Koopa  Since: 11-20-05 Last post: 6279 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| What makes you think there was logic behind that? | |||
Alkis Since: 12-28-06 From: Arletpolis < FA < Arletland Last post: 6304 days Last view: 6302 days |
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| Why do Americans feel the need to have weapons? You know, more stupid kids kill themselves playing with those than criminals who break into a house, seriously. | |||
Jomb Deddorokku  Since: 12-03-05 From: purgatory Last post: 6282 days Last view: 6282 days |
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| It's not really about criminals or children... it's about having a fighting chance if we ever have to rise up and overthrow the government again. | |||
Silvershield   580  Since: 11-19-05 From: Emerson, New Jersey Last post: 6292 days Last view: 6279 days |
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Originally posted by AlkisTo the best of my memory, Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" points out that Canadians actually have more guns per capita than Americans. A whole Canadian culture of hunting and whatnot, I suppose. (The immediate question is, of course, why murder is so much more common in the States than in Canada. But there's no real answer for that at the moment.) |
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Sinfjotle Lordly? No, not quite.  Since: 11-17-05 From: Kansas Last post: 6281 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| Maybe because of population density. | |||
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Silvershield 580 Since: 11-19-05 From: Emerson, New Jersey Last post: 6292 days Last view: 6279 days |
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Originally posted by SinfjotleA possibility, maybe. The movie was decidedly inconclusive. |
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Sinfjotle Lordly? No, not quite. Since: 11-17-05 From: Kansas Last post: 6281 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| It's bad form to trust anyone on the extremes of an issue. | |||
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Silvershield 580 Since: 11-19-05 From: Emerson, New Jersey Last post: 6292 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not on Michael Moore's side. I'm a registered Republican, if that's any indication (and, if it's not, then just take my word for it). But he was pretty nonpartisan in pointing out that, even though America doesn't lead the world in gun possession or any other factor that would seem obvious as a contributor to violent crime, we still somehow dwarf every other nation in murders, armed robberies, etc. It irked me that he didn't suggest any sort of conclusive reasoning for why that might be. | |||
Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6281 days Last view: 6280 days |
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| Yeah he did, that's what all that stuff about the culture of fear and paranoia was about. | |||
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Silvershield 580 Since: 11-19-05 From: Emerson, New Jersey Last post: 6292 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| That was the initial impression I got, but I gradually began to question the idea that America's "culture of fear" somehow has a causal relationship with violent crime rates. It just seemed too circumstantial to me. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6281 days Last view: 6280 days |
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| I dunno, "it's the culture, stupid" seems like about the best conclusion you can draw from that movie.
I don't remember, did he spend much time on the level of economic inequality and social injustice in the US compared to other countries with high gun ownership rates like Finland and Canada? I suspect that you could draw a spectrum among "high gun ownership rate" nations with "high income inqeuality" and one end and "low" at the other, with South Africa at one end, Finland at the other, and the US in the middle, and find a direct correlative relationship with crime rates. |
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Ziff B2BB BACKTOBASICSBITCHES Since: 11-18-05 From: A room Last post: 6279 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| The guns in Canada are usually rifles. In the US there are basically uncontrolled hand guns that flood the streets like fleas cover a dog. | |||
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Silvershield 580 Since: 11-19-05 From: Emerson, New Jersey Last post: 6292 days Last view: 6279 days |
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Originally posted by ArwonBut, does that really offer any sort of prospect of somehow improving the situation? I mean, in a country like the United States - in any country, really - you can't just "change the culture." But, if the culture is the single cause of such high crime rates, it would follow that the only way to curtail those crimes would, indeed, be to change the culture. Which is a hopeless prospect. |
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Ziff B2BB BACKTOBASICSBITCHES Since: 11-18-05 From: A room Last post: 6279 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| I think that there are a lot of reasons. Jane Jacobs touched on them briefly in one of her works. I guess sub-urbanization is one, as are many socio-economic realities combined with a culture of entitlement around firearms. | |||
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Silvershield 580 Since: 11-19-05 From: Emerson, New Jersey Last post: 6292 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| Well then, not to derail the thread (which has already happened more than once, I guess), but how does the gun control debate figure into the equation? Hypothetically, is it a reasonable solution to simply outlaw civilian ownership of firearms? Does that, as conservatives like to say, allow only outlaws to have guns? Or is that a blind oversimplification of the issue? | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6281 days Last view: 6280 days |
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| See that's the thing. Gun deaths are highly visible, but there's not that many of them. There's probably more people killed in car-crashes. It's quite easy for a culture to be quite lacsadaisical about gun-deaths and not to blame the actual guns or see them as a problem, despite the fact that people are killed by them. When somebody gets shot in the streets of LA, is it the fault of the guns or more attributable to other things like poverty, drug addiction and social injustice?
Guns are a furphy and a distraction. I'm not convinced that getting rid of all guns would make America that much safer. American crime rates are broadly comparable to the rest of the developed world, especially largely gun-free countries like the UK and, to a lesser extent, Australia. Guns are not a key variable in crime rates. The problems with comparison are numerous... "Crime rates" as an undifferentiated statistic are misleading because they include assault and arson and car theft and such, for example. Also, every country measures crime differently. Some go by crimes reported, some by crimes prosecuted,others use household surveys to augment police statistics with unreported crimes, and categories of crime vary greatly... for example, in Australia car crashes go under vehicular manslaughter and thus get counted in the murder rate, but in the US this doesn't occur. Establishing causal relationships between firearms and crime is notoriously difficult. Broadly speaking, America could probably use a decent registory and licensing system to help with crime-fighting, but beyond that, its cultural pre-occupation with guns and its apathy towards their proliferation is a socio-historical quirk, not a major problem. |
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Ziff B2BB BACKTOBASICSBITCHES Since: 11-18-05 From: A room Last post: 6279 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| I like gun control. My friends have theirs registered and it is a useful enforcement tool. Its not like it HURTS you to spend 5 minutes to register your god damned gun. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6281 days Last view: 6280 days |
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| See that's not really what I'd call gun-control. Maybe it's cos the terms of debate in this country are about banning types of guns or not. | |||
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Alkis Since: 12-28-06 From: Arletpolis < FA < Arletland Last post: 6304 days Last view: 6302 days |
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| If people kept guns in safe lockers on which only the gunowner knows the combination and their stupid kid can't get access to, it would all be fine. But morons just leave the gun and/or the combo lying around, resulting in their kid finding it and shooting himself or someone else. |
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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - World Affairs/Debate - Looks like the Dems are winning |
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