Posted on 01/27/2015 7:15:02 PM PST by SJackson
For a long time, I have believed that the gun culture of the United States is dangerous and frankly stupid. So many people are killed by firearms going off accidentally or because they fall into the hands of children or madmen. Their easy availability is not just because they are a transportable and smugglable commodity, but also because there is a myth in American culture that claims that only by possessing guns were the American rebels able to defeat the British and gain independence.
Even if that were so, and it is not, what might have been true 300 years ago is not necessarily the right answer for today. The NRA spends billions buying votes (as is the American way) to ensure that anti-gun legislation is blocked. Regardless of the massacres, casualties, abuses, and misuses, almost all attempts to restrict guns in the U.S. fail. As a result, its gun death statistics are the highest in the world per capita, and America insists on believing that guns help protect people.
The other lobby, of course, is the hunting lobby. I hate hunting. I think it is cruel. Shots often miss or injure without killing. Often enough an innocent bystander or passerby gets wounded or killed. But I know I will not convince anyone of this because I will be dismissed as a culturally inhibited Englishman corrupted by my upbringing, and I will be only preaching to the “amen chorus.” And yes, I do believe that the meat industry is cruel too and needs much tighter control. Frankly I’d like to see it banned altogether, but that’s another argument.
However, all this depends on the police forces around the world being able to protect their citizens. If you live in the Wild West, then – I agree, not having a gun would be crazy, even if it might not save your life. This would be true even if having a gun and being able to use it well meant that you were more likely to be a target yourself.
There has been a lot of debate about whether the police in the U.S. and elsewhere are over-armed. But since crooks, drug dealers, and ordinary citizens can acquire the most sophisticated and powerful killing machines, it would be ridiculous and insane not to allow the police to be able to match the fire they come up against. We have all seen how the Islamic fanatics in Paris were so well armed that they could force the police into retreat by completely outgunning them. They were, thankfully, eventually cornered, outnumbered, and put out of their miserable lives.
What happened in Paris, however, has now led me to modify my opposition. What happens when the state does not protect its citizens? There have now been repeated murderous assaults on Jews in France and elsewhere. Isn’t it time for them to be armed? It is the principle of the English philosopher Hobbes that we relinquish some of our freedoms to the state in exchange for its protection.
Where they fail, the contract is void. Europe has a strong tradition of restricting individuals from having access to firearms – even the police under normal conditions. As a result, its citizens are far less likely to be killed. But if assaults on Jews are increasing in France, I believe those Jews who remain must be prepared to arm themselves.
Israel is a country where citizens have access to guns and where they are constantly under threat. Yet you might argue that having guns did not stop the massacre in Har Nof. But the proximity of civilian arms did help limit the damage. If the Hyper Cacher store had armed protection, the initial assault might have been avoided. Clearly the French police have not done enough hitherto, despite the repeated assaults on Jewish targets. We must not be afraid of taking the initiative. If the French authorities object, they know that the answer is for them to do more to deal with the problem. Yet for all the fine words, we know they have abandoned area after area in France to Muslim self-control and have allowed the hatred to fester without response.
This situation is now being repeated right across the European community. I would not want to be in France today without self-defense. And the instructions of the U.S. State Department to Jews traveling to Europe not to show any outward signs of Jewish identity in public is simply crass appeasement, capitulation, and defeatism. Just as the refusal in Britain and the U.S. to print the cover of last week’s Charlie Hebdo uncensored, because it contains a cartoon of Mohammad, is a sign that we have lost the battle for freedom already.
We need a debate about the values of modern societies. Throughout the world what exacerbates alienation is a sense of inequality – financial and political. If one puts wealth and accumulation above providing a meaningful occupation, one will be breeding discontent. This is as true in Western states as it is in Eastern states. Even where there is a generous welfare system, this alienation festers. There has been a consistent governmental failure to find work, to create public infrastructure projects, or to use tools such as micro-lending to encourage the poor and unemployed to find some pride, regardless of color, religion, or race.
There is a constant flow of refugees and immigrants. In Europe every year some 300,000 come in from Muslim countries around the Mediterranean. In the U.S. there are just as many illegals crossing the borders. Most are peaceful and want only to find a better life. But inevitably amongst them, as with all such waves in history, there are gangsters and fanatics. Most societies have failed to integrate immigrants or the socially deprived. The problems are both social and, increasingly, religious. Muslim countries send thousands of primitive, hate-mongering imams around the world to cater to the spiritual needs of these disadvantaged and vulnerable wanderers.
On one level a society is to be judged by how it treats its weakest and poorest citizens. The Left believes that only a strong welfare system can help solve the problems of inequality. The Right believes that only by encouraging people to take care of themselves and find ways of creating wealth can the poor and disadvantaged raise themselves out of their disadvantages.
To be fair, most Western societies seek some sort of compromise between the two extremes. But clearly generous welfare in Europe has done nothing to ameliorate this. It is argued that American Muslims are less alienated than European Muslims because they feel better integrated.
But this is so in Europe too: those Muslims and other immigrant minorities who do well are better integrated. Those who are not are the breeders of violence. The European way has been to ignore the problem or simply throw money at it. Until this changes I see no alternative other than for us to strengthen our defenses. Because the jihadis are only showing that they can get more and better means of attacking what they regard as their eternal enemy.
There was a movie once about a society where on the police and the military had weapons.
I’ts called “Shindlers List”.
It is not but the left has never let a lie get in the way of the message.
That got me too. So what would have washington do without guns? Use peace signs? The stupidity of libtards knows no depths.
(1) “The NRA spends billions buying votes (as is the American way) to ensure that anti-gun legislation is blocked.”
Actually, the NRA spends an average of $25 million each year on lobbying and election contributions.
They spend around $75 million a year keeping their membership informed on pending legislation and on media bias. Members pay annual dues for that information, so I'm not sure why that would be “vote buying.”
(2) American “gun death statistics are the highest in the world per capita...”
Completely false. Even when you include USA gun suicides, many Latin American countries and South Africa rank higher than America.
Even though America has the highest gun ownership in the world, we rank 110th out of 210 countries in gun homicides, which include murder, self defense, and accidental shootings.
The USA gun murder rate is also misleading. When Black and Hispanic murderers are excluded, the USA white gun murder rate is only slightly higher than the European rate, on average, about 1.0 to 1.5 per 100,000 higher.
Few Americans realize that private gun ownership and the right-to-carry in Israel is severely restricted.
Gun ownership in America is about 10 to 1 higher than Israel.
Two recent events in Israel show the consequence.
Eight Israelis were stabbed on a bus, but only one fought back, the bus driver, who only had a can of Mace.
Four Israelis were shot and killed in a Synagogue. Not one person in the Synagogue had a firearm.
When seconds count, the Police are only minutes away.
I hope Jeremy Rosen gets stabbed.
Idiot is a bleeding heart antihunter.
hunters are the number one line of defense against poachers and animal eradication. They pay for guarding the wielderness they share with the animals. The whale hunt moratorium almost destroyed the whale population because the poaching Soviets were not controled and without ordered competition from commercial licensed whalers.
The same is true for the 2nd amendment. Without guns to protect life and property, criminals have no competition whatsoever, and the underfunded police is a joke. Criminals can roam and poach in neighborhoods and grab business with the mafias without problems.
It is a sociological phenomenum, but liberals supposedly into sociological manipulaton do not understand it as political aprentice sorcerers.
Indeed, he will then feel the Stalinist political correctness misery: a gun death by a toddler is a tragedy, but millions in systematic genocide at a slaughterhouse called gun free zone is a statistic.
The political class wins only if he or she is elected politician, but not the citizen.
They have revised their policies since then, allowing people to get their license a bit more easily in Israel now as a result of these attacks. But for a Brit, Israel is a well armed society.
The thing is, if the criminals have no opposition, then only the police becomes their competitors, and that right there is hell on Earth.
Hunting cruel? It is not genocide, for goodness sakes’. Linerals choose painless genocide over a little bit of pain with freedom.
Language has consequences.
Who is the “gun culture”? Is it the people running around killing people, or is it NRA members?
NRA members of course, don’t confuse them with misunderstood yoots unable to find employment.
Minutes are a long time. I believe the elapsed time between Officer Wilson's call for backup in Ferguson and it's arrival was about 90 seconds, though some sources think shorter. In any case, everything was over by then. A lot happens in a minute.
Kind of gets it, but still burdened by those misconceptions. But the conclusion valid, though it will never happen in Europe.
There have been a few threads on than doomed request.
Kind of. Left out of the movie, likely due to the producers political positions, was the fact that Schindler amassed arms for his works, and in at least one instance is said to have sent out a group to kill a difficult SS officer. Obviously the workers at his factory couldn't have prevailed, but they could have defended themselves, possibly allowing some to survive.
And there are tens or hundreds of people who have been mislead as much.
The problem is mind boggling.
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