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lem motlow
4 crazed meth heads smash into your house in the middle of the night with the intent of doing a Manson family like ritual on your wife and children.how many guns would you like? 0,1 ? How many rounds would you like to be able to shoot? 5?or 10?
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Swayed1967
But it’s a pretty sad world you Americans live in...
I imagine most Americans...
I would say a majority of Americans seem to believe this. And I wanna tell you the rest of the world thinks you're whack-jobs.
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Swayed1967
But it’s a pretty sad world you Americans live in...
I imagine most Americans...
I would say a majority of Americans seem to believe this. And I wanna tell you the rest of the world thinks you're whack-jobs.
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Rocky Dijon
Interesting you imagine you can speak for the rest of the world. Try replacing the word "Americans" in the quotes above with any other groups of people (nations, races, orientation) and see if it still sounds reasonable when you read it back.
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Swayed1967Quote
lem motlow
4 crazed meth heads smash into your house in the middle of the night with the intent of doing a Manson family like ritual on your wife and children.how many guns would you like? 0,1 ? How many rounds would you like to be able to shoot? 5?or 10?
Hmmm, I suppose I’d like at least a dozen human vaporizers built into the walls of each room in my house which I could immediately train on any invader via telepathic communication. Those crazed methheads wouldn’t know what hit ‘em, er, vaporized them...
But it’s a pretty sad world you Americans live in when your best solution is to arm yourselves to the hilt rather than addressing the issues underlying crime. Reduce the crime rate and you’ll be a helluva lot safer.
I imagine most Americans would agree with the above and would support initiatives to reduce poverty and raise the quality of education etc. etc. But when you point out that the quickest way to reduce crime would be to outlaw guns you encounter this enormous cultural divide between Americans and pretty much the rest of the world. The first argument put forth by the semi-rational types is that criminals will always find a way to procure guns on the black market or just use other weapons if guns were banned. So what happens when 4 crazed meth heads smash into your house and you’re armed with nothing but a tennis racquet? Well, I guess you die until you create a society where people don’t wanna use meth. That won’t happen overnight or in the next 3 years of Trump’s presidency of course but in the meantime less guns will mean fewer fatalities.
But it’s the other argument which the rest of the world find’s so asinine – the one about ‘our right to bear arms.’ Fear that if we couldn’t arm ourselves our government would suddenly strip us of our freedoms and turn us into cotton slaves or sell our organs to China or that we’d be fed to aliens like in that Twilight Zone episode. It’s not just the militant Heston types but I would say a majority of Americans seem to believe this. And I wanna tell you the rest of the world thinks you're whack-jobs.
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Leonioid
It is disappointing how quickly people forget, lose appreciation and then start talking how much they hate the United States when it was actually not too long ago that without the United States (and it weapons and armies) Europe, the South Pacific and world maps would look very very different today.
Many Unites States Americans gave their lives fighting to take back the freedom lost in countries which instantly hung out the white flag and allowed themselves to be taken over by invading armies, countries which did not have enough weapons to defend themselves so they just surrendered.
It was only 60-80 years ago... but how soon people forget.
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Leonioid
It is disappointing how quickly people forget, lose appreciation and then start talking how much they hate the United States when it was actually not too long ago that without the United States (and it weapons and armies) Europe, the South Pacific and world maps would look very very different today.
Many Unites States Americans gave their lives fighting to take back the freedom lost in countries which instantly hung out the white flag and allowed themselves to be taken over by invading armies, countries which did not have enough weapons to defend themselves so they just surrendered.
It was only 60-80 years ago... but how soon people forget.
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Leonioid
It is disappointing how quickly people forget, lose appreciation and then start talking how much they hate the United States when it was actually not too long ago that without the United States (and it weapons and armies) Europe, the South Pacific and world maps would look very very different today.
Many Unites States Americans gave their lives fighting to take back the freedom lost in countries which instantly hung out the white flag and allowed themselves to be taken over by invading armies, countries which did not have enough weapons to defend themselves so they just surrendered.
It was only 60-80 years ago... but how soon people forget.
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DandelionPowdermanQuote
Leonioid
It is disappointing how quickly people forget, lose appreciation and then start talking how much they hate the United States when it was actually not too long ago that without the United States (and it weapons and armies) Europe, the South Pacific and world maps would look very very different today.
Many Unites States Americans gave their lives fighting to take back the freedom lost in countries which instantly hung out the white flag and allowed themselves to be taken over by invading armies, countries which did not have enough weapons to defend themselves so they just surrendered.
It was only 60-80 years ago... but how soon people forget.
I agree with this, but at the same time it should be okay to point out that this weapon policy is unique and hard to understand for other countries.
I know, of course, that it's a huge simplification to say «americans» in this matter, as many americans don't support today's weapon policy at all.
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Leonioid
It is disappointing how quickly people forget, lose appreciation and then start talking how much they hate the United States when it was actually not too long ago that without the United States (and it weapons and armies) Europe, the South Pacific and world maps would look very very different today.
Many Unites States Americans gave their lives fighting to take back the freedom lost in countries which instantly hung out the white flag and allowed themselves to be taken over by invading armies, countries which did not have enough weapons to defend themselves so they just surrendered.
It was only 60-80 years ago... but how soon people forget.
Slightly revisionist...and TOTALLY arrogant and disrespectful.
IF THE Japanese had not bombed Pearl Harbor the US would probably still be sitting on their hands
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Swayed1967Quote
Rocky Dijon
Interesting you imagine you can speak for the rest of the world. Try replacing the word "Americans" in the quotes above with any other groups of people (nations, races, orientation) and see if it still sounds reasonable when you read it back.
Although I recognize this is a divisive issue among Americans, there is a general consensus in the international community regarding gun ownership in the US – ‘you folks is nuts.’ And I feel perfectly comfortable speaking for the rest of the world on this matter.
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Leonioid
It is disappointing how quickly people forget, lose appreciation and then start talking how much they hate the United States when it was actually not too long ago that without the United States (and it weapons and armies) Europe, the South Pacific and world maps would look very very different today.
Many Unites States Americans gave their lives fighting to take back the freedom lost in countries which instantly hung out the white flag and allowed themselves to be taken over by invading armies, countries which did not have enough weapons to defend themselves so they just surrendered.
It was only 60-80 years ago... but how soon people forget.
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Leonioid
It is disappointing how quickly people forget, lose appreciation and then start talking how much they hate the United States when it was actually not too long ago that without the United States (and it weapons and armies) Europe, the South Pacific and world maps would look very very different today.
Many Unites States Americans gave their lives fighting to take back the freedom lost in countries which instantly hung out the white flag and allowed themselves to be taken over by invading armies, countries which did not have enough weapons to defend themselves so they just surrendered.
It was only 60-80 years ago... but how soon people forget.
It's sad to see how so many people don't know that the one and only reason WWII ended the way it did was because the monster H. was stupid enough to invade a country governed by monster S. Let two monster fight each other, each capable of sending millions to their death and who will win? The one who has a Russian winter on his side. It's frightening to realise that indeed this world would have looked quite differently, if it weren't for two cold winters in Russia.
In any case this is hugely off-topic, since although indeed the US has been involved in multiple wars (more often than not unjustified and hardly ever effectively) it has nothing with the common sense that having guns and automatic rifles readibly available for anyone who has enough money, even people known to have mental illness, is sheer madness. And the only reason this is still happening is not because of an amendment or because of some forefathers or some divine principle or the hypothetical case of methheads in your home (I assume a real society would have taken care of those methheads before) but the same answer as always: money.
I do beg forgiveness to Bjornulf for posting this, I have been trying to ignore this thread for the past days and I have tried to say things now as politely as possible, but in these terrible times, one sometimes feels saying one's opinion is important.
But I promise I won't post more in this thread, and will now go back to comparing Ronnie's bad solos to Keith's bad solos.
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MisterDDDD
Remembering the victims of the Las Vegas shooting: Here are their stories
[www.washingtonpost.com]
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MileHigh
I'll just point out a reality disconnect. Some people are criticizing the United States for its gun policy and singling it out and saying that the rest of the world considers them to he "crazy." I suppose that you could call this the "forgetting" phenomenon. There are huge swaths of Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia where power literally comes from the barrel of a gun. There are militias and warlords and territories staked out with people that have sub-machine guns mounted on the backs of of pickup trucks. It's frightening, oppressive, and makes life an experience where low-level terror is always in the background and you never know if one day it will become active terror with people with guns and machetes that will come to your house and demand your money or your car or even your daughters. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of people live lives under the yoke of the barrel of a gun today as we speak. And America is the number one country when it comes to problems with guns and their consequences? I don't think so.
You can get into your car in America and starting on the East coast and drive all the way to the pacific ocean shoreline and never see someone brandishing a gun, never have to pass through a militia checkpoint, never have to pay a "tax" to some stranger brandishing a gun. Instead, you will see peace and prosperity and good will and people living their lives and raising their children in happiness.
Now, is America all good vibes and roses every day? The answer is no, but compared to many places in the world America is a paradise and people want to go there. The glass is way way more than half-full in America. The American Dream is still alive and well and people prosper in America and they make a positive difference every day.