USA Politics
- Thread starter Genghis Khan
- Start date
No, no, no, you see, they need to be trained handling guns starting in kindergarten so all those good guys with guns can stop bad guys with guns.
jazz from hell
Ancient Mariner
In terms of guns and sex, the USA are more dishonorable und uptight than the catholic church.
Spaldy
Ancient Mariner
They sell bulletproof backpacks for schools now. That's not a joke.
I'll be honest, I'm not against guns, per say. But the free-for-all in the USA, combined with toxic gun culture, is frightening.
Atop that, the recounting of events now seem like the shooter was barricaded in a classroom, where he either had already killed the members of the class, or was killing them, and the cops waited around for 60 minutes to get in and take care of the guy.
Atop that, the recounting of events now seem like the shooter was barricaded in a classroom, where he either had already killed the members of the class, or was killing them, and the cops waited around for 60 minutes to get in and take care of the guy.
Diesel 11
As you scream into the web of silence...
I can barely even be sad anymore about this. Anytime I see a headline about someone shooting up a place I’m just like, “well damn”, and then move on. Like what else is a person supposed to do in this country? I have high paranoia that I’m gonna be murdered that a high part of my day is spent listening to little noises and going nuts. If the meat department in my retail store is banging a door, my brain will instantly start saying, “It’s a shooter and you’re gonna die.” If I see a random person the street I instantly start looking to see if they’re armed. If I hear animals on a bike ride I’ll start worrying that my whole town is being massacred and I’m riding in towards destruction. And it’s not even me being overdramatic because in the United States of America this stuff can and will just fucking happen.
And then these rat bastard politicians say they’re heartbroken and offer up prayers to everyone and do nothing about it. They don’t care about kids at all, if they did they wouldn’t be writing up all this bills harming trans children. It’s ridiculous. It’s fucking stupid. Every day a classroom is invaded by an armed lunatic and they think the issue is… *checks notes* puberty blockers, abortion, and birth control?? What????
Biden runs onto Twitter and says “This shit should not be happening.” My brother in Christ, you’re the fucking president. What did you get elected for? I’m worried that 2024 will come, a true fascist (not just the dumbass that Trump was) will come into office and that’ll be the end of even our faux freedoms. At the rate we’re going the future is looking bleaker and bleaker and no one is doing anything to stop it.
And if you thought that “good guys with guns are needed to stop bad guys with guns”, go get your fucking colon cleansed. The police actually saw the shooter outside, tried to shoot him, missed, figured he had protective gear, and LET HIM WALK INTO THE BUILDING TO MURDER KIDS. That. Is. BEYOND. Fucked. Up. Possibly the most disgusting thing about the whole incident. Our law enforcement has official failed us and it would be better to just drop the police entirely and let individuals enforce the law since that’s what’s happening anyway in this hellhole.
From the bottom of my heart, I hate this fucking country. I always thought it was suspect that the history books I grew up with said “God first, then your family, then your country.” Fuck God, if he was so all powerful he would’ve been back by now. Fuck my family, they’re the people who vote these useless politicians. And fuck this country, it’s a blight on the face of the earth.
And I read all you guys from other places talking of how bad it is and how scary and sad it is even an ocean away. Well, all I can say is that at least you don’t have to live here.
EDIT: Also the fact that the black people murdered in Buffalo didn’t cause this big of a response is stupid, too. But I’ve already said my piece.
And then these rat bastard politicians say they’re heartbroken and offer up prayers to everyone and do nothing about it. They don’t care about kids at all, if they did they wouldn’t be writing up all this bills harming trans children. It’s ridiculous. It’s fucking stupid. Every day a classroom is invaded by an armed lunatic and they think the issue is… *checks notes* puberty blockers, abortion, and birth control?? What????
Biden runs onto Twitter and says “This shit should not be happening.” My brother in Christ, you’re the fucking president. What did you get elected for? I’m worried that 2024 will come, a true fascist (not just the dumbass that Trump was) will come into office and that’ll be the end of even our faux freedoms. At the rate we’re going the future is looking bleaker and bleaker and no one is doing anything to stop it.
And if you thought that “good guys with guns are needed to stop bad guys with guns”, go get your fucking colon cleansed. The police actually saw the shooter outside, tried to shoot him, missed, figured he had protective gear, and LET HIM WALK INTO THE BUILDING TO MURDER KIDS. That. Is. BEYOND. Fucked. Up. Possibly the most disgusting thing about the whole incident. Our law enforcement has official failed us and it would be better to just drop the police entirely and let individuals enforce the law since that’s what’s happening anyway in this hellhole.
From the bottom of my heart, I hate this fucking country. I always thought it was suspect that the history books I grew up with said “God first, then your family, then your country.” Fuck God, if he was so all powerful he would’ve been back by now. Fuck my family, they’re the people who vote these useless politicians. And fuck this country, it’s a blight on the face of the earth.
And I read all you guys from other places talking of how bad it is and how scary and sad it is even an ocean away. Well, all I can say is that at least you don’t have to live here.
EDIT: Also the fact that the black people murdered in Buffalo didn’t cause this big of a response is stupid, too. But I’ve already said my piece.
Diesel 11
As you scream into the web of silence...
It’s very much been a consideration of mine. I already have a citizenship, it’s more a matter of logistics, money, making decisions with my partner, and so forth. Down the road I may decide to move there permanently.
Flaming Blimp Crash
Ancient Mariner
@Diesel 11 the most infuriating thing of this presidency so far (and I say that as a Democrat) is Biden, Pelosi and Schumer sitting around going "Somebody should do something about this."
I get that there's no real majority in the Senate, but, ffs, try.
I get that there's no real majority in the Senate, but, ffs, try.
Jer
'Til Tomorrow
To inject some facts into the discussion:
www.gao.gov
There aren’t clear patterns of causality in U.S. school shootings, and a variety of people commit them for a variety of reasons. The common denominators are obviously the use of a gun (by definition, or it wouldn’t be a shooting), and someone being so emotionally distraught or mentally unbalanced that they decided bringing a gun to a school to do harm would be a good idea.
Yes, U.S. gun culture is unique and bizarre. The frontiersman history, combined with people wanting to ensure that the government couldn’t take away their ability to defend themselves from threats (including potentially their own government), and the ongoing romanticization of the hero with the gun (cowboys, cops, soldiers, etc.), tends to make things more problematic.
There are limits to what you can do that would help, though. Universal background checks in gun stores and at gun shows are a widely popular idea that wouldn’t pose any constitutional issues, and it’s shocking that we haven’t seen any motion on this at all since the Democrats came into power. I mean, at least make people vote for or against the idea on the record. But these days people can pretty easily 3D print guns and do an end run around any regulations that way, so even doing the right thing on background checks wouldn’t dissuade a determined perpetrator. And black market guns are obviously still an option too.
With a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court and 30 of the 50 state legislatures controlled by Republicans, amending the constitution or getting a different interpretation of the oft-forgotten “well-regulated militia” part of the second amendment is off the table for now. So with this reality, and no clear causal relationship between some other regulatable thing and school shootings, what can you realistically do about it? Putting metal detectors or armed security guards in schools apparently causes depression and distraction in the students, which arguably exacerbates the problem, or at least causes a pretty terrible side effect. And I’m not sure how you’d assess its effectiveness as a deterrent without a hell of a lot more school shootings at otherwise similar schools both with and without those protections in order to have a statistically significant answer.
Another thing to consider is that freedom comes with a price. Americans felt strongly enough about preventing the government from coming between them and their guns that they added this protection to the constitution and intentionally made it really difficult to override. It’s easy to have a kneejerk reaction to hearing about another school shooting and talk about how the U.S. is a bunch of idiots who just need to rein in the gun problem and be done with it. It was also easy for people to hear about yet another teen suicide where the person was listening to heavy metal music a lot, and assume it was the fault of the musicians, and all we needed to do was ban or censor them and try to sue them in court to solve the problem. Or the same thing with kids reading gory monster comic books in the 1950s, and what we really needed was to censor and limit the content of those comic books to avoid corrupting these young minds. Those other examples sound absurd in retrospect, but they were mainstream thinking at the time, and led to the industries choosing to label and/or censor themselves under social pressure, when there’s no indication that this had any positive effect on the problem people thought it would solve.
It’s easy to slag on the U.S., but when I read about comedians losing court cases in Canada when they’re sued for making a joke, or films and video games being banned from sale in Australia because someone decided their content was offensive, or Germany’s heavy-handed application of Volksverhetzung restrictions, it reminds me that these other western countries don’t take freedom quite as seriously as the United States does.
Freedom is messy and chaotic, it often has negative side effects, and it requires you to tolerate things that you find personally infuriating. But it also ensures that you get to live life as close to your own preferences and beliefs as possible. In a country that has codified gun ownership as an inalienable right, you are going to see more gun-related tragedies than in other places, period. You can try to mitigate the contributing factors within the law, but you’re never going to fundamentally address the problem as long as people are fully free to keep and bear arms.
K-12 Education: Characteristics of School Shootings
We examined school shootings and found: Half were committed by current or former students Suburban and rural, wealthier, and low-minority schools had...
There aren’t clear patterns of causality in U.S. school shootings, and a variety of people commit them for a variety of reasons. The common denominators are obviously the use of a gun (by definition, or it wouldn’t be a shooting), and someone being so emotionally distraught or mentally unbalanced that they decided bringing a gun to a school to do harm would be a good idea.
Yes, U.S. gun culture is unique and bizarre. The frontiersman history, combined with people wanting to ensure that the government couldn’t take away their ability to defend themselves from threats (including potentially their own government), and the ongoing romanticization of the hero with the gun (cowboys, cops, soldiers, etc.), tends to make things more problematic.
There are limits to what you can do that would help, though. Universal background checks in gun stores and at gun shows are a widely popular idea that wouldn’t pose any constitutional issues, and it’s shocking that we haven’t seen any motion on this at all since the Democrats came into power. I mean, at least make people vote for or against the idea on the record. But these days people can pretty easily 3D print guns and do an end run around any regulations that way, so even doing the right thing on background checks wouldn’t dissuade a determined perpetrator. And black market guns are obviously still an option too.
With a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court and 30 of the 50 state legislatures controlled by Republicans, amending the constitution or getting a different interpretation of the oft-forgotten “well-regulated militia” part of the second amendment is off the table for now. So with this reality, and no clear causal relationship between some other regulatable thing and school shootings, what can you realistically do about it? Putting metal detectors or armed security guards in schools apparently causes depression and distraction in the students, which arguably exacerbates the problem, or at least causes a pretty terrible side effect. And I’m not sure how you’d assess its effectiveness as a deterrent without a hell of a lot more school shootings at otherwise similar schools both with and without those protections in order to have a statistically significant answer.
Another thing to consider is that freedom comes with a price. Americans felt strongly enough about preventing the government from coming between them and their guns that they added this protection to the constitution and intentionally made it really difficult to override. It’s easy to have a kneejerk reaction to hearing about another school shooting and talk about how the U.S. is a bunch of idiots who just need to rein in the gun problem and be done with it. It was also easy for people to hear about yet another teen suicide where the person was listening to heavy metal music a lot, and assume it was the fault of the musicians, and all we needed to do was ban or censor them and try to sue them in court to solve the problem. Or the same thing with kids reading gory monster comic books in the 1950s, and what we really needed was to censor and limit the content of those comic books to avoid corrupting these young minds. Those other examples sound absurd in retrospect, but they were mainstream thinking at the time, and led to the industries choosing to label and/or censor themselves under social pressure, when there’s no indication that this had any positive effect on the problem people thought it would solve.
It’s easy to slag on the U.S., but when I read about comedians losing court cases in Canada when they’re sued for making a joke, or films and video games being banned from sale in Australia because someone decided their content was offensive, or Germany’s heavy-handed application of Volksverhetzung restrictions, it reminds me that these other western countries don’t take freedom quite as seriously as the United States does.
Freedom is messy and chaotic, it often has negative side effects, and it requires you to tolerate things that you find personally infuriating. But it also ensures that you get to live life as close to your own preferences and beliefs as possible. In a country that has codified gun ownership as an inalienable right, you are going to see more gun-related tragedies than in other places, period. You can try to mitigate the contributing factors within the law, but you’re never going to fundamentally address the problem as long as people are fully free to keep and bear arms.
I feel pretty free, I dunno. I feel more free knowing I'm not gonna get shot for going to a grocery store.
There's a lot of exaggerated misinformation about this going on. I keep talking to people who have ideas about German laws, German attitudes, German guilt and so forth and it doesn't have much to do with reality. If you want to discuss this and not just use it as a rhetoric device, maybe you can give some examples of what you read.
Jer
'Til Tomorrow
That's funny, I don't have any concern about getting shot going to a grocery store. Though I would be unlikely to jog up to a police car after calling the cops, given what happened to Justine Damond.
And I would prefer to feel actually free, rather than "pretty free", if given the choice. Though pragmatic reality will always fall short of the ideal.
Jer
'Til Tomorrow
I am obviously not an expert on this, but I do have some discomfort over the idea of a German citizen posting things to the internet from the U.S. or Canada and being tried domestically in Germany for them because the content was able to be viewed in Germany (e.g. Ernst Zundel). No matter how objectionable the speech is, bad ideas should be countered with rational challenges and better ideas, not with government-enforced censorship, IMO.
Also, the outright ban on certain Nazi-related images, even in a historical context, is concerning. My understanding is that WWII-themed video games always have to swap the swastikas for the iron cross when sold in Germany. The closest analog to the United States' own history would be banning the use of the confederate flag in any similar context, which would seem pretty draconian from an American perspective.
And regardless of how Volksverhetzung has been applied to date, the broadness of the potential definition of "disturbing the public peace" would seem to leave the door wide open for greater abuse down the road.
But yes, feel free to correct any misconceptions I have about how this works.
JudasMyGuide
Ancient Mariner
Eh... thank you, I guess...
I respect your opinion, and I've encountered it with several Americans before. I perfectly understand the American perspective on this, but I think what's always left out of the equation is that German hate speech laws don't come from some theoretical deliberations, but from very specific first-hand experience of what hate speech is capable of doing. They were first passed in a society that had not yet ingrained democratic ideals, and which had experienced the rise to power of Hitler based on his hate speech which proved immune against rational challenges and better ideas. Those existed, but they were powerless at the time. When the German constitution was drafted in the late 1940s, the only guarantee against a renewed rise to power of groups like the Nazis was the occupation of the country by Allied troops, but the idea was that one day they would leave and Germany would be a strong democracy.
With that being said, of course you could argue the laws are no longer necessary because Germany now has an established democratic society, and I'm on the fence with that. Personally, I feel more comfortable knowing that someone will face legal consequences when they flat-out lie about the Holocaust with ulterior motives, but of course there are people smart enough to find workarounds to say these things without actually saying the words. But there is a difference between being arrested for questioning the Holocaust after three beers, which doesn't happen, and being tried for systematically spreading hate speech in order to rouse the masses against certain parts of the population and the constitutional order, which is what Volksverhetzung means. Zündel's case is borderline to me, but it's not just that his websites could be viewed in Germany, but that they were specifically targeted at a German audience with said motivation.
This ban is not as extreme as you think. Swastikas can be used for purposes of education and art. For example, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade can be shown perfectly fine on public TV and that happens a lot, too. Contrary to popular belief, the Star Trek episode Patterns of Force was not banned in Germany, although it wasn't part of the original 1970s/80s broadcast run, probably because the broadcasters were uncomfortable with it; however, since the 1990s it's part of the German Star Trek canon and has been shown on TV repeatedly.
Video games are a bit of a different story, because German censorship works differently for several reasons: First, it does not appreciate video games as "art", and second it is conservative on what is deemed "glorification of violence" (Gewaltverherrlichung), which is the reason why many German releases of video games had to remove blood and gore. But the rules aren't consistent, and one game may get a pass and another may not.
Some examples: Wolfenstein 3D was not censored in Germany because of its use of swastikas, but because it was deemed as glorifying violence by the conservative censors of the time, and after several revisions, it is now freely available for anyone who still wants to sell it. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade removed all the swastikas except for the ones appearing instead of stars when you punch a Nazi guard, but this was self-censorship on part of the game designers. From what I can find, Call of Duty also self-censored. I'm not familiar with other games.
And yes, there have been and always will be silly outliers, such as the controversy about the KISS logo. Again, this was never actually banned because German authorities felt that it could not be mistaken with the SS runes. But there was a media frenzy in the late 70's and early 80's, which is to be seen in context with a general conservative rejection of hard rock, which led to the label changing the logo in 1980 to avoid publicity issues. It is perfectly legal in Germany to display the original logo. People have been sued for it, but the courts always ruled in their favour.
Again, the reasoning for banning Nazi symbols is more complex than the comparison with the confederate flag. Swastikas (unless used for religious purposes) are deemed anti-constitutional (Verfassungsfeindlich) because they represent an organisation whose purpose it is to overturn constitutional, democratic order with a very concrete historical precedent. I do not believe German law is entirely consistent in this, as it does not ban symbols from the former GDR, so I'd give you this point if you were to make it. However, do note that such bans aim very specifically at Nazi symbols. For example, it is legal to display the imperial German flag (black/white/red). There is a very recent law which has not yet been passed as far as I know that outlaws the display under very specifically defined circumstances, meaning such in which they are used in a context that endangers public safety. This was designed under the impression of an attempt to storm the Reichstag building in 2020 in which the flag was put on prominent display. I'm not sure I agree with this, but I do want to point out that there are rather high bars for such a law and what it can ban.
Volksverhetzung isn't "disturbing the public peace", that's Störung der öffentlichen Ordnung; it would apply for someone running around naked in a public place shouting. Volksverhetzung is translated as "incitement of masses" and has a constitutional definition. Note that one of the definitions involves disturbing the public peace, but is neither limited to that, nor is it the only definition.
jazz from hell
Ancient Mariner
Sorry man! There are good things about catholicism too.
A very smart fellow once wrote that everyone is entitled to certain rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is possible to value one of those three so much that the others become infringed.
As I am reminded, I am guaranteed the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. All freedoms have reasonable limits, so that they may not be used to infringe upon the freedoms of others. What is so justified changes, from time to time, from generation to generation, and our understanding alters. At least here. In America, it's apparently set in stone since 1787.
I am a free person. Would I have less liberty in the United States? Perhaps not. Do I feel more free to live and pursue happiness where I live than I might in the United States? Evidence suggests it seems likely.
But Americans have the right to choose their course, and thankfully, I have the right to choose not to live there. A freedom I fully intend to execute upon.
As I am reminded, I am guaranteed the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. All freedoms have reasonable limits, so that they may not be used to infringe upon the freedoms of others. What is so justified changes, from time to time, from generation to generation, and our understanding alters. At least here. In America, it's apparently set in stone since 1787.
I am a free person. Would I have less liberty in the United States? Perhaps not. Do I feel more free to live and pursue happiness where I live than I might in the United States? Evidence suggests it seems likely.
But Americans have the right to choose their course, and thankfully, I have the right to choose not to live there. A freedom I fully intend to execute upon.
Jer
'Til Tomorrow
Except for, y’know, the 27 times the U.S. has altered its constitution since 1787, including the first two amendments that have been most centrally involved in this discussion. But let’s not undermine your applause line.
The Bill of Rights were written by the same guys who wrote the Constitution. Well, some of them, but it's generationally the same.
No significant amendment to the US constitution has occurred in 51 years, when the voting age was lowered. No amendments are likely to occur. And with the recent draft decision that will overturn Roe v. Wade, it is very clear that the 5 conservative judges on the SCOTUS are rejecting the concept of a living Constitution, and indeed, the 9th Amendment, and want to revert to the originalist interpretation of the Constitution. If it doesn't say it, it can't possibly exist.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. I won't assume you can move along with the flow of discussion and points without pedantry. So I'll leave it at this: if you want to think you have the better outcome in the world, you have the right to believe that. And I have the right to believe otherwise.