Why is it okay for you to tell us how things are in america, but we have to provide you with proof? I live here and I've lived in various locations throughout the country, there's very few reports that are going to tell you what its like on the street. You look up stats and try and disprove it if you don't believe me. I'm not an encyclopedia, why on earth am I going to trawl through stats when I live here and know what its like, why would I lie?
I can't agree with you that in a supposedly civilized 1st world country the only solution is to allow everyone to arm themselves and defend themselves "wild west" style. Some of the descriptions on here I think have been over hyped, but essentially come to "we live in mad max world, theres next to no police, if you don't have a gun you die, if you do have a gun, you maybe won't".
okay here you go from my own country, if i knew your country i would look it up instead of asking you to provide.
police response times:
http://apbweb.com/featured-articles/1188-response-times-city-to-city.html
http://www.wbez.org/story/chicago-police-response-time-down-2012-97137
http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/02/05/020512-news-detroit-vigilantes-1-5/
http://www.self-defense-mind-body-spirit.com/average-police-response-time.html
by the by, the average police response time in the nation is something like 10 minutes. In my case it is about 2 minutes, which is pretty dang good. However, if someone attacked me in my home (even without a gun), i will be dead for about a minute before the police could arrive.
population density:
http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/catalog/national/html/Population.htmldir/USpop1990.html
(granted from 1990)
population diversity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
although they apparently count latinos and hispanics as white, which is kinda strange to me. Ah here we go "Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race." So latinos and hispanics are wild cards, but they make up about 13% of the population. So whites are at 60%. blacks are at 13%, latinos/hispanics 13%, asians 5%, native americans 1%, Pacific islander .2%, etc etc.
Also the Wild West was not as bad as Hollywood made it out to be. The Wild West would be an improvement crime wise.
"only thing proven to work around these problems inside the US" the US has never even tried tried a different system so how is it proven?
Yes, we have tried different ways in different states. Each State has their own rules and laws and different outlooks on many issues. Each state is their own mini-nation (hell they each have their own army). Some states and cities have implemented very strict gun control laws. Chicago banned handguns as well as the ability to conceal or open carry any weapon (well, until 2010 at least), and they have one of the worst if not the worst crime in the country.
"most of those problems are simply beyond our reach without implementing a police state." see my post about scaling down over 50 odd years, it could be done, we're not talking about a "ALL GUNS FROM TUESDAY ARE ILLEGAL, DEAL WITH IT BITCHES!!!" kind of address.
without dealing with those issues that i presented (which are not feasible) no even a 50 year or even a 5000 year timeperiod could not solve it. The only way it can be done is via police state.
"poverty" I read stats the other day that said the poorest 5% of Americans are richer than 85% of all Indian's. Americans don't know what true poverty is.
Hey, i completely agree with you. People in poverity here have it much better than in other countries. Unfortunately that means squat in the context of this conversation. People dont aspire to live in poverty, they aspire for something greater, making it in the world and whatnot. Among certain communities, crime is a commonly possible path to "making it" in the world, sometimes it is even glorified and idolized. That is a problem. Unfortunately this is kinda a chicken and the egg scenario in how it started. Part of the reason why this happens is because of the general poverity of that community, the other reason is that law enforcement is stricter on them. So this creates an infinite loop where crime is glorified and they are more likely to do so, law enforcement treats that community harsher because of so, and the community is pushed more towards crime/disrespect for law enforcement as an outlash to the prejudice, and so on and so forth. Niether side is willing to be the first to give ground either, even though both of their attitudes suck.
".since we can not stop or even stem the flow of illegal goods, banning guns or heavily restricting them is pointless" I simply CANNOT understand this kind of attitude for justifying everyone being armed. I'm just repeating myself over and over to different people. Admittedly there needs to be a whole host of changes to numerous attitudes laws and policing techniques. But america is no different than any other country. If you look at the European Union as a whole there is every single issue america has. Borders almost impossible to fully monitor, wide ethnic differences, stark differences in wealth. Religious tensions, drug and gang problems, people trafficking. And on top of that we have 2000 years of history of killing each other in various wars, the last one being within living memory. But gun violence is kept low, by a different policing attitude and strong regulated gun control.
I think we will just have to disagree, because frankly anybody who thinks the widespread ownership of guns is the way forward rather than anything but an outdated stagnate view from a bygone age, is not going to be convinced by reason. An unfortuantly its probably going to take allot more innocent people and children to die before action is done. The reasons everyone gets so up on the US for their gun control is because they have the power and the means to end the cycle, at some point someone is going to have to accept that the average american gun owners attitude to weapons is unhealthy and many people do not give them the respect they deserve. Arming everyone to the teeth and making it so very easy for criminals and those who should not own weapons, can not be justified that the police from the sounds of it are unable to protect individuals, vote for change, petition your politicians, restructure etc, there will never ever been any moving forward under the current system.
Even if guns were banned and the gun industry dismantled, guns will still easily find a way to criminals hands. Hell, there are plenty of foreign illegal guns. Automatic uzis are illegal and not made here, still find their way here.
Wide ethnic differences....HA. We have populations from every single country in the world under one roof. The entire human history of group grievances is at our unfortunate disposal. The fact that our country hasnt turned into a giant smoking crater because of what some A-hole did 1000 years ago in a DIFFERENT part of the world is a GD miracle in every sense of the word. Hell, it is baffling to americans that Europeans cant get along on an individual group basis oftentimes considering that in the US every European/white country from France to Russia is part of the same community here.
I regularly interact with blacks, latinos, asians, muslims, and indians on a day to day basis. And my city is less diverse than most places in the US.