Therumancer said:
Okay, this touches on a lot of things so I'll start with the one most likely to piss people off so we can move past that:
When it comes to international coverage of things like US Armament, there is a very transparent case of "gun envy". Basically the Brits and other countries like to go off about armed Americans because on a basic level they wish they had an armed populance as well. In say the UK, the people are more or less entirely at the mercy of their own goverment and law enforcement, which can act pretty much as it sees fit without any direct threat of resistance from the people. In the US, the goverment is greatly limited by what it can do because in the case of a popular uprising the most it could hope for would be to destroy itself. Assuming the military backed the goverment during a popular uprising, when the smoke cleared and the tanks and planes destroyed everything (and that's what it would take) there would be nothing left for the goverment to rule. In a more "present" sense it also means that stupid laws become more or less unenforcable because at the end of the day your typical cop has to worry about whether it's worth potentially getting shot to enforce some politician's stupid vanity law. Overall the US works well and maintains the world's highest standard of freedom because of the way the right to bear arms limits govermental authority and excesses. The authorities can deal with armed individuals, and even small groups of individuals, but not with any kind of popular or large scale uprising, and it also means that at the best of times the authorities have to show caution.
Im a member of the UK and i have to say your wrong on just about every level
we choose to make guns restricted. Elections and the courts are our protection , infact its yours to. we just dont elect anyone thats going to pull a coup and the courts prevent them from doing so if they tried. for the politicians to order the police or the army in to do anything against the population they have to run it through parliament and it can be overturned by the courts. And the military wouldnt back the government in these cases anyway , you see we have a parliamentary democracy, america is a presidential republic. theres actually a lot of difference in how they work , your president is your commander in chief , it doesn't work like that here.
Therumancer said:
To really "see" things clearly here you have to listen to what people from the UK, Australia, etc... have to say when they aren't discussing guns directly, but in terms of the goverment doing stupid things with no recourse for the average person. Goverment/police thuggery are pretty much a way of life, because at the end of the day it has all of the real power and can make the people do whatever it wants. A cop in the UK will just do whatever a politician tells them to usualy when a law is passed, because there is no real reason for him not to. Without his life being in danger the path of least resistance is to just do whatever he's told, and tell anyone who complains to blame the politicians. A lot of things in the rest of the civilized first world go badly there largely because the population is powerless. They just don't tend to put 2 and 2 together. Nor do most bother to consider this when they try and say "we have more freedom than the US", when really whatever freedom they have is entirely based on whatever the goverment wants to give them. In some nations like Canada that are also fairly critical you have the police running around with Blank Warrents (or they used to), something which pretty much undercuts 90% of the rights the people there think they have.
See, at the end of the day, ask yourself could the people of the UK for example ever have the right to bear arms like Americans can if they wanted it? The answer is no, they could not. The goverment would never let them have it, holding all the cards it has no real vested interest in changing that. The UK goverment wouldn't even need tanks and planes to put down a large scale revolt because the people just aren't well armed enough for it to be a factor, any revolutuon would have to worry about arming itself from the outside.
err again no , the police have to behave in certain ways they for example they only shoot people who pull guns on them (well mostly) And just like in the states here when they cross the line and behave "thugish" both countries resort to the courts not to the gun.
Politicians dont command the police, the best they can do is pass laws that might affect their powers but again its not one guy making a decree its a bill that goes through readings votes and reviews.
Every 4 years we have Elections if gun ownership was something we wanted we are free to vote in a party that would do it, but having been on both sides of the line we know better than to do that , by restricting guns you loose nothing and keep a few thousand extra people alive each year.
Therumancer said:
The bottom line though is that the armed incidents you hear about are a small price to pay for the freedom and safeguards inherant in an armed society.
maybe, but paying that bill doesnt net you that reward, you have that because of the a document i think you call the constitution
Therumancer said:
when the UK fought the IRA, it largely gave as well as it got, because it was willing to be just as vicious under the table if need be as the guys they were fighting, leading to massive amounts of atrocities on both sides and an actual war. The US in general isn't willing to do that, or at least not on the same level.
With the Gun Violence there is a clear cost/benefit analysis involved, the price of the gunshot deaths is well worth the benefits in terms of limiting goverment power. With terrorism there is no clear question like that. In an objective sense we should be profiling people like crazy, and having our troops in The Middle East rounding up 1,000 civilians at random for every American that dies in a terrorist attack or the result of insurgency and executing them to make the conflict unsustainable (ie we'll achieve genocide before the fall of the US if they push it far enough). We have the power and abillity in reality to end the entire problem in a couple of months.
Yep My grandad served in WW2 and went straight to NI after to join the black and tans. he used to regail us as kids with stories about how whenever the RUC or British army lost a trooper they would go down to some catholic bar drag a dozen out the back line em up and blow thier brains out against the wall.
didnt work though did it? nope it escalated the fighting 1 IRA man kills 1 RUC, they kill 12 indiscriminate in response and the next day there are 12 new groups of families and friends ready to sign up and fight he opresser, it was only when we started talking to them did we ever see an end to that time.
Therumancer said:
Hell, in an absolute sense the entire world survives at our whim because we alone have enough nukes to end the world 10x over if we ever just decided "hey you know, let's destroy the world for lulz!" we *might* be able to stop someone else from doing that with our anti-missle technologies if we wanted to, but nobody else could... that's a truely staggering amount of power. The US on the other hand is based on the principle of not flaunting our power (despite what we're accused of) and pursueing humanitarian goals, at our worst we're like a nosy cop that nobody wants around until they are yelling for help. Profiling violates our moral imperitive and the principles of proof and equality we long since established. Acting in a way to fight an "intangible" cultural enemy as opposed to a national one is directly contrary to our founding principles. As a nation we've been telling the world they should be living by our standards of proof, and using our level of military restraint, and it would be galling to many if we had to admit we were wrong, make the exceptions, and do all of the things we've been trying to define ourselves by not doing. Personally, I've been long since convinced we were wrong and need to face reality, thank Islam and Muslim culture for taking the dream of global co-existance and dumping it into the crapper by demonstrating there are people who can't co-exist with anyone else at all except under their own very specific terms (including things like the enslavement of women). A lot of people have not been, and think things will magically work out if we stick to our guns.... and neither side ever wanted there to be sides drawn about things like this.
well you and russia both have the ability to wipe everyone out int he initial exchange. but the UK , France, China, Israel, Pakistan ,India and possibly the DPRK all have enough nukes to end all life on the planet and you cant shoot em down because theres no need for them to hit you , 10 large nukes in the same area anywhere in the world will be enough to trigger an ELE (extinction level event)
Not flauting your power? the last 5 decades have seen nothing but aggressive attempts to shape the world after you own ideals, why do you think people are fighting back? through the IMF, World bank, 40 years of trade deficit and dollar imperialsm. restraint? you bankrupt and enslave nation after nation then wring your hands and wonder why some people might be pissed at you? WAKE UP DUDE!
Islam isnt to blame , equating the terror factions claiming to be Muslims is like saying the KKK is a fair representation of Christianity. you are aware that Muslims Christians Jews and Catholics all pray to the same god right? or that there are thousands of them serving in your armed forces and police.
