Crouton Wrote:The NRA seems pretty screwed up to me. I love how they are now trying to blame video games for shootings rather than guns. Well guess what, every other developed Western country in the world plays heaps of video games, but don't have mass shootings nearly every year like America does. Games don't cause shootings, not having decent gun laws does.
I think the Swiss would disagree. :tongue:
Hmph, just in case you don't know the Swiss have banned violent video games while you can see things like this in their country (and if this Swiss Miss were to do that in most places in the USA she'd be taken out by a SWAT team without warning or chance to drop it):
![[Image: switzerland_guns0502.jpg]](http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2007/0705/switzerland_guns0502.jpg)
Also, I mean this more in fun. My views on guns, the NRA, school shootings, how the UK and Australia has been affected (in both good AND bad ways) by their respective gun bans and how I think such a similar ban would affect the USA, and much, much more, are complex and complicated and should not be assumed.
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Marc Wrote:There is always 1!
Stating a fact is not racism.
Perhaps you could prove it fact, rather than asserting it?
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Pix Wrote:I think the Swiss would disagree. :tongue:
Hmph, just in case you don't know the Swiss have violent video games while you can see things like this in their country (and if this Swiss Miss were to do that in most places in the USA she'd be taken out by a SWAT team without warning or chance to drop it):
Also, I mean this more in fun. My views on guns, the NRA, school shootings, how the UK and Australia has been affected (in both good AND bad ways) by their respective gun bans and how I think such a similar ban would affect the USA, and much, much more, are complex and complicated and should not be assumed.
Well I'd hate to be Swiss then. That sucks for the gamers of that country. The gun bans did seem to work in the UK and Australia. There was a shooting at a Primary School in Scotland. The UK banned private ownership of guns... no school shootings since. There was a mass public shooting in Australia. Our Government banned guns... no large shootings since. This approach has been working wonders in other countries. As for the US? Who knows.
I was reading some numbers recently about gun deaths in each country. For one year (I think it was 2010 or 2011) there were 30 deaths by firearms in Australia, and 9,128 in the US. That seems insane to me. I think 30 is too many, but over 9 thousand is just ridiculous. It just goes to show how embedded guns are in the US society. Whether they ban them or not I'm just sick of seeing people try to blame games for something that is the fault of guns, or maybe a lack of care for mentally ill. Either way this is not video games fault.
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part of the idea here is that it is not really a good idea to have the government armed and the populace not.
it's not really that Americans are nuts, moreso that the government will be less likely to behave like a tyrant if it knows that its people are armed.
not necessarily saying that is correct, more that that is the mentality. we don't really like being ordered around by princes of Europe... we tend to be more independent. I don't necessarily think that is a bad idea.
there are always going to be crazy people walking around... at least we don't go around building Empires and engineering genocide on the scale of the Europeans, or murdering people en masse to the tune of 6 million. My guess was that if the populace of Europe had been armed they might not have marched so placidy en masse to concentration camps...
just the opinion of one American. Europeans are so self righteous.
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genersis with all due respect my relatives have had to go over to Europe twice to save that continent from its own stupidity and megalomania, in both respective world wars over the last 100 years.
Europe is hardly in a position to lecture the planet on how to behave like civilized people.
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rover330 Wrote:genersis with all due respect my relatives have had to go over to Europe twice to save that continent from its own stupidity and megalomania, in both respective world wars over the last 100 years.
Europe is hardly in a position to lecture the planet on how to behave like civilized people. I lectured no one.
I did not mention anything about wars.
I did not mention anything about the USA being, or not being Europe's hero.
I was bringing up qualms with overgeneralising people from Africa and the middle east, neither generally thought of as in Europe.
Don't play the "You owe us one for the World Wars, so your argument/issue/opinion/ETC is moot" card, doubly in such an unfitting context.
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the idea is that a government is far less likely to be tyrannical if they know their populace is armed.
the founding fathers meant that far more than they were talking about "a well regulated militia".
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they say that politics makes for strange bedfellows. being a pot smoking, card carrying homosexual liberal, I'm going to have to side with the NRA on this one.
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spencer, there is probably not a gay man in the world who does not recognize Harry is hot. dang. I popped a bone when I saw the pics. don't think he would really mind that I did either.
lol
thank goodness his looks followed his mother's.
just saying...
he is a hot man. hopefully he will have the looks of his mother and the wisdom and loyalty to duty of his grandmother.
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Just for the record I don't blame video games as people know they're games and fantasies. (I WOULD partially blame a culture of violence, but I'd offend many NRA members if I were to define that culture of violence, which I'm not in the mood to do right now.)
As for the NRA...holding my tongue for the most part, I'm just going to throw one thing out...for an organization that is largely made up (especially at the bureaucratic level) of hardcore conservatives with some extremists thrown in I find it interesting that many are inclined to to talk about how incompetent, corrupt, abusive, and worse teachers are and who don't deserve the lousy compensation they get already but DO think they should be armed (must...resist...more graveyard humor involving open hostility to teachers, getting a great many fired with more fearing for their jobs, and then saying, "And here, have a gun"...).
I will say IF a teacher (or other faculty member) manages to gain a CCW permit on their own initiative then I'm fine with them bringing their gun to school (as long as it stays concealed and isn't casually discussed, which is also smart as otherwise such a person would be the first to be shot by a mass shooter), but the NRA idea of training teachers to be like teachers in Israel (that is under siege)...well I have to say that while there are some really good teachers out there, I wouldn't trust many of them (for reasons ranging from incompetence to anger management issues) with a pocket knife, let alone a gun and I think it would do more harm than good to pressure them to be armed. I also don't like the idea of armed security as they're much more likely to become another threat to kids rather than protection (especially as they can simply be taken out first, as happened at Columbine, and many NRA members have already led to the slashing of school budgets so that they're only barely operational anyway), and US schools are too much like prisons already. Of course I can see why making schools like prisons while also upping gun sales and training (and thus money to the NRA) would appeal to many NRA types (and if it means firing even more teachers to pay for the guards then I'm sure that's just a bonus to them).
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