Quote from: Leiandra on September 13, 2008, 07:26:37 PM

Quote from: Flan Princess on September 13, 2008, 06:56:17 PM
The real problem is not a "gun-culture" per say, but hate which is unfortunately, integrated into almost every human. Just look at the UK, the government took away gun ownership for almost everybody and they still found ways to murder each other.

Very true. In our case it's knives that are now the big deal. But people can be determined, take away everything and we'd bash each other over the head with rocks. It's the unbridled aggression and sense of "I'm more important than you, and my needs are greater than yours" which need to be dealt with, rather than the methods used to express them. Desensitisation and dehumanisation turn people into either potential threats or potential victims.

Owning a firearm and owning the desire to use it are two different things. Take care of the latter and the former is no longer an issue.

*edited because I sounded sarcastic and didn't mean to* I would argue that those who fought the Revolutionary War on opposite sides of their brothers and fathers and sons probably didn't want to pull the trigger.

NO, it is not "how we became a country." We became a country using a French Navy and Army to do much of the work and luck and the open connaivance of the Brits to do the rest. That myth about all those minutemen is about of the same order as the cherry-tree chopping and the throwing of a pound coin across the Potomac {there were no dollars to throw at the time.] I've thrown a quarter across it in Maryland. It was rather easy in fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland

Yep, Wiki for guns in Die Schweiz. It's only as good as who wrote it but to tell the truth I didn't really feel strongly enough about Switzerland to fact-check any further than there. The so-called "required" automatic weapons are semi-automatic after military service ends at 30, and nothing about being required for anyone. Just a high rate of gun ownership and enough problems that there are pushes to limit both ammo and guns.

It would be nice if, rather than shooting from the hip, one would go and make sure of factual information, like the universal "requirement" and "guns won the Revolution" and cite some actual facts rather than age-old American myths.

Nichole

Quote from: iFindMeHere on September 13, 2008, 07:29:20 PM

Quote from: Leiandra on September 13, 2008, 07:26:37 PM

Quote from: Flan Princess on September 13, 2008, 06:56:17 PM
The real problem is not a "gun-culture" per say, but hate which is unfortunately, integrated into almost every human. Just look at the UK, the government took away gun ownership for almost everybody and they still found ways to murder each other.

Very true. In our case it's knives that are now the big deal. But people can be determined, take away everything and we'd bash each other over the head with rocks. It's the unbridled aggression and sense of "I'm more important than you, and my needs are greater than yours" which need to be dealt with, rather than the methods used to express them. Desensitisation and dehumanisation turn people into either potential threats or potential victims.

Owning a firearm and owning the desire to use it are two different things. Take care of the latter and the former is no longer an issue.

*edited because I sounded sarcastic and didn't mean to* I would argue that those who fought the Revolutionary War on opposite sides of their brothers and fathers and sons probably didn't want to pull the trigger.

Perhaps not, but war is not the same thing. No one sat at home in their armchair is ordered to pull the trigger on anyone. Those decisions come from the individual. War is a whole different kind of stupidity.

i'm not perfect and don't expect myself to be. I'm more focused on keeping an even keel and as such am respectfully bowing out of this conversation.

QuoteToday, military service for Swiss males is universal. At about age 20, every Swiss male goes through 118 consecutive days of recruit training in the Rekrutenschule. This training may be a young man's first encounter with his countrymen who speak different languages. (Switzerland has four official languages: German, French, Italian and Romansch.)

Even before required training begins, young men and women may take optional courses with the Swiss army's M57 assault rifle. They keep that gun at home for three months and receive six half-day training sessions.

From age 21 to 32, a Swiss man serves as a "frontline" troop in the Auszug, and devotes three weeks a year (in eight of the 12 years) to continued training. From age 33 to 42, he serves in the Landwehr (like America's National Guard); every few years, he reports for two-week training periods. Finally, from ages 43, to 50, he serves in the Landsturm; in this period, he only spends 13 days total in "home guard courses."

Over a soldier's career he also spends scattered days on mandatory equipment inspections and required target practice. Thus, in a 30-year mandatory military career, a Swiss man only spends about one year in direct military service. Following discharge from the regular army, men serve on reserve status until age 50 (55 for officers).

Interesting and very different from buying a gun at K-Mart. I read too that Switzerland officially adopted a position of armed neutrality in 1515 and an armed citizenry helped enforce that. I would have to agree with Nichole and others that it's more a cultural issue than a gun issue. I wouldn't worry a bit about camping in Switzerland, even though there is a heavily armed populace.

Thanks Annwyn, I didn't know that about Switzerland. Back to more reading.

Dennis

Quote from: iFindMeHere on September 13, 2008, 07:18:50 PM

Quote from: Nichole on September 13, 2008, 06:34:53 PM

Quote from: Annwyn on September 13, 2008, 05:37:13 PM

Um, not at all.  Some countries make it mandatory that each household have a fully automatic firearm and inhabitants be trained on how to use it.  FUnny how those countries also boast a VERY low crime rate... hrmm, you'd think they'd all be out shooting each other, right?   

What you and others are either not seeing or don't want to see is that you are partially right. It's not the guns that are problematic. It's the gun-culture that's problematic. Die Schweiz hasn't a gun-culture, nor a wild west culture, nor a culture that measures a penis with a gun extension added to it. Nor are they noted for firing first and asking questions later.

I perfectly agree that the problem is not the guns themselves. The problem is the morons who own them. Sorry, after two hundred years of gun culture it will require a good bit more from American citizens to provided "safety" with an automatic rifle in every home, or even 40.

Nichole

it's how we *became* a country...

am I the only one who thinks that breaking with Britain was a stupid thing to do?

Posted on: September 13, 2008, 09:33:51 PM

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What happened to the notion that american society is insane?

I'm not smart enough to answer that question.  There is something wrong with how we are governed, though.  Whether or not society has gone insane, our media and news outlets do the most they possibly can to make us feel like everything has gone insane and we have no way to control it except to turn off the noise and try to convince others to do likewise.

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."

~Friedrich Nietzsche

Collective insanity, perhaps. But then if most are insane... those few who are not will be the ones deemed mad.

In all the gun discussion, has anyone on the anti-gun side ever considered that such a policy can only be enforced by having the government shoot people who disobey?  That's the threat behind every law, isn't it?

Further, do people like George W. Bush suddenly become noble, trustworthy, and competent when their people have all the guns?  Even if you're hoping for Obama in '08 and you're sure he'll do no wrong while in office, you've got to see that he won't be around forever, and there's always the chance of another McBush.

And what about opposition to monopoly?  If it's bad to have small-scale monopolies in the private sector, how is it good to create a COLOSSAL monopoly on GUNS, run by a class of people famous for corruption and incompetence?

If you think people should only have firearms for personal defense, think again - "granting" ordinary citizens the "right" to have semi-automatic weapons only is practically identical to taking away guns completely.  Think about it - the ultimate power of an armed citizenry is the ability to challenge the government, and is the morally correct course when the government becomes oppressive.  However, If the military has recoilless rifles while we've got Saturday night specials, then we might as well have nothing.

You can't get out of the problem by saying "We are the government".  That's a sham.  The entire state apparatus exists and does what it does whether any of us want it to or not - this is not consensus reality.  If the President declared martial law tomorrow and suspended the Constitution, I'm sure most people would hate it, but it wouldn't change anything.

Posted on: September 13, 2008, 11:24:23 PM

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Yes, many Americans have swallowed a collection of myths, lies, half-truths, and delusions.  Much of what passes for American history, politics, and religious dogma can be found in this collection.  This witches' brew, when combined with the financial momentum from a more economically liberal time, has made the USA uniquely dangerous in the world.  America is a flaming Mack truck full of strung-out lunatics singing peans to rich liars while careening through a crowded supermarket.

Quote from: Nichole on September 13, 2008, 07:35:22 PM
NO, it is not "how we became a country." We became a country using a French Navy and Army to do much of the work and luck and the open connaivance of the Brits to do the rest. That myth about all those minutemen is about of the same order as the cherry-tree chopping and the throwing of a pound coin across the Potomac {there were no dollars to throw at the time.] I've thrown a quarter across it in Maryland. It was rather easy in fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland

Yep, Wiki for guns in Die Schweiz. It's only as good as who wrote it but to tell the truth I didn't really feel strongly enough about Switzerland to fact-check any further than there. The so-called "required" automatic weapons are semi-automatic after military service ends at 30, and nothing about being required for anyone. Just a high rate of gun ownership and enough problems that there are pushes to limit both ammo and guns.

It would be nice if, rather than shooting from the hip, one would go and make sure of factual information, like the universal "requirement" and "guns won the Revolution" and cite some actual facts rather than age-old American myths.

Nichole

I corrected myself, and then I further cited some facts.  Talk about selective reading, STFU.

I said in the beginning, that I was trying to establish a distinction between full fire military grade weapons, and sport guns.  I'm not against guns, and oddly enough I don't think people feel any safer knowing everyone around them is armed.  That it might help you feel safer to be armed is perhaps an illusion, as I feel that it might encourage poorer choices through a false sense of courage or protection.

But, and here is the point I want to make, its insane when one can not make a simple distinction anymore.  There is even a name for this insanity and its Zero Tolerance.  People can't distinguish between a teen age girl giving Midol to one of her GFs and selling her crack, they are dealt with in exactly the same way.  A gun, or a kitchen knife to cut an apple in the lunchroom?  Everyone Panic!  They are both weapons.  A sane person can make simple decisions, so too should a sane society.

Yet another example of social insanity is a complete and total lack of civility in society.  People do not deal with others out of politeness but more out of an almost psychopathic sense that they, and they alone live in this world, and everything affects them and only them.  A society of self-contained individualism is no society at all, not even according to even one of the more than 150 different definitions that sociology uses.

Quote from: tekla on September 16, 2008, 09:44:00 PM
Yet another example of social insanity is a complete and total lack of civility in society.  People do not deal with others out of politeness but more out of an almost psychopathic sense that they, and they alone live in this world, and everything affects them and only them.  A society of self-contained individualism is no society at all, not even according to even one of the more than 150 different definitions that sociology uses.

That's solipsism, not individualism.  Individualism is nothing more than the belief that individual human beings are the moral actors and judges of value in the world, not some collective consciousness.  Ergo, it's people who have rights, not society - it's wrong to hurt real people in the name of "the greater good".

I don't know about you, but I've found that lots of Americans are very hostile to individualism, and that's what's been fueling the lack of civility.  Many people are so obsessed with perceived class interests and collective beliefs that they see outsiders as either objects to exploit or enemies to destroy.

When your out sitting on the central campus lawn in your Birkenstocks and Tevas drinking jug wine and smoking grass after that big Philo 101 test - its Solipsism.

When you are interacting with real people, in real time, in the real world - its psychopathic.

But what does that have to do with individualism?  Psychopaths don't care about individual rights, so they're not individualists.  They're just self-absorbed and antisocial.

I said, "self-contained individualism" which is not the philosophy of Individualism.  So, perhaps I should have just said people who feel they are the only ones that matter at all.

Quote from: tekla on September 16, 2008, 09:44:00 PM
But, and here is the point I want to make, its insane when one can not make a simple distinction anymore.  There is even a name for this insanity and its Zero Tolerance.  People can't distinguish between a teen age girl giving Midol to one of her GFs and selling her crack, they are dealt with in exactly the same way.  A gun, or a kitchen knife to cut an apple in the lunchroom?  Everyone Panic!  They are both weapons.  A sane person can make simple decisions, so too should a sane society.

'K, here's a question - how do you determine whether a society is sane?  What's your baseline?  What does insanity even mean in the case of a collective?  Just as the human body is more than the sum of its parts, and we don't judge a person's mental health by what their cells are doing, isn't it possible that a society's mental health can't be inferred from the actions of it's component humans?

(I'm not trying to be annoying, I'd just really like to hear people's opinions on this)

Largely the same way we do in single people (notice how I avoided using the 'I' word) on a case by case basis - by how they deal with reality.

Aw, come on.  The only issue I had was with the use of "individualism" the philosophy, not "individuals". 

Anyway...

Quote from: tekla on September 16, 2008, 11:17:45 PMLargely the same way we do in single people (notice how I avoided using the 'I' word) on a case by case basis - by how they deal with reality.

Doesn't a society experience a different level of reality than an individual?  None of us know what it's like to be a society, so how do we judge its sanity?  With people, we know about basic human desires and motivations, and whether someone's actions are congruent with those desires.  With societies, who knows?  Even to say that a society is "repressive", or "progressive", or "wealthy", or "impoverished" is just us projecting our mindset onto an aggregate of people, and has nothing to do with the actual emergent organism.

Quote from: Nephie on September 12, 2008, 12:47:24 AM

Quote from: Elwood on September 11, 2008, 05:00:41 PM
Everyone has issues, most people need some sort of therapy, and a lot of people don't bother to ever step into a doctor's office...

If most people need therapy, than it's possible that lots of doctors need therapy too.  Scary thought.

Posted on: September 12, 2008, 01:40:55 AM

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I've always been amazed at the number of clinical psychologists I know who see therapists. But then, I guess they get a deal.

Everyone has issues, most people need some sort of therapy

While I might agree that everyone has some issues, I doubt that 'most' need therapy, or would have any real and lasting benefit from it.  And, FTR, I think that the reason therapists see therapists is that it is hard dealing with everyone else's problems, but more than that, its the only person they can talk to about it without violating laws regarding patient confidentiality.

But for national sanity, that trolley is off the tracks and has been so for a long time.  Consider the current financial meltdown.  Cassandra types like me have been trying to point it out for well on 15 years now, that you could not deregulate the entire financial and corporate structure and somehow expect to get greater accountability out of it. 

Or... the idea that we could fight a major war and not expect any sort of sacrifice from public.  It was not, 'blood, sweat and tears' it was 'lets go shopping' and we have pretty clear evidence that while the first tactic worked, the second did not.  You could not do it without raising taxes unless you wanted to put the debt levels into record levels.  So we now have the second.

You can not claim that we are the world's leading democracy when more people vote for American Idol than president.  But we do anyway.

And the qualification for getting that office is 'who's the guy I'd like to have a beer with."  Look, I like my drinking buddies as much as the next guy, but - save one perhaps - I would not want to see them as president, thought I'm sure they all would have been better than what we got.

Doesn't the Fed's ridiculous level of credit expansion have something to do with it?  Even Keynes didn't believe in running the printing press all the time.