Comments by "J Drake1994" (@JDrakeify) on "BBC News"
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DrUgaBuga There are mass shootings in some countries that have stricter gun laws, like France, but not nearly as many.Other countries used to have mass shootings, like the UK and Australia, but have not experienced one since gun massacres in the 90s got them to act to introduce far stricter gun legislation. In comparison to all other western countries, the US is off the scale in terms of gun violence, both in terms of mass shootings and overall gun related deaths.
I think most of the problems you cite exist in one form or another in those countries too. Although I think that the overall 'gun culture' in America that exists in a way completely unlike anything in other countries, as well as the higher poverty rates might mean that the US homicide rate would still remain relatively higher than most other countries, I think proper gun control would bring a very significant reduction to the number of gun related deaths of all kinds.
And what exactly do you think your right to own a gun is preventing from happening? The US federal government spends a ridiculous amount on its military, it is better trained and organized with better technology than any ordinary gun owner can ever hope to have, if it wanted to do you harm, it wouldnt let your ownership of a gun stop them. Those western countries that have strict gun control laws havent turned into authoritarian dictatorships overnight because they brought in gun control
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DrUgaBuga I dont really know what you are on about with regards to the EU. It has powers over certain issues, yes, but the only ones where they really have a decisive effect on the issue is on things like freedom of movement and freedom of trade,perhaps labour and environmental regulations. Of course, if a country is part of the euro(which the UK isnt), the EU influences a lot of its economy too, but over most areas of government a country still has significant degrees of autonomy, greater than the powers the EU has. It is a myth to say that all of Europe is somehow under the control of faceless bureaucrats in Brussels. It is to an extent democratically accountable (though not nearly as much as it should be) due to the elected European Parliament and the European Commission being selected by leaders of the member countries. I am not at all aware of any laws the EU has relating to firearms.
Besides, Australia is not in the EU, and in many regards it is the country in the world most similar to America. When they got rid of guns, what happened? Nothing.
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Sublimation I was not talking about the history of one particular country, but of the world in general. And, as with the examples of people like Christopher Columbus, Cecil Rhodes, or even at times Winston Churchill, historical figures can still be remembered as international heroes despite their blatant racism. It is true we do not remember the crimes of some Eastern Empires from that long ago, but it is also true that crimes by whites such as Caesar's wars in Gaul, or Cromwell's wars in Ireland, go under reported too. We do also revile many Asian figures too, such as Genghis Khan, and Mao.
As for racial profiling, it is not necessarily the case that police have a better reason to target black kids over white ones. After all, it is a well known fact that whites have done most kind of drugs at a higher rates than blacks, and yet it is black people who are continuously subjected to stop and search. And looking at the incidents where black people have got shot by police or self appointed vigilantes because of the shooters own racial bias, it makes little difference whether blacks are more likely to commit crime, because it is still unlikely that they are criminal, even if it is statistically more likely than if they were white, and even if they are, they have likely not committed a crime that warrants being killed, and if they had, they had a right to a fair trial first. So it doesnt really matter whether blacks are more likely to commit a crime in that regard- the chances are they still did not deserve to be shot.
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Sublimation Fine, but even if those things are problems, can you honestly say those same things dont exist in western countries with low gun violence?
And, as I have said, you can blame all sorts of things for someone getting to the point when they feel they want to go and commit a mass shooting, but those feelings would get converted into violence a lot less if it werent so easy for someone to go buy a gun.
All bases of this problem ought to be covered, so that means tackling mental health (which is a factor in other problems too) widespread alienation from society, and poverty, but those things have to be in conjunction with gun control, which, when implemented effectively,not a substitute for it.
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Sublimation I think you forget just how much white men still have going for them. The people who run almost everything up and down the country are white men, and it is easily provable that basically everyone has a subconscious racial bias, and therefore it is far easier to get by in a world run by people exactly the same as you are.
If you are applying for a job or asking people for help in a public place it helps to be a white male. And the police are a lot less likely to harass you or kill because of their subconscious racial assumptions.
As for the academia, most of it is still composed of white men. White men are not reviled in any sense. What you are referring to is merely a wave of historical revisionism that looks back and realizes that previous biases have led us to emphasize the role of white males who were sometimes terrible people over people of other races. Politicians do not talk about them as rapists or murderers, either consciously or by implication.
For instance, thinking 'hey, Christopher Columbus was a terrible person who clearly murdered thousands of people, maybe we shouldnt give him a day where we celebrate him' is a perfectly fine, especially when the focus of history is still, even after a bit of revisionism, overwhelmingly focused on white men.
It is pretty insecure to see any attempt to even things out a bit from a society where white males are overwhelmingly priviliged as an attack on them and making them into the most reviled group in society?
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