@bidicus*maximus wrote:We live in the midwest... suburbs of Kansas City. Population not as dense as areas of the country like the coasts and most folks here live in their own single family homes.
It does seem that the more closely you pack a surplus of people together, the more problems you have all around and the harder it is for them to achieve a better way of life through their own honest efforts... making illegal activities or the "something for nothing" schemes proposed by some politicians all the more attractive to those who do live in these high density areas.
Here it's probably the other way around as most guns would be owned by farmers and hunters/shooters.
Put people closer together and tensions/anger can get out of hand quickly and if you put a gun into the mix the
next step can be a killing.
At other times it's just a case of I don't like that guy or the way he looked at me,bang he's death problem solved.
Or look I got a new gun and I want to shoot someone and a guy goes jogging by bang I got him and he's dead.
Gangs shoot at each other and a bystander gets hit band he's dead.
An earlier post was getting shot at for throwing snow balls and it's happened on more than one occasion.
That's what guns do as they are built for shooting/killing and in the US that means you are 7 times more likely
to be killed by a gun then in any other high income country.
You can combine 20 other high income countries together and still not get to the murder death rate that the US
has from guns.
@bidicus*maximus wrote:LOL @ vampires, etc. You are obviously convinced that you couldn't possibly be wrong. Rather pointless for me to continue, I'd say...
The problem is you think you are right as in the "despot" post and that's the sort of paranoia that gets people
killed in the US so stands to reason you may believe in the other fairy tales.
To become a "despot" you would need the support of the people and the armed forces and that wont happen
in the US (maybe the 70% of citizens in the US that don't own guns might support one).
Two-thirds (67% of gun owners cite protection as their major reason why they own a firearm.
Considerably smaller shares say hunting (38%), sport shooting (30%), gun collecting (13%) or their job (8%)
are major reasons.
So good luck finding any others that believe in a "despot" government.
@bidicus*maximus wrote:There seem to be many misconceptions about life here in the US... we all need guns to protect ourselves from each other... we all live in poverty... nobody wants to move here anymore (yet we are FLOODED with immigrants daily, both legal and illegal)...
The difference between liife experience and web scholarship, I suppose...
I don't know that people think that.
We certainly don't think everyone lives in poverty. Just about everyone I know has visited US (except me 
) & some have been numerous times. I have written to an American for 50 years, since we were kids, and I know she lives in the type of home I could never aspire to.
What one of my daughters did comment on though was there seemed to be a big divide-plenty of people doing well, but I think it was San francisco she said looked like a 3rd world country in some parts, with the number of street people.
I think everyone also knows the US is an attractive destination for lots of people.
My friends report that on the whole, they found the people very friendly and they never had any trouble on their trips. It is, on the whole, a peaceful society over there.
In many respects, I don't believe it is all that different to Australia. Our problems are mainly in the big cities too, because that is where most people live. We also are being flooded with migrants, both legal & illegal, so much so the infrastructure is struggling to cope. We have pockets of poverty and violence here too.
The main difference is probably overall attitudes to gun control, in that most Australians are happy enough to have strict regulations around gun use and ownership, whereas in US, not so much.
Everything has a price, I guess. With cars, we know there will be a certain number of deaths on the roads and we more or less accept that risk.
In US, I think the people do know that giving almost everyone much, much easier access to guns is going to mean pretty regular massacres and shoot outs, but it is the price the Americans are willing to pay.
As long as they are just killing each other though, I guess we should respect their choice.
Just one thing that sort of encapsulates what I think of as the divide Aust/US.
This example always amuses/amazes me.
I can't imagine it happening here, that's all.
On a board I go to, where there was a resident texan, he told us he owned several guns.
Now, he was a very friendly man, very kind hearted and generous to some of the male boardies in UK, overall decent family man.
Well, one day he reported he had an opossum in his house and my eyes nearly popped out of my head as he reported he got his gun and started shooting at it in the kitchen and now had a few dinged cupboards.
I thought an opposum was just a possum and it seemed a bit drastic to me, but he assured me they are different and can attack.
Another time a neighbour's dog wandered onto his property and bailed him up. He shot it and got rid of it. This was an example, he said, of why he needed a gun at all times.
His posts were always entertaining but sadly, he died a couple of years back.
Here we see this :
In the US On numerous occasions I saw this :
@bidicus*maximus wrote:Not being a gun owner myself, I have no objections to reasonable requirements being put upon the acquisition and ownership of guns... and many others feel the same way. The problem is, nobody seems to be able to define "reasonable" in such a way that it is agreeable to everyone... and I doubt that they ever will. Mix in the fact that millions of guns already exist and will continue to be available to criminals through the black market in spite of any new laws that may be passed and... what's the point?
Perhaps our laws should focus on mandatory execution for gun violence?
A complicated problem with no simplistic answers.
The point is that it's not millions of guns that are available as you and most from the US seem to think,it's over
350 million guns are held by citizens of the United States and that's not just totally wrong that's deadly which has
been proven time and time again.
That is what no real gun control has achieved and the numbers will only ever go up and it's mainly through the
sale of guns to citizens that already have guns.
Want simple gun control then get rid of any automatic or semi automatic guns and make them illegal to own
and only allow each citizens two guns maximum and not the 5,10,20 plus stores that some have been able to
build up.
Guns for protection in the cities are hand guns not semi automatic weapons or repeating rifles.
