International News Americans with guns ....

Mississippi, for example, already has about 20% of its population living in poverty. Having been there, that statistic doesn't surprise me. I found it to be a pretty backwards place in almost every respect.


...and yet I've just learned that Mississippi is leading the USA in the percentage of same-sex couples raising children.
 
...and yet I've just learned that Mississippi is leading the USA in the percentage of same-sex couples raising children.

That’s interesting. The fascists will try to ban that next , and same sex marriage, but these things are just facts - they can’t turn back the clock.
 
...and yet I've just learned that Mississippi is leading the USA in the percentage of same-sex couples raising children.

OK, but how many same sex couples are there in Mississippi? The only recent data I can find only lists the top 25 states (by %) and they weren't in that.

If there's only one same sex couple in Mississippi, and they're raising a child, then the percentage of same-sex couples raising children is going to be pretty high!
 
OK, but how many same sex couples are there in Mississippi? The only recent data I can find only lists the top 25 states (by %) and they weren't in that.

If there's only one same sex couple in Mississippi, and they're raising a child, then the percentage of same-sex couples raising children is going to be pretty high!

Indeed, I just wanted to give them something, anything!

"Thank God for Mississippi"

(that phrase being another of today's learnings)
 
Indeed, I just wanted to give them something, anything!

"Thank God for Mississippi"

(that phrase being another of today's learnings)
You might argue that it should be "blame god for Mississippi"[emoji848]
 
could just rename thread "stupid americans"...
One of the supreme court justices incorrectly conflating Covid vaccines and "cells from aborted children" - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...e-thomas-covid-vaccine-abortion-b2113505.html

The 6 conservative judges apparently also want the planet to get warmer! Watch those wildfires burn and the droughts lengthen even more....

 
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Jim Jefferies makes the point brilliantly regarding guns for home protection. Either you have a loaded gun readily available at all times, which presents a far greater risk that your children will kill themselves or each other, or you have your gun secured in a safe, which means that it offers no protection!

Having guns to protect yourself or your property is a bullshit excuse as they do neither.

Not strictly true although I like his sketch. They have things like finger print recognition locks for your bedside table on a small gun secure case
 
Welcome back from holidays! What crap is this ? Do you have or need a handgun to protect your home …?

I think you’ll find a huge proportion of gun owners who have a gun don’t actually like or want a gun, but have a gun for this very reason. Home invasions happen and you know that the perpetrators will be armed. Very few are stupid enough to do that unarmed .
 
I think you’ll find a huge proportion of gun owners who have a gun don’t actually like or want a gun, but have a gun for this very reason. Home invasions happen and you know that the perpetrators will be armed. Very few are stupid enough to do that unarmed .
Totally agree, the problem is though as guns are readily and easily available, you would feel justified in possessing one for you and your family.

Not sure if it’s still law and I believe only in Texas if someone entered your property without an invite and unknown by the homeowner. The homeowner would have every right to shoot them dead without fear of prosecution.
 
Jim Jefferies makes the point brilliantly regarding guns for home protection. Either you have a loaded gun readily available at all times, which presents a far greater risk that your children will kill themselves or each other, or you have your gun secured in a safe, which means that it offers no protection!

Having guns to protect yourself or your property is a bullshit excuse as they do neither.


Ok so first off I am not in favour of guns. Just to put that marker down. But I’ve lived in Texas since 2015 so I’m probably sat in the very heart of the American gun culture. Every day when I pick my daughter up from elementary school there are people with open carry guns holstered outside school waiting to pick up their kids. I still find it hard to comprehend.

I would disagree with your last comment. Guns most certainly do provide opportunity to protect your home and sadly there are stories almost daily on the local news about both successful and unsuccessful outcomes.

In an ideal world there would be no guns here. As rightly pointed out the Americans are fanatically protective about their constitution but the amendment pertaining to guns is wildly outdated.

I have to say that I find myself torn and sat on the fence. I’m anti gun. But the horse has well and truly bolted. Hundreds of millions of guns are out there, many registered and well looked after in a safe, and many not. If you try to ban guns or do an amnesty the good decent folk may hand their guns in (but based on prisoners dilemma I doubt it) but the criminals certainly won’t. So it’s rather pointless. If a nut job or bad guy wants a gun they’ll get one.

I don’t have a gun but I’ve definitely thought hard about getting one to protect my family and home. (Interestingly more so after I watched the way Ukrainians were able to fight back against an imposing unwanted new “government”). I don’t because a huge proportion of people die at the hands of their own gun.

What I will say about Texas specifically is that most of my friends, including the liberal ones, have guns and are very responsible. (I recognize plenty aren’t). The hunting, fishing and outdoor culture here is a massive part of who they are and how they live their lives. They don’t want a Wild West they just want to go hunt deer. And I’ve learnt to respect that.

But also You won’t persuade a lot of people that there should be no guns for cultural reasons or because they also perceive the horse having bolted. It’s easy to have high morales and grand standing from the other side of the Atlantic but there needs to be a pinch of how you deal with the reality of the situation.

So really it’s a case of how do you start restricting the most dangerous issues. And the Supreme Court is conservative at the moment so it’s not about to happen. It’s desperately disappointing that assault rifles are so available, that anyone can buy a gun by just walking into the equivalent of sports direct and showing their driving license, or talking to someone they know who is selling one.

But I don’t see how you change the current reality.
 
But I don’t see how you change the current reality.
(I know it's not quite the same, but it's also not as different as you might think)

Twelve days after the Port Arthur massacre, the Australian prime minister, John Howard, announced a sweeping package of gun reforms in a country where firearms had long been considered an essential prop in the national mythology of life in the bush.

“At that stage the gun lobby was the ruling lobby in Australia,” says Philip Alpers, associate professor at the University of Sydney. “What happened at Port Arthur is that they were outpaced, outflanked and outwitted by a man who had the power to move in 12 remarkable days.”


What is interesting about the Aussie experience is that it switched from a country that accepted guns as a necessary part of everyday life for many, to one which decided that most people really did not need guns, and certainly not semiautomatic assault rifles.
 
What I will say about Texas specifically is that most of my friends, including the liberal ones, have guns and are very responsible. (I recognize plenty aren’t). The hunting, fishing and outdoor culture here is a massive part of who they are and how they live their lives. They don’t want a Wild West they just want to go hunt deer. And I’ve learnt to respect that.

But also You won’t persuade a lot of people that there should be no guns for cultural reasons or because they also perceive the horse having bolted. It’s easy to have high morales and grand standing from the other side of the Atlantic but there needs to be a pinch of how you deal with the reality of the situation.

So really it’s a case of how do you start restricting the most dangerous issues. And the Supreme Court is conservative at the moment so it’s not about to happen. It’s desperately disappointing that assault rifles are so available, that anyone can buy a gun by just walking into the equivalent of sports direct and showing their driving license, or talking to someone they know who is selling one.

But I don’t see how you change the current reality.

I don't disagree with anything you've said, RO.

But the frustrating/scary thing for us in NJ right now is not that things aren't changing to try and curb the mass shootings - it's that the gun lobby and conservatives, with the support of the current Supreme Court, are now coming for our gun laws and trying to change things in the opposite direction.

Because the culture here is very different. I'm not sure I know a single person who owns a gun here in Central Jersey - certainly noone that would admit to it. And I've never actually seen a gun in the possession of a private individual - only the police or armed forces. Because you need a permit to carry, and a good reason to get a permit, and most of the time it's denied. Assault weapons are banned as well, as are large magazines.

And now this anti-gun culture (compared to most of the US at least!) is under threat, despite the fact that it's the will of the NJ people, and despite the fact that (in NY at least) it's been in place for a hundred years, because half a dozen justices are deciding to interpret a vague, 250 year old, one sentence law as gospel truth.

It's really ****ed up, and I think it's going to get politically very messy in the next few years.
 
@tonyw i couldn’t agree more. I don’t bother debating it down here because honestly peoples views are so entrenched that no amount of data or logic will shift their view points.
 
Ok so first off I am not in favour of guns. Just to put that marker down. But I’ve lived in Texas since 2015 so I’m probably sat in the very heart of the American gun culture. Every day when I pick my daughter up from elementary school there are people with open carry guns holstered outside school waiting to pick up their kids. I still find it hard to comprehend.

I would disagree with your last comment. Guns most certainly do provide opportunity to protect your home and sadly there are stories almost daily on the local news about both successful and unsuccessful outcomes.

In an ideal world there would be no guns here. As rightly pointed out the Americans are fanatically protective about their constitution but the amendment pertaining to guns is wildly outdated.

I have to say that I find myself torn and sat on the fence. I’m anti gun. But the horse has well and truly bolted. Hundreds of millions of guns are out there, many registered and well looked after in a safe, and many not. If you try to ban guns or do an amnesty the good decent folk may hand their guns in (but based on prisoners dilemma I doubt it) but the criminals certainly won’t. So it’s rather pointless. If a nut job or bad guy wants a gun they’ll get one.

I don’t have a gun but I’ve definitely thought hard about getting one to protect my family and home. (Interestingly more so after I watched the way Ukrainians were able to fight back against an imposing unwanted new “government”). I don’t because a huge proportion of people die at the hands of their own gun.

What I will say about Texas specifically is that most of my friends, including the liberal ones, have guns and are very responsible. (I recognize plenty aren’t). The hunting, fishing and outdoor culture here is a massive part of who they are and how they live their lives. They don’t want a Wild West they just want to go hunt deer. And I’ve learnt to respect that.

But also You won’t persuade a lot of people that there should be no guns for cultural reasons or because they also perceive the horse having bolted. It’s easy to have high morales and grand standing from the other side of the Atlantic but there needs to be a pinch of how you deal with the reality of the situation.

So really it’s a case of how do you start restricting the most dangerous issues. And the Supreme Court is conservative at the moment so it’s not about to happen. It’s desperately disappointing that assault rifles are so available, that anyone can buy a gun by just walking into the equivalent of sports direct and showing their driving license, or talking to someone they know who is selling one.

But I don’t see how you change the current reality.

Can’t imagine walking into Sports Direct and putting some Lonsdale socks, a pack of tennis balls and an AK47 with ammo on the counter, shows how different the culture is in that respect.

A very interesting post, yours and Tony W posts even show the differences between the US which is only just about one country as it’s so huge and varied, let alone the difference’s between the UK and the US which despite the common language are worlds apart in many respects.

It’s awful that so many innocent people are killed (although Mexico over the border has much stricter gun laws and has huge problems as well) due to the ease of which people can get guns, but as you point out you can’t easily put that genie back in the bottle overnight with a ban.
 
Can’t imagine walking into Sports Direct and putting some Lonsdale socks, a pack of tennis balls and an AK47 with ammo on the counter, shows how different the culture is in that respect.

A very interesting post, yours and Tony W posts even show the differences between the US which is only just about one country as it’s so huge and varied, let alone the difference’s between the UK and the US which despite the common language are worlds apart in many respects.

It’s awful that so many innocent people are killed (although Mexico over the border has much stricter gun laws and has huge problems as well) due to the ease of which people can get guns, but as you point out you can’t easily put that genie back in the bottle overnight with a ban.
Mexico has about half the gun death rate of the US, despite having a higher murder rate.
And guess where the guns come from: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/st...toxic-flow-of-gun-traffic-from-u-s-to-mexico/
 
@tonyw i couldn’t agree more. I don’t bother debating it down here because honestly peoples views are so entrenched that no amount of data or logic will shift their view points.
I would find this unbearable if I lived in the US, particularly in a pro-gun/pro-second amendment rights state. I imagine many issues - latterly gun ownership and abortion rights - cannot be discussed or debated in any reasonable way. Living in the UK, extreme views on most topics don't appear to be as entrenched. You will, inevitably, come across extremists but they can, by and large, be ignored.

EDIT - That said, I suppose it's fair to assume that most Americans ARE reasonable people capable of reasonable thought, but that (assumed) majority simply don't get the exposure of the minority.
 
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I would find this unbearable if I lived in the US, particularly in a pro-gun/pro-second amendment rights state. I imagine many issues - latterly gun ownership and abortion rights - cannot be discussed or debated in any reasonable way. Living in the UK, extreme views on most topics don't appear to be as entrenched. You will, inevitably, come across extremists but they can, by and large, be ignored.

EDIT - That said, I suppose it's fair to assume that most Americans ARE reasonable people capable of reasonable thought, but that (assumed) majority simply don't get the exposure of the minority.

I think it’s also one of those things that feels and looks way worse from the outside too versus the reality.

@bashamswonderland described the USA earlier in the thread as being at a point of dystopian end of days complete societal capitulation. Which is ludicrous. (As an aside Teachers here make $55k starting and many of them are on $70k. Nurses make between $60-120k)

As a suburbanite middle class example I don’t feel particularly unsafe or scared. The majority of gun incidents are between gangs, domestic violence or suicides.

And i honestly felt far less safe when I was in London because it felt like there used to be way more muggings and attacks there than there are here (maybe because people worry their target would have a gun? Or maybe it’s just my perception about my environment).

Either way it’s one of those things, like so baby things in life, where you tend to just adapt and get used to it.

The abortion one is another debate I don’t touch much being in the religious south. It’s not much of a debate in that circumstance because their scripture binds them. I’m pro choice but I don’t pretend to have truth on my side. It’s a very grey area and I think I’m the UK we sometimes assume we have found “truth” because the majority believe a certain thing, Abortion is a classic philosophical case of “two wrong answers” and which one do you find easier to tolerate.
 
Can’t imagine walking into Sports Direct and putting some Lonsdale socks, a pack of tennis balls and an AK47 with ammo on the counter, shows how different the culture is in that respect.

A very interesting post, yours and Tony W posts even show the differences between the US which is only just about one country as it’s so huge and varied, let alone the difference’s between the UK and the US which despite the common language are worlds apart in many respects.

It’s awful that so many innocent people are killed (although Mexico over the border has much stricter gun laws and has huge problems as well) due to the ease of which people can get guns, but as you point out you can’t easily put that genie back in the bottle overnight with a ban.

First time I walked past it all I hadn’t even conceived of it. I was looking at fishing rods and turned a corner to see dozens of guns. I was so perturbed I steered my daughter the other way. Perhaps I’m going native but now I barely look twice (except to imagine which one is pick if I was James Bond)
 
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