Out of Pod Experience

Troll... stopped reading right there. This reminds me of a story:

My friend, policeman for 12 years, was patrolling this nice white neighborhood. Dispatch called him and ask him to investigate 1st street because residents called about a suspicious black man walking around. "I was just there" said the policeman, "there was nobody there". But he went and patrolled again. Dispatch called a 2nd time "we had more calls, suspicious black man walking around". My friend went there a 3rd time and patrolled. While he was walking in front of house #1, dispatch got another called and patched it through:

Police - Are you saying you are looking at the suspicious black guy right now?
Resident - Yes, I can look at him from my window he's right there, like talking on a cellphone or something.
Police - What's your street address?
Resident - I'm in 001 1st street.
Police - Really? Is the suspicious black guy jumping on one leg right now?
Resident - Yes, yes! you see him too?
Police - No sir, there's not suspicious black guy. It's just me, your friendly black policeman. :\

First you say that Spain is crimeless... now you say that drugs have nothing to do with crime. It keeps getting better with this one. Almost like the dreddits... the trollage just never ends. Maybe you are going to say that this week's Armed Robbery at the Madrid's Bank doesn't count as crime? Linky

Anyway, back to your original trollage of my description being one of "somalia"... looks like your cities have all the same carasteristics. The steel bars, the 8 foot fences, the barbed wire, everything. So be a good sport troll and admit you were trolling and got called out.

And while we are having this little and constructive cultural exchange. What's the deal with the Cataluña Separatists? Is it like the Quebec issue? No trolling tho, every big nation has a few of those. Here in the US he have the Republic of Texas and the Banana Republic.

You should like it. It was turned into a movie like in the 80s or sometime awhile ago. Actually a sequel. Where the black driver, becomes the body guard for her and is called. Protecting Miss Daisy.

I watched a similar film but the title was Mandingo.

Yeah it does create a loop. Yeah the germans have the turkish apperently. That is why I love Europe, they take all the wierd minorites and we get all the normal ones. You and france should team up and overthrow the muslims. Have the French build a second wall, like we want to do to keep the mexicans away.

See we don't need guns, just alot of tall walls, placed strategically.

Gotta love some Charlie Brooker. Does any of this sound familiar: This is why I don't watch the news

Drugs don't cause any more crime than in any other country. For geographical reasons, Spain is a major entry point for drug traffic (much as Mexico, we lay in the shortest path from producers to consumers). But then we don't have dealers shooting each other in the streets, and never had them, by the way. Homicide rate is quite low and standard for european countries; and certain kinds of violent crime are fairly uncommon .

As for the fences, et cetera, they are as much a safety device as a cultural thing.

It started back in the 1400s, when it became suspicious to have a house the way they used to be: without windows to the outside, and built around a central open space. At some point that made people suspect of being muslim or jew as semitic people built their houses that way, and it could potentially conceal heathen behavior. So it began an habit to build windows to say "i am a good christian, i don't have anything to hide". Anyway, having windows open to the street offered entry points to thieves, and thus windows were barred.

The matter about barring or not windows became a matter of trust: in small isolate towns were everybody knew everybody, windows weren't, in cities or larger towns wehre foreigners came for market, et cetera, they were. It still is like that nowadays.

Also there is another question: most Spaniards (85%) live in what you American would call condominiums, that is, muti-storey buildings. Also we follow the roman age old tradition of insulae, and the street floor usually is used for holding shops. Individual, single-family homes are unusual, and they are either second homes or the main home of wealthier people, thus gealous of their privacy and with properties worth keeping safe.

And all in all, we've been building fences around our homes for like 600 years, and we won't lose that habit any more than you American will start doing so... not because of crime, but of culture and habits.

A good old phrase comes to mind: "Todo es según el color del cristal con que se mira" (It's all in the eye of the beholder). You say the fences is a cultural thing and I say fences are needed because people can't have guns. Like opinions, everybody has one.



Firearms did not exist back then, therefore you needed walls (people had swords you know ).

Cherry picking data to make a point is really really dishonest.

There is little to no correlation(it might even be slightly negative) between guns per capita and murder rate.

Good examples of lots of guns and low crime: Switzerland, Canada, Scandinavia

Good examples of few guns, but lots of crime: Russia, Brazil, Most of the third world.

Now, even if you look inside EU and exclude former Eastern block members with low guns and high crime - you will see that many countries have something like 4-5x as many guns per capita as Spain, but similar murder rates.

Please, never use that argument, is it really dishonest to pick 1 or 2 EU countries and compare them to USA. Not to mention, USA local gun restrictions haven't really created low crime areas.

I think that you're missing the point here.

Why owe a gun?

Self defense.

Self defense from what threat?

Any.

But, what's the most common threat around?

People who owe firearms.

But, what people?

ANY people. Everyone can owe a firearm and you never know who you're gonna meet.

So the reason why you need a weapon it's the American like you, who owe firearms because American like you owe guns.

Oh, you may say, "but, i am NOT a threat!" But then in your own words, "you don't know who will greet ya". And you are everybody else's "who will greet me?". So you are armed because of their arms, and they are armed because of your arms.

So all in all, American arm themselves because of armed American. And the more American arm themselves, the more American will have to worry about all those armed out there, thus they will keep arming themselves.