Out of Pod Experience

Switzerland has the highest gun ownership per capita in the world.

Its Americas culture that's ****** up and has guns in circulation, not a problem with the guns themselves. Switzerland hasn't been invaded and even the Nazi's didn't step foot inside knowing ever man was legally obliged to have a gun, ammo and take marksmanship training.

Silens covers the American side better than what I had typed up.

That said Australia and the UK prove you can disarm a gun loving nation without much trouble, took 3 months from proposal to no the firearms buyback after a mass shooting in Australia, so if the US government chose to do so there is already a precedent for disarmament successfully.

Also have you seen the 3d printer panic? Theres proposals to regulate and monitor usage of 3d printers. It's as if these people didn't know that you can build guns pretty easily, but those bullets are a bit more difficult.

Fair enough, but Australia has a similar mentality. Large landmass, frontier mentality away from the motherland, highly independently minded, former British colony. And that applies to both the US and Australia. Large chunks of Australia had to be conquered in wars, and defended against Japanese expansion, lets not even begin on Gallipoli. Australia has the old British mentality before we dismantled the Empire after WW2, or so friends and family have told me.

And I've got the plans to the Liberator on my computer here, back of the envelope calculations looks like had a high chance of exploding in my face if I printed it off and had access to bullets. I would prefer a copper pipe and a shovel handle to this thing, its a Nerf gun with the barrel diameter of a standard round and the option to stick a nail in as a firing hammer.

The reaction is hilarious, its as if it didn't occur to anyone that you could kill someone with rat poisoning a crossbow or bare hands.

Childhood

Youth

Adulthood

One should not give first two groups weapons except in 'controlled' situations when you send em to kill other ppl for oil and such.

or it will end up in news making us look bad.

The US existed just fine with guns for a very long time. Okay, maybe Prohibition got a little out of hand.... Roll

Anyway, the problem are the following:

1) Lack of parenting time - On the average, both parents work over here. So, let's assume an 9-5 job. No time in the morning due to the hussle & bussle of everyone getting ready in the morning. Afternoon is both parents navigating traffic (since 80% of our population lives in urban areas now). Everyone gets home and then there's dinner to cook and eat. Clean up after. Homework to be done and some chores. On average, that leaves about 1 hour each day of actual quality parent/child time. Of course, both parents are exhausted, so the kid plays X-Box and they collapse on the sofa. That leaves the weekends to catch up on the bog chores and actually be a parent fora day or two...of which, the kid really doesn't take seriously since the other 5 days are already a joke.

2) Lack of discipline - Lack of this ties into the lack of time in point #1. Discipline in schools has been reduced to a memory. No real time for discipline at home. Just threats of it that there's no time to follow through on.

3) Lack of accountability - Our society has been formed into a "It's someone else's fault I did this". Black violence is because their ancestors were slaves. Child violence is video games. Late to work is always some excuse. Lack of performance is because the boss expects too much. Remember, a lady won a law suit against McDonald's because her coffee was too hot. So, no matter what someone does wrong, they can always find someone/something to blame it on and there will be those that have sympathy for them.

4) Positive Reinforcement - The act of being friends with your children and nurturing the notion that everything they do is wonderful and they are very special in the world. Screw that. Children should have a healthy fear of what Mom & Dad are gonna do to them if they do something they know they shouldn't. They also should earn the tI didn't become friends with my parents until after I had moved out and made my own life.

.....of course, exercising discipline is almost against the law nowadays. Sad really.

5) Media Saturation - honestly, these recent events are tragedies and should shock me, but I have acclimated to them. Even the graphic images of the Boston Bombing didn't bother me. It bothers me that it didn't. It bugs the snot out of me we are becoming immune to feeling a sense of horror over these things.

6) Dependence on ADD/ADHD - take all of the above and, instead of saying we have both a parenting & social crisis on our hands, we call it ADD or ADHD. Put them on meds to further numb their brainwaves and emotions. Brilliant.

7) Social Isolation - Stay inside. Watch the TEVO, internet, Facebook, Twitter, etc We don't get out and meet those around us. There's no flags that go off when behavior changes simply because we know people more through the text that they post than how they really act.

So, you get a generation of self-entitled, non-disciplined, non-caring, violence acclimated, spoiled kids who do not see any problem with hurting others mentally, emotionally sexually, or physically. They can blame someone/something else and everyone starts looking for the answers to "Why did they do that?" and "How could this happen?"

My answer to both questions is Ref 1 - 7

Or, be like my wife and I:

Because we knew we would not be able to discipline them, we never had children. If we did, they would be a social outcast for not having the same outlook. We know about 1/3 of our neighborhood because we get out and walk & talk to people. We do not use Facebook, Twitter, etc. We have friends whom we physically get together with and have real conversations with. We are not interested in seeing pics of the burger they had for lunch nor all the other mundane details of their daily existence.

We exist in the real world, with real values, have real expectations, and expect only to be special to ourselves and nobody else.

Generally I don't like criticising other countries internal things....

But there appears to be a systematic problem. Both parents working full time, no time to parent. They both work full time to pay the bills which are relatively higher than they were 30 years ago due to wage stagnation. Even the US Navy considers this to be one of the biggest defence related problems : lack of a competent citizenry to train.

At the moment the US is treading water, but the initiative is in Asia now, lets not even begin talking about the EU... We don't think a war could happen at all due to the safety bubble, heck thats why Russia of 140M and an economy made of Wensleydale is a military match for the EU, 500M and the largest economy on Earth, how the hell does that work out?

I suppose what I'm getting at is that this is a symptom of issues, not the core issue itself. Stabalise the economy, crack down on the wealth distribution problem by investing in the bottom up. The ironic thing is that the left which would be the most likely to have reason to rebel against the government at the moment are the ones against the means to conduct said rebellion.

TAFTA is going to make things very, very interesting. Negotiations ongoing about creating a free trade block between the EFTA and NAFTA states. My inner geopolitical armchair general is screaming incoming unified Western World

Silens, I looked up Australian rebellions, there have been q few but not on the scale as the US ones I think, but Australia was founded as a Penal colony so pretty much everyone sent in the initial waves were criminals against the Crown. Whether the people whose crimes would be considered petty theft by today's standards is another thing, but I hope you get what I mean.

I love reading this ****. You guys are so much smarter / awesomer than the guys on the MMA forum I read.

I completely agree with all the 1-7 presented by Totalrx, especially with #4:Every Child is special... What one can expect in the country where parents aren't allowed to discipline their kids, and kids can sue their own parents?

The media, fastfood, lack of proper parenting pretty much screwed up the generation.

that is exactly the hypocrisy of the right to own a gun , overthrowing a democratic elected goverment by force because you are not agreeing on what the majority of voters voted for
where is the democracy and freedom in that

and no guns do not belong in the hands of kids no matter how well you educate them in the use of fire arms this isn't a case of owell a education they get from their parents

it is a case of resposibility and accepting the consequinces of your action which is something kids do not have at the same level of the huge majorityy of adults

I am not against guns per se nor am i american but sometimes it just sounds or looks so absurd this whole gunculture in the USA

You're wrong, and you're not at fault for being wrong - you just don't have teh frame of reference to understand. Accept that, and move on.

Because they are kids, these concepts have to be taught... repeatedly.

Still, giving guns to children is so over the top ridiculous it makes my stomach churn each time I see it on TV (there has been quite some news coverage about those "good American parents" in the last weeks). Seriously, nobody has the right to call her/himself a parent if she/he is ok with that kind of stuff...

EDIT: I know, Americans are "brainwashed" by the NRA since earliest youth to see it as their "god given right" to bear arms and yadda yadda... but concider this: Over the last decade, approx 3.000 US citizens have been killed by terrorism, that's bad, but over 96.000 have been killed by guns in their own homes!