[cpbell0033944]

In the U.S., about 11,000 people are murdered with a firearm each year (out of about 2.5 million total deaths).  So only a tiny fraction of deaths in the U.S. each year are murders, and spree killings make up a tiny piece of that 11,000.  So in defense of the cops, the odds are pretty small (thousands to one) that a killer is going to murder two people, then reload and massacre more people nearby.  It almost never happens, and it's probably not right to condemn someone for failing to act to prevent something that almost never happens.

Sorry Lingster, that argument doesn't wash.  I also like the way that, according to you, the Independant, one of the UK's most respected broadsheets, is anti-US (like seemingly all of the UK in your eyes) and has the nerve to suggest that US culture might be partly responsible for this.  I've just read the offending article, and found it very balanced and considered.  To my unenlightened, wishy-washy liberal eyes ( ::)), the equation is simple:

Easy availability of firearms (if not in one state, then a couple of hour's drive to take someone into a neighbouring state will find guns readily available) + a culture that still hasn't COMPLETELY left-behind the "pioneer fighting the Indians" mentality + Hollywood films with bullets flying everywhere = Columbine, the Amish schoolhouse, now Virginia Tech, and how many more?

In the UK, we had two big instances of this sort of thing happening.  In 1987 we had the Hungerford massacre.  One guy killed 16 and wounded another 15 on a sunny summer's day in a picture-postcard English village.  Then in 1996 a guy walked into a primary school in the Scottish village of Dunblane and killed 16 children and one teacher.  As a result of these tragedies, our gun laws were tightened considerably, and we haven't had anything like that since (pray to God we never do again).  How bloody hard can it be to kock some sense into people's heads?  Either you have a country in which this sort of thing is vanishingly unlikely, but has some people grumbling about restrictions, or you let people buy one gun a month for as many months as they damn well like, and accept that this sort of thing will just keep on happening, time after time. >:(
IT'S A NO BLOODY-BRAINER! ::)

[TC2]

I'm getting a little tired of you acting all 'superior' to Americans.  In almost any post that involved the US you seem to find a way to deride, put down, insult, or laugh at the things "Americans" do, and quite frankly it's getting offensive.  You're categorizing us under the list that we're all dumbasses with your comments and it's getting a bit old.

[cpbell0033944]

I'm getting a little tired of you acting all 'superior' to Americans.  In almost any post that involved the US you seem to find a way to deride, put down, insult, or laugh at the things "Americans" do, and quite frankly it's getting offensive.  You're categorizing us under the list that we're all dumbasses with your comments and it's getting a bit old.

I'm not deriding anybody – it just seems sad to me that parents, brothers, sisters, wives and husbands may well have to suffer as the loved ones of these people are now just because it's in a country's culture to allow often almost unfettered access to guns.  All I'm pointing-out is that a choice needs to be made – let me quote my post.

Either you have a country in which this sort of thing is vanishingly unlikely, but has some people grumbling about restrictions, or you let people buy one gun a month for as many months as they damn well like, and accept that this sort of thing will just keep on happening, time after time.
IT'S A NO BLOODY-BRAINER!

OK, the "no bloody-brainer" bit was perhaps taking things too far, but my point is that, if the suffering resulting from this is too great for society to bear, then difficult decisions need to be taken.  Either you restrict firearms, carry on as you are, but have these incidents happening time after weary time, or you encourage anybody over the age of 16 to pack a veritable arsenal every time they leave the house, in which case you have anarchy.  I DO NOT laugh at the US – I am very much an admirer of many aspects of US achievement – if I seriously thought that Americans were all dim, then I'd be pretty stupid myself, because biological research (in which I hope to shortly be involved) is driven by the US.  Many great minds are American, and yes, people in the UK can be every bit as dim-witted, stupid, dumb, thick, whichever word you want to use as any American. 

My "one gun per month" reference is of course relating to the state law in Virginia on firearms; my point being that it's no good restricting somebody to one gun per month when this guy (who of course was not American except by means of residency) was able to cause this much carnage with just TWO MONTHS' RATION.  You need an overall limit, rigorous licensing, and, above all, a police force that will take reports of gunfire seriously, and a university that does more than just to send out an email to students mentioning a shooting incident", which means very little other than "someone's accidentally loosed-off and air rifle and shot a sparrow, or whatever small birds would be found in Virginia.

Can you honestly, with your hand on your heart say that you'd rather be able (or rather that someone so inclined was able) to go to the backwoods and do a bit of hunting when the mood strikes rather than saving the lives of many innocent people?  Trouble is, you can't have your cake, eat it AND not have indigestion afterwards.

[Lingster]

cpbell0033944:

Firstly, where does it stop?  How many things should we ban because they're dangerous?  Automobiles kill ten times as many people each year in the U.S. as are killed in firearm homicides.  Alcohol, tobacco, red meat, SHOWERS – what else would you ban?  What else should be sacrificed on the altar so that the sheeple can have a false sense of security?

Secondly, I suspect that like many Europeans you have a very simplistic view of the United States.  Many people throughout the world believe that they understand the U.S. because they've seen our movies and TV programs.  I can assure you that what goes on in movies and TV programs is fiction and does not much resemble daily life here.  If you haven't lived here, you probably don't know us.  As a people we Americans tend to be inward focused – we're constantly derided for this in European media, but the upside is that we don't feel the need to pass judgment on other peoples around the world, a failing to which Europeans often succumb.  When a tsunami or a typhoon kills tens of thousands of people, we don't point fingers and say, "You should have built sturdier houses."  Instead we send money, food and clothing and try to help them prevent future incidents of the same kind – the U.S. is currently financing a tsunami warning system for nations in southeast Asia.  We're also trying to build a missile defense system over Europe.  We don't often feel the need to explain that we're doing it because prior to the U.S. establishing a permanent military presence in Europe, you people were making excellent progress toward exterminating yourselves.  (On two separate occasions.) 

It seems that the practical outcome of the recent phenomenon of European multiculturalism is that Europeans are not allowed to hate and disparage anyone but Americans.  And you spend quite a bit of time doing that.  What you don't understand is that the U.S. has very social trust.  I am not afraid of my neighbors having guns.  In fact I feel better having armed neighbors than I do having armed police in my neighborhood.  I do not trust the government with my defense.  I am glad my neighbors own guns.  I am glad that I can look to them for help when there's trouble.

Finally, the wisdom of the U.S. system of government is that it is entirely oppositional.  Not just insofar as the right fights the left, but also that the Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial are necessarily in opposition and forever pushing against one another.  Also, the 50 state governments are necessarily in opposition to one another much of the time, and in opposition to Washington much of the time.  And finally the citizens, themselves armed with hundreds of millions of firearms, represent a power block that must at all times be considered in Washington and the state capitals.  The implicit meaning of the Declaration of Independence is that Americans have the right to overthrow our government if (when) it eventually descends into tyranny.  300 million firearms goes a long way toward making that a credible threat.

In part because of that threat, we have kept one form of government without interruption longer than any other people in the history of the world.  Along with Britain (if you don't count Irish independence) and a tiny handful of other nations, we suffered no interregnum or revolution or conquest during the 20th century.

When Katrina hit New Orleans there was no end to the criticism of the U.S. in European media.  To hear your newspapers and magazines, it was an indictment of the American system itself.  Never mind that Europe doesn't get hurricanes.  Never mind that North America has the most violent weather on the planet.  It was all our fault.  Gone unmentioned was that the year before, a heat wave in Europe KILLED TWENTY TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS KATRINA.  A freakin' heat wave.  But by all means, feel free to pass judgment on what we did over three days when a section of the Gulf of Mexico moved several miles inland and inundated several major cities, versus what you yourselves did when you had an unusually hot summer.

We know how to run our own affairs.  And you should mind your own, because we're a little bit tired of having you Europeans attributing moral fault every time we suffer a tragedy.

[Chuck]

We also shouldn't generalize people on the basis of geography lest we do them a disservice, European, American, or Martian.

[Chuck]

Also, while there should be outrage at what has happened, we also shouldn't take this as an opportunity to lambast the failings of other larger bodies. There has never been a perfect society anywhere in the world.

Anger breeds more anger. Outrage leads to either a change in the social order or unnecessary lashing out.

We are friends here. Something very bad has happened. Let's not rip out each other's throats.

[cpbell0033944]

Thanks for your considered and enlightening comments, Lingster and I'm sorry for causing offence: I certainly did not mean to do so.  It's through reading news stories from the US point of view and these sorts of debates here on Amaz0ns that I've realised that the US is very different to Europe in how it runs its own affairs.  To my European eyes, the idea of having, a Lingster described, the people, the States, the Executive, Judicial and Legislative all pulling in different directions sounds like it should be a recipe for deadlock and stagnation.  The fact that it isn't is obviously a tribute to common sense.
As for the "cars, red meat and alcohol are dangerous" argument, I see Lingster's point, but, if someone wants to eat fatty foods, or drink vast amounts of alcohol, it's their health that's at risk, not that of 30 or so bystanders.  Cars are probably the only equivalent. Speak to any British (and I would assume American also) traffic police officer, and they'll tell you that a car is a lethal weapon – hence why thorough driving tests and driving under the influence of alcohol enforcement are very important factors.  However, the fact remains that firearms are potentially extremely dangerous to many innocent people when they get into the wrong hands, so they surely must be treated differently to Big Macs!

As for the European heatwave – yes, it was a cock-up (although manland Europe, not the UK was worst affected).  Don't forget also that northern Europe is unused to heatwaves, whereas the US Gulf Coast should be better prepared (poorly maintained levees NOT being examples of well-preparednes IMHO) for hurricanes, as they do happen more frequently.  I would not criticise the authorities for failing to prevent as many people from dying, other than their negligence with regards to the levees, but what shocks British people is to see reports from New Orleans that show the tourist revenue-earning districts back to normal, whilst the poorer areas are still wastelands strewn with debris all this time afterwards.  To the eyes of a continent that believes in Social Security and in the idea that Governments have a responsibility to help those who are least able to help themselves, the scenes from New Orleans are utterly shocking; in the UK people were horrified that the government of the richest nation on Earth could leave so many people with next to no help in their hour of need.  The fact that, to American eyes, this was unremarkable and only to be expected probably didn't help the perception of the US abroad – a country waging a war that it (along with us) started whilst doing little to help its own citizens embroiled in a massive natural disaster seems to minds on the eastern side of the Atlantic to be the behaviour of a developing nation or a country run by a despotic dictator, not "the Land of the Free" or the country that sometimes claims to be the world's only true democracy.  The ostracizing of France because it behaved over Iraq as France always behaves – digging-in its heels – also surprised Brits.  We may have a love-hate relationhip with France, but we didn't boycott their wine, and, even if we called chips 'French fries', I doubt we'd have felt need to rename them.

I do think it's good that the US doesn't pass judgement on others as readily as others do; I can see the upside to inwardness.  It does however mean that the perception in other parts of the world is that the US thinks "We're all right, so who cares about anyone else."  As Lingster says when he mentions the US's role in the Asian tsunami warning system, the US does use its power and wealth for good more often than many in the rest of the world realise, but Americans need to mention this sort of thing more – if you've got a bad reputation, the prudent course of action is to try and change perceptions, not to say "Well, the world doesn't understand us, it's not our fault that we're not popular, so let's become even more inward-looking rather than try and change people's views."  Anyway, I don't recall the UK being anything less than generous (not our stingy government, I mean the citizens themselves) when the Asian tsunami hit, neither do I recall finger-pointing about sturdier houses, either.  We understood that this was Mother Nature at her most violent, and that these people needed help.  I think that, while Europe misunderstands the US, so the US misunderstands Europe equally.

[Lingster]

More evidence of British perfidy.  When will it stop!?

[Author]

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