Starker on 4/5/2023 at 13:21
“Please teach your kids to stay away from doorbells.”
US gun culture is endlessly fascinating and absolutely horrifying in equal measure.
JakeOh on 9/5/2023 at 07:50
Quote Posted by demagogue
This is a gaming forum, so I would even bet a majority of people here like to play shooters and love the idea of guns in the purely mechanical and functional way, in the sport of body and machine working together to shoot something accurately to "make progress" in the most direct way of eliminating the bad guys as obstacles. And they have deep historical connections--guns were central to cultures brewed in the outback, like hunting culture; they stopped the Nazis from conquering the West, and were key to other national salvation moments; etc.
All of those are valid reasons to love guns by themselves if you could put aside any social or moral ramifications. But in the real world of course you can't put aside the social and moral ramifications of real guns killing real people out in the real streets without any mitigating justification. There's your rub.
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I didn't see that video posted above earlier. Being in Oklahoma these days, well I wanted to say I have no idea how people think here, but honestly I know all too well how people think here. I don't think it's really that different from any middle American region. It's just in the culture and people are saturated in it.
Yep, guns in vacuum are interesting and fascinating, but the way people used those, especially in recent years kinda making it hard to side with a lot of points gun advocates make.
I do own a hunting rifle thought(some semi-cheap .308 from a local hunting store (
https://gritrsports.com/) Gritr Sports), my father taught me to hunt from a pretty young age, hence why it's kinda a part of me at this point. Not planning on getting anything semi-auto anytime soon though.
Nicker on 9/5/2023 at 12:40
Another clear-eyed and moving essay on gun violence from Laurence O'Donnell.
[video=youtube;jmLRXYCq4V0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmLRXYCq4V0[/video]
In the comments someone posted a poem by Brian Bliston -
“England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is a gun.
Brazil is football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona's hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.
Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun.
Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America is a gun.”
RippedPhreak on 9/5/2023 at 13:32
Hilarious to refer to Sirhan Sirhan (A Jordanian person who should never have been in the country) as "A Messenger from the Secret Filthy Heart of America."
More like a parable on not allowing foreigners into your lands. But hey, the Kennedys were pro-immigration so Bobby got what he voted for.
Jason Moyer on 9/5/2023 at 15:45
If only Native Americans had done a better job of keeping immigrants out.
RippedPhreak on 9/5/2023 at 15:59
You probably think this is some kind of smug "own," but you're quite correct there...if every Spaniard, French or British person who stepped off a boat was instantly filled with arrows, the tribes could have kept their ancestral lands. A shame history is repeating again with today's Americans.
Tocky on 9/5/2023 at 16:14
Or conversely if those immigrating were less warlike and greedy for land then they could have cohabitated as we are now doing with immigrants. I myself am a mixture. My little town is a mixture. That other view only works if one is fearful of genetic diversity and being "replaced".
RippedPhreak on 9/5/2023 at 16:37
So just to be clear, the Cherokee, Iroquois and so forth should have welcomed the new immigrants. They were just trying to make a better life for themselves, yes?
Tocky on 9/5/2023 at 16:49
Many of them did. Some did not. They were played one tribe off another by the invaders because they had prior hate themselves. Also there was disease. But the settlers had a fear of other which was stoked from within their own community. They also had a greed for land. That served to make them unite against the natives.
It's a whole long history but one which could have played out better for everyone if there had not been so much hate and fear of other cultures. Everyone could have blended as I am now.
Starker on 9/5/2023 at 18:07
Once again a confirmation that nationalism is politics for basic people.
